Judging from the selection of books that have arrived for review this year, the practice of Shakespeare and related criticism is ever more diverse, seemingly without a clear direction, even miscellaneous. This is of course not altogether a bad thing, since the opportunities for new and innovative approaches are necessarily plentiful at such a time. Certainly ‘variety’ is the byword of this year’s review: variety in topics, in quality, in critical approach, and in the media discussed.

The evidence of publishers’ lists and tables at conferences suggests that those planning to undertake studies of Shakespeare’s contemporaries might want to think twice before beginning a project without that magic name in its title. The same evidence also indicates that one publisher in particular is making a concerted effort to broaden the range of criticism on early modern subjects. Ashgate is noteworthy for both the quantity and quality of its offerings on a broad selection of such topics, a good example being Marlowe’s Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age of the Armada, by Alan Shepard. It offers an ambitious treatment of all Marlowe’s plays; indeed, its scope is rather wider than the title and subtitle seem to advertise. Central to his argument is the idea that ‘under the stresses of war, counterfeiting the guise of a soldier in the streets could bring a death sentence, while in the theatre it could bring modest celebrity to a player and, in rare circumstances, wealth to shareholders.