Abstract

This text challenges the long tradition which sees human play as the fount of creativity and origin of all civilization. The book traces the history of an alternative theory of play in Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Freud, where play is an end in itself - a cultivation of aesthetic forms which do nothing to disguise their artificiality and which are loved only for the fictions which they are. Nietzsche, the arch-philosopher of play, Freud, the theorizer of slips and jokes, and Shakespeare, master of the man-made illusions of the play world, are shown to anticipate the playful philosophy which has become a hallmark of postmodern times.