Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This article examines the evolution of criticism that focuses on the representation of animals in Shakespeare. While animals have always been a topic of interest to Shakespeare critics, recent decades have seen the emergence of a coherent body of theoretically informed work that investigates the cultural, material, and ideological work that animals perform. Shakespeare's plays and poems have become the ground from which challenges to the human‐animal divide, Cartesian mind‐body dualism, and other powerful manifestations of “the anthropological machine” can be successfully mounted. The article considers debates within the field and takes account of new directions in the scholarship, arguing that continued and reciprocal engagement between Shakespeare criticism and animal studies enlivens both.</jats:p>