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Evaluates Contantin Manea's Romanian-language "retranslation of Shakespeare's sonnets" in terms of "agency, intertextuality, and history," using rhyme, meter, diction, and tone as metrics. Argues that no single translation can "recreate Shakespeare's entire poetical originality."

Uses speech act theory and politeness theory to analyze scenes of thanking in Shakespeare's plays, as gifts and actions. Considers thanks in terms of grace, pardon, and ingratitude.

Explicates the value of Shakespeare's poetic language, showing differences in early and late career and comparing Shakespeare to other authors. Suggests that when it comes to early printed plays and "good" and "bad" quartos, "the 'good' texts really are poetically and dramatically superior to their counterparts." Includes extended discussions of Taming of the Shrew, 3 Henry VI, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet.

Recounts importance of Shakespeare to "intellectual/social life of colonial Bengal/India by the last quarter of the 19th century." Shows how social reformers, nationalists, poets, and playwrights and directors responded to and used Shakespeare. Explores responses to "racial misrepresentation" of Othello and "the anxiety of the Raj in teaching King Lear," before turning to Shakespeare's position in "post-independence Indian academia" and "contemporary Indian cinema."

Uncovers the significance of the "cockered child" stock character in medieval and early modern drama, where boys were portrayed as "immature and effeminate" and girls as "too masculine for their own good." Considers cockered child figure in Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night.

Examines the scholarly debate over the reading of “wise” versus “wife” in Ferdinand’s speech from Tempest. Concludes that “wise” (which often refers to individuals skilled in the occult arts) is the appropriate reading because Ferdinand’s wonder and admiration are directed at Prospero’s majestic vision of Greek gods, while his wife Miranda is temporarily absent from his thoughts. English summary, 276.

Argues that “Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon vaded,” a poem of uncertain authorship in William Jaggard’s anthology The Passionate Pilgrim, turned several Renaissance elegiac conventions to profane use. Contends that this transgressive lyric produced the “Shakespearean effect” through its resemblance to Venus and Adonis and Shakespeare’s sonnets. English summary, 263.

Analyzies second chances, imagined lives, and how life stories are constructed in Shakespeare's plays. Suggests that we can "read Shakespeare in the light of Freud and Freud in the light of Shakespeare" to glean literary and psychoanalytic insights.

Argues that Shakespeare's tragedies are "preoccupied ... with the inscrutability of human life, the indeterminacy of the universe," "the unacknowledge fictions through which human beings attempt ot make their existences feel meaningful, and the unhappy consequences to which these fictuions generally give rise." Suggests that Shakespeare's tragedies "affirm the status of dramatic art as a medium ... through which to explore the truth of human experience in a world that is not fully susceptible to rational analysis." Includes chapters on Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, and Coriolanus.

Analyzes Titus Andronicus as a play of "rhetorical hyperbole and dramatic excess" that draws on revege tragedy tradition created by Thomas Kyd. Positions Hamlet as an "anti-revenge play" that explores antitheatrical sentiment and presents an "ethically vacant theatrical space."