Shakespeare and the Political Way attempts to argue that the questions traditionally addressed under the heading ‘Shakespeare and politics’ – whether the plays are revolutionary or reactionary, what contemporary events the dramas allude to, and how they construct history and legitimacy – tend to overlook some deeper questions about Shakespeare’s representations of political power. Political power as such is brought into conflict, in the plots, with economic clout, the workings of violence, religious authority, magic means, and other sources of domination. The plots also play political power as machiavellian subterfuge and ruthlessness, against a more open, truthful, public construction of political action. The question of ‘reading Shakespeare politically’, and that of the concept of politics, will be addressed by the speakers and responded to by the author.