Oxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship, including some general anthologies relating to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century traces the reception of Shakespeare in the critical literature from the end of Victorianism to the present day. It charts a course through the turbulent waters of the twentieth century's intense and prolific engagement with Shakespeare, dramatist and poet. This is not an exhaustive history: its aim is to describe the place of the major Shakespeare critics in the schools and movements of their times. Following an introductory overview of the major trends in Shakespeare criticism in their embattled state in the twentieth century, later chapters take up the various strands of this criticism in a more expansive manner. While recognizing that these strands work from genuine differences of principle and methodology, Taylor points out connections, parallels, and echoes between and among the critical approaches. The book ranges widely across the plays and poems, and canvasses all stages of Shakespeare's career.

Michael Taylor's profile page

Professor, University of New Brunswick, 1975-93 (retired). Editor of Middleton: Four City Comedies (OWC, 1995); author of sections in Wells, ed., Shakespeare: Select Bibliographical Guide (OUP 1990] and Wells, ed., English Drama: Select Bibliographical Guide (OUP 1975); and author of numerous articles on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, and fiction.

'Taylor ... proves a most congenial guide on this conducted tour of 20th-century criticism ... Taylor's asides and judgements are wryly perceptive ... an admirable introduction to a dauntingly vast topic.' Rex Gibson, Around the Globe, April 2001

'The end of the 20th century was a ceremonial occasion on which to mark and reassess all these Shakespeares of the past hundred years, and possibly to refocus the interpretive enterprise in certain ways. Michael Taylor is a shrewd and lively chronicler of this eventful history ... pleasantly chatty ... balanced and realatively informal ... Although Taylor himself is not fundamentally sceptical or suspicious, he has the delicacy to refrain from approval or disdain, letting the better and the sillier voices alike speak for themselves.' Claire Preston, Times Higher Education Supplement, 1 June 2001

'this account, however evenminded, also broadcasts a bracing handful of salutary advisos.' Claire Preston, Times Higher Education Supplement, 1 June 2001