Shakespeare's Wordplay and Possible Worlds

Book excerpt: Shakespeare’s Wordplay and Possible Worlds proposes a novel possible-world approach to the complex interpretative potential of Shakespeare’s wordplay. The approach is based on the observation that in Shakespeare multiple significations of ambiguous words or syntactic structures often cohere with other apparently unambiguous words or syntactic structures and thus project parallel cognitive scenarios. Therefore, the use of possible worlds as cognitive tools allows the exploration of such scenarios in their broadest context and, at the same time, provides insight into the conceptual blending that occurs between and among them. The book demonstrates the utility of the proposed theoretical construct for textual and cultural analysis in three illustrative case studies.