This volume gathers and annotates all of the Shakespeare criticism, including previously unpublished notes and lectures, by the maverick American intellectual Kenneth Burke (1897—1993). Burke's interpretations of Shakespeare have had an impressive influence on important lines of contemporary scholarship, playwrights and directors have been stirred by his dramaturgical investigations, and many readers outside academia have enjoyed his ingenious dissections of what makes a play function. Burke's intellectual project continually engaged with Shakespeare's works, and Burke's writings on Shakespeare, in turn, have had an immense impact on generations of readers.
