Two dolls, 30 detailed period costumes from Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Henry V, Richard III, and 7 other great plays.

"What is a person? What company do people keep with animals, plants, and things? What are their rights? To whom are they obligated? Such questions - bearing fundamentally on the shared meaning of politics and life - animate Shakespearean drama, yet their urgency has been obscured by historicist approaches to literature.

Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean dramaA new way of accounting for the different sorts of plays that Shakespeare wrote later in his careerA detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection, from the eighteenth century to the present dayCase studies that, through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, shows the shared concerns of the authorsA new approach that differs from the more typical method of looking merely for verbal echoes, resulting in a deeper, richer sense of the way that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne shaped his writingIn this revisionist study, Peter G. Platt provides a detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric and the alterations in Shakespeare's acting company helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne is an under-recognised driving force in these later plays.

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? This authoritative collection of essays brings fresh perspectives to bear on an intriguing cultural phenomenon.

This collection reflects the distinct methods and insights Stephen Booth has brought to the reading of Shakespeare for more than forty years. Together these essays suggest how his approach enhances the reading, playing, or teaching of Shakespeare in the years to come and suggest the enduring value of his work to Shakespeare scholarship.