William Shakespeare: A Marxist before Marx

The paper aims to identify Marxist elements in Shakespearean plays to determine whether Shakespeare could be considered a „Marxist‟ before Karl Marx himself developed his theories and ideologies. Shakespeare‟s plays have become subjects of historicism, psychoanalytic, feminist, postcolonial, and Marxist studies, among others, which were not in practice during his time. The subject matter related to these theories had been inherent in the plays even before the theories themselves began to evolve. Critical theories, such as Marxism, were hardly invoked in exploring his works. Therefore, the study was inquisitive about whether Marxist elements remained in his plays, even though they had been written before Marx was born. To conduct a holistic and comprehensive analysis, the study examines Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coriolanus, and The Tempest, employing textual, document, and content analysis. As a theoretical framework, elements from Marx‟s "A Communist Manifesto" have been adopted. Overall findings of the study include that William Shakespeare conceptualized the economic hierarchy, division of labor, desire to revolt, and so on, which can be identified as Marxist elements, though the theory of Marxism appeared two centuries later.