Trends in Recent Criticism

There is nothing like enough space here to do justice to the best – or the worst – critical studies of Shakespeare available for review this year. The first part of this survey concentrates on publications which seem to indicate the way that things are going nowadays, while discussions of specific genres, texts, and topics will be cited later on.

Of obvious importance is a collection of some of the best papers presented to the first Congress of the International Shakespeare Association.l Their titles will indicate the range of essays by (among others) Alistair Cooke ('Shakespeare in America'); Joel Hurstfield (' The Search for the Good Society in Shakespeare's Day and Our Own'); Helen Gardner ('Tragic Mysteries'); Alvin Kernan ('Shakespeare and the Abstraction of History');