Shakespeare and Montaigne share a grounded, genial sense of the lived reality of human experience, as well as a surprising depth of engagement with history, literature and philosophy. With celebrated subtlety and incisive humour, both authors investigate abiding questions of epistemology, psychology, theology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. In this collection, distinguished contributors consider these influential, much-beloved figures in light of each other. The English playwright and the French essayist, each in his own fashion, reflect on and evaluate the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of new modern perspectives many of us now might readily recognise as our own.

Describing books as ‘this world’s theatre’, Montaigne admitted his curiosity to read and thereby ‘discover and know the mind of my authors’. This book’s dynamic discoveries about the shared literary, historical and psychological sympathies of Shakespeare and Montaigne illuminates the mind and work of both. It is a field-changing collection. -- Emma Smith, University of Oxford
Among the qualities that characterize the achievement of Montaigne and Shakespeare is the capacity over many centuries to arouse not merely interest but love, a love often deepening across the course of an entire lifetime.　 Despite their differences – the one a French nobleman, the other the son of an English glover, the one a famously personal essayist, the other a famously impersonal playwright– many readers, loving them both, have sensed a profound affinity between them. In exploring and testing the grounds of this affinity, this exemplary collection of essays finds new, often surprising ways to enrich our understanding of their individual talents and their shared gifts. -- Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University

Lars Engle, Chapman Professor of English at Tulsa, is the author of Shakespearean Pragmatism, coauthor of Studying Shakespeare's Contemporaries, and coeditor of English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology. His essays have appeared in PMLA, Modern Philology, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, SEL, and in numerous other journals and essay collections. He's a past Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. Patrick Gray is Associate Professor of English Studies and Director of Liberal Arts at Durham University. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism, and Civil War (2019), editor of Shakespeare and the Ethics of War (2019), and co-editor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics (2014). His essays have appeared in Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Skene, JMEMS, Comparative Drama, and Textual Practice. William M. Hamlin is Professor of English at Washington State University and Bornander Distinguished Professor in the WSU Honors College. His books include Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare's England (Palgrave, 2005), Montaigne's English Journey (Oxford, 2013), and, most recently, Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2020). A recipient of Guggenheim and British Academy fellowships, he has published essays in Renaissance Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Shakespeare Studies, Montaigne Studies, and many other journals.