A Companion to Shakespeare's Works. Volume 1. The Tragedies

To paraphrase Thomas Caryle, ours is an age of proliferating publishers “Companions”. There are companions to this writer and to that writer, to that theme and this theme and to goodness knows what. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard's volume is the first of a four‐volume Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare's Works. According to the introduction, “compiled as a single entity” this “offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism” (p. 1). To quote the Duke in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure “Hence shall we see … what our summers be”.

Dutton and Howard's volume has stiff competition from, for...