Shakespeare in the Theatre

Stanley Wells is Honorary President of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon. He is general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and co-editor of the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare.

'Oxford University Press offer a mix of engagingly written introductions to a variety of Topics intended largely for undergraduates. Each author has clearly been reading and listening to the most recent scholarship, but they wear their learning lightly.

• Introduction: Shakespeare and the Theatre Critic ; c.1700 Colley Cibber on Thomas Betterton as Hamlet ; c.1738-9 Thomas Davies on Cibber as Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV ; (?1744-68) Thomas Davies and James Boaden on David Garrick and Mrs Pritchard in Macbeth ; (uncertain date) Thomas Davies on Garrick as King Lear ; 1774-5 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg on Garrick as Hamlet ; 22 May 1776 Henry Bate on Garrick as King Lear ; (uncertain date) Charles Lamb on Robert Bensley as Malvolio and James William Dodd as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night ; (uncertain date) Sir Walter Scott on John Philip Kemble as Macbeth and in Coriolanus's death scene ; (uncertain date) Julian Charles Young on Kemble as Coriolanus and Sarah Siddons as Volumnia in Coriolanus ; 15 Feb. 1814 William Hazlitt on Edmund Kean as Richard III ; 27 Feb. 1814 Thomas Barnes on Kean as Richard III ; 14 Mar. 1814 Hazlitt on Kean as Hamlet ; 21 Jan. 1816 Hazlitt on A Midsummer Night's Dream, adapted by Frederic Reynolds, with music by Sir Henry Bishop ; 4 Nov. 1816 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Timon of Athens ; 21 Dec. 1817 John Keats on Kean as a Shakespearian actor; with John Hamilton Reynolds on Kean on Richard Duke of York (in the Merrivale adaptation of the three Henry VI plays) ; 4 Oct. 1818 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Othello ; 31 Oct. 1819 Leigh Hunt on William Charles Macready as Richard III ; 5 Dec. 1819 Leigh Hunt on Macready as Coriolanus ; 25 Apr. 1820 anon. review of Kean as King Lear ; c.1832 James E. Murdock on Kean as Posthumus in Cymbeline ; c.1837 Helena Faucit on herself as Hermione, with Macready as Leontes, in The Winter's Tale ; 14 Fen. 1838 John Forster on Macready as King Lear ; 18 Mar. 1838 Forster on Macready as Coriolanus ; 1 844 James Robinson Planche's description on Ben Webster's neo-Elizabethan The Taming of the Shrew ; 15 Oct. 1853 Henry Morley on A Midsummer Night's Dream produced by Samuel Phelps ; 3 Sept. 1854 Morley on Phelps's Pericles ; 1856 Theordor Fontane on Kean's production of The Winter's Tale ; 24 Apr. 1858 anon. review of Kean's production of (and performance in) King Lear ; (uncertain date) Henry Austin Clapp on Charlotte Cushman as Queen Katharine in Henry VIII ; 10 Apr. 1875 Joseph Knight on Tommaso Salvini as Othello ; Jan. 1879 Edward Dutton Cook on Henry Irving as Hamlet ; (uncertain date) William Winter on Irving as Shylock ; 8 Nov. 1880 anon. Times review of Edwin Booth as Hamlet ; 6 July 1895 Bernard Shaw on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, produced by Augustin Daly ; 15 July 1895 Shaw on Daly's A Midsummer Night's Dream ; (uncertain date) Winter on Ada Rehan as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew ; 2 Oct. 1897 Shaw on Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet ; 1898 William Archer on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree ; 5 Feb. 1898 St John Hankin on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree ; 30 Sept. 1899 Max Beerbohm on Beerbohm Tree's production of King John ; 13 Nov. 1899 anon. review of Richard II produced by William Poel ; 4 Dec. 1899 C. E. Montague on Frank Benson as Richard II ; 30 May 1903 Beerbohm on Much Ado About Nothing with Ellen Terry as Beatrice and designs by Gordon Craig ; 7 Nov. 1903 Beerbohm on The Tempest at the Court Theatre, London ; 8 Apr. 1905 Beerbohm on H. B. Irving as Hamlet ; 28 Sept. 1912 John Palmer on The Winter's Tale directed by Harley Granville-Barker ; 1 Jan. 1922 Granville-Barker on Twelfth Night directed (in French) by Jacques Copeau ; 20 Nov. 1922 Stark Young on John Barrymore as Hamlet ; 1923 Herbert Farjeon on Nigel Playfair's production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, with Edith Evans as Mistress Page ; 30 Aug. 1925 Hubert Griffith on Hamlet directed by Barry Jackson ; 30 Sept. 1933 Virginial Woolf, on Twelfth Night directed by Tyrone Guthrie ; 18 Nov. 1934 James Agate on John Gielgud as Hamlet in his own production ; 17 Oct. 1935 Agate on Gielgud's production of Romeo and Juliet, with Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier, and Edith Evans ; 12 Nov. 1937 John Mason Brown on Orson Welles's production of Julius Caesar ; 1944 Ronald Harwood on Donald Wolfit as Lear ; 1947 Kenneth Tynan on Olivier as Richard III ; 1947 Tynan on Olivier and Ralph Richardson in Henry IV, Parts One and Two ; 1947 T. C. Worsley on Guthrie's production of Henry VIII ; 1950 Richard David on Measure for Measure directed by Peter Brook, with Gielgud and Barbara Jefford ; 1955 Evelyn Waugh on Titus Andronicus directed by Brook, with Olivier as Titus ; 1959 John Russel Brown on All's Well that Ends Well directed by Guthrie ; 1959 Laurence Kitchin on Olivier as Coriolanus, directed by Peter Hall ; 1962 Kitchin on Brook's production of King Lear with Paul Scofield as Lear ; 1964 Ronald Bryden on Olivier as Othello ; 27 Aug. 1965 Bryden on Peter Hall's production of Hamlet with David Warner as Hamlet ; 1970 Robert Speaight on Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream ; 1973 Peter Thomson on Richard II directed by John Barton ; 1976 Roger Warren on Macbeth, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Ian McKellan and Judi Dench ; 1978 Warren on Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Barton ; 29 June 1984 Stanley Wells on Antony Sher as Richard III, directed by Bill Alexander ; 1985 Nicholas Shrimpton on a production of the first quarto version of Hamlet ; 1985 Warren on Howard Davies's production of Troilus and Cressida at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 1986 Wells on Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V, directed by Michael Bogdanov ; 11 Apr. 1987 Michael Billington on Antony and Cleopatra directed by Peter Hall ; 1987 Wells on Titus Andronicus, directed by Deborah Warner at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 1989 R. L. Smallwood on Othello, directed by Trevor Nunn at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 3 Oct. 1990 Paul Taylor on The Tempest, directed by Brook ; 6 Dec. 1991 Taylor on As You Like It, directed by Declan Donellan for Cheek by Jowl ; 1993 Peter Holland on Richard III, directed by Barrie Rutter for The Northern Broadsides ; 1996 Smallwood on The Comedy of Errors, directed by Tim Supple