A Shakespeare Reader: Sources and Criticism provides a rich collection of critical and secondary material selected to assist in the study of Shakespeare's plays. It includes a selection of sources and analogues Shakespeare drew upon in writing nine of his major works, a variety of widely divergent critical interpretations of the plays over the last sixty years - from the practical criticism of the 1930s to the theoretical approaches of the 1990s - and informative essays on Shakespeare's theatre and on the challenges of editing the Shakespeare text. This book represents an invaluable resource for students and teachers of Shakespeare, as well as for theatre practitioners.

'...an excellent and varied collection of textual sources and critical material.' - Dr Julie Sanders, University of Keele 'Taken together, the trilogy attempts in some sense to 'manage' the study of Shakespeare by breaking his work down into task-specific ideas and categories...The breadth of what is possible in a university-level Shakespeare/ Renaissance literature course is the great merit of the trilogy, and many will be excited by its variety.' - Claire Preston, Times Higher Education Supplement

RICHARD DANSON BROWN and DAVID JOHNSON are both Lecturers in Literature at the Open University. Richard Brown is the author of The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser's Complaints and David Johnson is the author of Shakespeare and South Africa.