MICHAEL ALEXANDER is Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of St Andrews, UK. He is a poet and translator and has international experience of teaching English literature, both medieval and modern. He is the author of Palgrave's bestselling A History of English Literature now in its second edition and his Penguin translations of Beowulf and other Old English poems have sold a million copies.

Preface First Things Career in brief Authorship Play and page Printed Books Posthumous Publication The Recorded Life Stratford and Family Education Plays Shake-scene What kind of Scene? Immediate Predecessors First Plays Language Verse Dramatist Love's Labour's Lost Romeo and Juliet A Midsummer Night's Dream Histories Richard II Henry IV Henry V Comprehensiveness Versatilty The Merchant: Changing Contexts To the Globe Much Ado About Nothing Julius Caesar As You Like It Twelfth Night Shake-speare's Sonnets Horatio's Question: Hamlet Taken to Extremes Problem plays Measure for Measure Tragedies Othello King Lear Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Late Romances The Winter's Tale The Tempest Retrospect His supposed point of view 'Read him therefore' Order of Composition Chronology of Publication Further Reading Abbreviations and References Notes Index