David Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago. His numerous publications include The Bantam Shakespeare, in 29 paperback volumes (1988, new edition forthcoming), and The Complete Works of Shakespeare (fifth edition, 2003), as well as the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Henry IV Part I (1987), the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of Antony and Cleopatra (second edition, 2005), and the Arden Shakespeare edition of Troilus and Cressida (1998). He is the senior editor of the Revels Student Editions, and is a senior editor of the Revels Plays and of the forthcoming Cambridge edition of the works of Ben Jonson. He is also general editor of English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology (2002), and the author of Shakespeare: The Seven Ages of Human Experience (second edition, Blackwell, 2005).

Shakespeare was not, strictly speaking, a philosopher. That is, he did not write essays or treatises arguing philosophical positions or proposing an all-embracing philosophical scheme. However, we do have the plays and poems - and they collectively give evidence of a deep moral and intellectual commitment that we can locate in what we call "Shakespeare", meaning not only the plays and poems themselves, but the multitudinous responses they have elicited over the four centuries or so since Shakespeare wrote them.
Asking what the plays and poems suggest in continual debate about an array of topics -- sex and gender, politics and political theory, writing and acting, religious controversy and issues of faith, skepticism and misanthropy, and closure -- we can delve into the philosophy of Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a "great mind".

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1. A Natural Philosopher.
2. Lust in Action: Shakespeare's Ideas on Sex and Gender.
3. What is Honour? Shakespeare's Ideas on Politics and Political Theory.
4. Hold the Mirror Up to Nature: Shakespeare's Ideas on Writing and Acting.
5. Pray You Now, Forget and Forgive: Shakespeare's Ideas on Religious Controversy and Issues of Faith.
6. Is Man No More Than This? Shakespeare's Ideas on Scepticism, Doubt, Pessimism, Misanthropy.
7. Here Our Play Has Ending: Ideas of Closure in the Late Plays.
8. Credo.
Further Reading.
Index