Discusses changing interpretations of Shakespeare and his plays through the centuries, arguing that claims of his uniqueness reflect the characteristics of particular eras and critics more than Shakespeare.

Shakespeare has made the big time. No less than the Beatles or Liberace, Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Shakespeare is big-time in the idiomatic sense of cultural success and widespread notoriety. Not only has he achieved canonical status, Shakespeare is a contemporary celebrity. His artistic distinction and aptitude for controversy constantly keeps his name in the public eye. Bristol debates Shakespeare's cultural authority, and clarifies the semantics of his name in our culture. Big-Time Shakespeare suggests his plays represent the pathos of our civilisation with extraordinary force and clarity. Shakespeare's contradictory understanding of the social and cultural past is also examined with close analysis of The Winter's Tale, Othello, and Hamlet.

Published in 1971, this book is a restored copy of the many works of Shakespeare. This is a work originally from 1725, written in Old English, gives a commentary on the errors in the works of William Shakespeare by Pope. The play merited this treatment is Hamlet, with cross-referencing to his other plays.

Between 1660 and 1682 seventeen of Shakespeare's plays were altered for the new Restoration stages and times. Shakespeare Adaptations from the Restoration: Five Plays now publishes five of these plays for the first time in a critical edition.

Shakespeare's Boys: A Cultural History offers the first extensive exploration of boy characters in Shakespeare's plays, examining a range of characters from across the Shakespearean canon in their original early modern contexts and surveying their subsequent performance histories on stage and screen from the Restoration until the present day.