The accommodated animal

Shakespeare wrote of lions, shrews, horned toads, curs, mastifss, and hell-hounds. But he used the word 'animal' only eight times in his work - which was typical for the 16th century, when the word was rarely used. As Laurie Shannon reveals in this book, the animal-human divide first came strongly into play in the 17th century, with Descartes's famous formulation that reason sets humans above other species: 'I think, therefore I am'.