Shakespeare for Freedom shows why Shakespeare has mattered for four hundred years, and why he still matters today.

Ewan Fernie is Professor at the Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham) in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is joint editor of the Shakespeare Now! series and his books include Shame in Shakespeare (2001), Spiritual Shakespeares (2005), Reconceiving the Renaissance (with Ramona Wray, Mark Thornton Burnett and Clare McManus, 2005), Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today's World (2012), The Demonic: Literature and Experience (2012), Thomas Mann and Shakespeare (with Tobias Döring, 2015), and the novel he co-authored with Simon Palfrey, Macbeth, Macbeth (2016), which the philosopher Slavoj Žižek called 'a miracle, an instant classic'. In 2011, he co-wrote a civic liturgy for St George's Day which was performed in major cathedrals; and he is currently co-writing a play after Shakespeare's Pericles about immigration and sexual politics for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is also working on the forgotten challenge of progressive culture in nineteenth-century Birmingham.

1. Reclaiming Shakespearean freedom; 2. Shakespeare means freedom; 3. 'Freetown!' (Romeo and Juliet); 4. Freetown-upon-Avon; 5. Freetown-am-Main; 6. Free artists of their own selves!; 7. Freetown philosopher; 8. Against Shakespearean freedom; 9. The freedom of complete being.