Introduction

Alternative to what? It isn’t as if we were short of competing critical accounts of Shakespeare’s plays. Their quantity is notorious, their disparity scandalous: this, at least, is the popular belief. And yet, for all their apparent variety, the ‘alternatives’ on offer too often seem to embody mere surface differences. However noisily they vie for our attention, many turn out to be conceptual stable-mates, thriving on a diet of common presuppositions.