Anne Barton's essays on Shakespeare and his contemporaries are characterized by their combination of intelligence, humanity and elegance. This book contains two previously unpublished pieces and makes accessible to a wider public of students and scholars essays which have previously been available only in article form, here revised and updated where necessary.

In a linked but wide-ranging collection the author addresses such diverse issues as Shakespeare's trust (and mistrust) of language, the puzzle of Falstaff's inability to survive in a genuinely comic world, the unconsummated marriage of Imogen and Posthumus in Cymbeline, Shakespeare's debt to Livy and Machiavelli in Coriolanus, 'hidden' kings in the Tudor and Stuart history play; comedy and the city, and deerparks as places of liberation and danger in English drama up to and beyond the Restoration. Professor Barton looks at both major and neglected plays of the period and the ongoing dialogue between them.

Taken together the essays reveal a remarkable range of reference and depth of insight, together with an increasing emphasis on historical and social contexts.