Shakespeare High and Low: Character, Audience, Career

A critically sophisticated yet highly readable exploration of Shakespeare’s career as a mass entertainer

• A critically sophisticated but highly readable analysis of eleven key Shakespeare plays and of Shakespeare’s career overall
• An introduction to Shakespeare that differs from others in showing how Shakespeare regarded his plays as neither high nor low culture but as a potent amalgam of both
• A revival of character study as essential to grasping the broader issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, psychology, politics, philosophy, and religion in Shakespeare’s plays

For many theatergoers and readers, Shakespeare’s lofty reputation as the world’s greatest playwright has turned him into an intimidating, even a forbidding figure. In Shakespeare High and Low, Jeffrey Knapp helps us to understand and enjoy Shakespeare’s plays by restoring Shakespeare’s own sense of them as neither high culture nor low culture, but a potent amalgam of both. Only in recognizing Shakespeare’s determination to connect with every social class in his theater can we begin to grasp how his plays have managed to thrill audiences for so many centuries and across so many cultures. 

-Edinburgh University Press