ABSTRACT
Traditionally, or at least since 1892,1 Hardy has been seen as Shakespearean – in his tragic depth and characterizations, mastery and invention of language, and in his ambitious scope. His allusions to Shakespeare have been frequently noted but no comprehensive list has been compiled.2 No major work connecting the two authors has been accomplished, only relatively short occasional paragraphs, articles and chapters have appeared.3 ‘Shakespeare and Hardy’ is seen as too vast a subject to be contained in a monograph; Hardy is, famously, ‘Shakespearean’ and critics leave it at that. My aim here is to trace the steps by which Shakespeare influenced Hardy’s
sense of himself as a writer, from childhood through the writing of Desperate Remedies. For this purpose I will be focusing on the passages that Hardy annotated in his copy of Shakespeare which he bought in 1863.
