HELENECIXOUS's epic wittily and reverentially echoes elements of Shakespeare's history plays, but while Cixous maintains much of the formal patterns of interpersonal conflict and confrontation established by Shakespeare, she has a keen sense of how the tragic contradictions of the modern world differ from those of Renaissance England. Where Shakespeare's characters embody the collision between feudal, family-centred interests, the centralizing, rationalizing tendencies of absolute monarchy, and the anarchic displacements of the rapidly developing, individual-oriented entrepreneurial spirit, Cixous's characters embody the irreconcilable extremes of first-, second-, and third-world ideologies – multi-national capitalism, communist absolutism, and the indigenous cultural rhythms of an ancient, agrarian civilization.