A literary and historical analysis of the politics and culture of Elizabethan society as reflected in the plays of William Shakespeare, who engaged the audience with contemporary issues through drama, satire and comedy. A scholarly tome.

Abandoned at 27%. The very fact that it's taken me a month to get to 27% is an indication of the fact that this book is a) very long and b) not riveting.

Clearly well researched, I'm not sure what exactly it's adding to the sum of knowledge. Shakespeare's history plays spoke to contemporary concerns. Yes, agreed. Does not all good literature speak to the time of its writing? So... and? But the real problem is the style - it feels totally unfocused. It took about 1500 Kindle thingies just to get past the intro, where the author repeated and repeated the same thing, telling us a million times what he wasn't intending to do as much as what he was. Thereafter he goes through each of the plays in turn, drawing comparisons to the politics of the time of writing, and suggesting that they address the same questions as the Catholic tracts (of which I was and remain entirely unfamiliar). And it's a repeat of the same arguments for each play - the book could have been shortened dramatically and made more impactful by defining the major arguments and then calling on relevant scenes from the plays to prove them, rather than just rambling through each play at length, reiterating the same points.

And since I'm complaining anyway, can I just say that Latin has been a dead language now for centuries, and is rarely if ever taught in any but the top private schools any more, so could authors perhaps stop dropping Latin tags in? I say this as someone who did actually study Latin but still struggles to know what many of these phrases mean - how much more annoying must it be for people who never studied Latin at all. I get that historians have to learn Latin to read source documents, but that doesn't mean they have to use it as if it's interchangeable with English.

So, in short, I give up... I'm giving it two stars, because I'm sure there's probably plenty in there to interest fellow scholars. But I can't recommend it for the general reader.