First published in 1968.

By selective study of certain of the comedies, tragedies and sonnets, Philip Edwards views Shakespeare's work as a whole and explains why his art developed as it did. The work which the author sees Shakespeare striving to create is the perfect fusion of comedy and tragedy and he suggests that we are watching the progress of a mind as acutely conscious as anyone today of the disorder and lack of meaning in the world. Nevertheless, it remains faithful to the possibility that within the imaginable forms of drama there exists that play which will satisfy the basic...

1460-1660 was a dramatic and crucially formative period in the emergence of the modern English state, language and identity. It encompassed the reigns of the last Plantagenets, the Tudors and the early Stuarts, as well as the victory of Parliament over the King in the Great Civil War and the amazing experiment of the Puritan Republic. The Making of the Modern English State traces the changes in politics and religion over the two hundred years that helped to form a new English identity. It is both an up-to-date narrative of the growth of the English state and an invaluable guide to...

First published in 1997, this volume challenges the belief that possessive individualists need states to restrain them from trespassing on the natural rights of others or from harming themselves and questions whether anarchy can be sustained to accommodate the long-term self-interests of possessive individualists. Issues discussed include Hobbes' response to the Foole, Libertarian Anarchism and the inevitability of a minimal state in anarchist society, along with tactics to avoid large wealth differentials.