Transfer of Power in Literature and Business: Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and King Lear

The study of Shakespeare’s plays, apart from the delight one may experience from the language, plot, and staging, offers useful insights into the enduring problems of human relationships in general and of organizational behavior in particular. Using as text material the tragedy of King Lear and the comedy Measure for Measure, this paper addresses one such organizational problem, succession, the transfer of power from one chief executive to another.

Canonising Shakespeare in 1920s Japan

In 1927, just before completing the first Japanese translation of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935) selected eight of his translations for inclusion in his own Selected Works, which were published in fifteen volumes in conclusion to his career as one of the leading exponents of cultural reform of his generation. His choice is idiosyncratic as it omits the plays that had become most popular during the period of Shakespeare’s initial reception in late nineteenth-century Japan, but includes a number that were relatively unknown, such as Measure for Measure. This article suggests likely reasons for his selection before discussing the comments he makes on each play in his translation prefaces, and thus provides an overview of what Tsubouchi had come to value about Shakespeare.