Yeats, Shakespeare, and Irish Cultural Nationalism examines Yeats's writing on Shakespeare in the context of his work on behalf of the Irish Literary Revival. While Shakespeare's verse drama provides a source of inspiration for Yeats's poetry and plays, Yeats also writes about Shakespeare in essays and articles promoting the ideals of the Revival, and on behalf of Irish literary nationalism. These prose pieces reveal Yeats thinking about Shakespeare's art and times throughout his career, and taken together they offer a new perspective on the contours of Yeats's cultural politics.
In each case, Yeats's thinking about Shakespeare responds to the remarkable conflation of aesthetic and religious philosophies constituting his cultural nationalism, thus making a unique case of Shakespearean reception. Taken together, Yeats's writings deracinate Shakespeare, and so contribute significantly to the process by which Shakespeare has come to be seen as a global artist, rather than a specifically English possession.