Marxist criticism
Marxist criticism.By the end of the 20th century Marxism had long ceased to be a unitary political philosophy, having developed over its 150-year history into an extraordinary array of competing theories ranging from the most vulgar or tyranny-abetting economic determinisms to some of the most sophisticated intellectual projects of the 20th century. Marxist criticism of Shakespeare has varied accordingly. All Marxist criticism is characterized by the belief that art and literature are interrelated with the societies which produce them, but further generalization is impossible. The German radical philosopher and social theorist Karl Marx (1818–83) himself was an avid admirer of Shakespeare and quoted him frequently throughout his works, often decoratively, at times more substantively, as in the discussion in his The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 of Timon's tirade on gold in Timon of Athens (4.3.26–45), in which Marx saw...
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