Suppose that philosophy is pursued either according to the myth or wish that one may know everything, or else according to the myth or wish that one may know nothing – defenses against the philosophical defeat of claiming to possess some privileged access to or measure of truth. In our century the names of Heidegger and of Wittgenstein are reasonably clear instances, respectively, of these modes of defense. By instinct and training my mode has been that of careful ignorance, but nowhere more than in my reading of Shakespeare have I been more aware of the liabilities and hazards of this course, hence nowhere more needful of timely aid and encouragement.

From the first of these essays I have counted on the friendship and the work of Michael Fried, of John Harbison, and of the late Seymour Shifrin; especially in recent years on that of Janet Adelman, Jay Cantor, Burton Dreben, Marc Shell, and Judith Shklar. I think also with gratitude of the vivid lift in particular exchanges with Paul Alpers, David Bevington, Carol Neely, Norman Rabkin, Amelie Rorty, Edward Snow, Meredith Skura, and Richard Wheeler. And throughout there have been the students – from those in the General Education course at Harvard for which the material on King Lear was prepared, to those in the two discussion seminars I have offered on the other plays represented in what follows here, to those generations of philosophy graduate students on the third floor of Emerson Hall willing to listen and to question as I sought to follow out my irregular sense of philosophy's bearing toward and from Shakespeare, conversations many of which – I am blessed to know – continue now years later.