Introductions to Shakespeare

This volume gathers the prefaces written for a mid-twentieth-century edition of the individual plays, one introduction for each of thirty-five works. Actors, directors, and scholars treat the comedies, histories, and tragedies as texts for performance as well as reading: they outline the situation, the principal figures, and the practical problems of a scene or a role. Hamlet, Lear, the English history cycle, the Roman plays, and the late romances are introduced in turn. The essays are short critical approaches rather than a life of Shakespeare or a continuous history of the Elizabethan stage. The book is a collection of play-by-play briefings.

Bound in orange cloth with pale brown paper on the front board, printed in brown and black. Pale orange endleaves. Pale yellow-brown slipcase.