'… this book looks, with searching wisdom, at the changes in theatre method and critical heart, the lessening of the gap between lecture room and stage … Professor Styan … begins with nineteenth-century Shakespeare, the early antiquarianism of Charles Kemble's King John and of Charles Kean's later Bithynia, Macready's recovery of the Fool … [he] knows, none better, how to chart his course among the chiding billows and the wind-shak'd surges, the productions of Poel and Granville-Barker, Guthrie and Brook … by way too of every form of experiment … This is an important survey, then, of the 'acted passion', the directors' passion and the professors'. It is for scholar, player, and playgoer … indeed for everyone … who believes that 'criticism based on a strong sense of the play as something incomplete until it is performed, seems likely to grow in importance'.' J. C. Trewin, Theatre Bookshelf

• List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introductory; 1. Victorian Shakespeare; 2. Scholars and actors; 3. Mr Poel's Hamlet; 4. The advent of stage-centred criticism; 5. Barker at the Savoy; 6. Granville-Barker's early criticism; 7. Stylized Shakespeare and Nigel Playfair; 8. Barry Jackson and dizzy modernity; 9. Criticism: retreat and advance; 10. Guthrie and the open stage; 11. Shakespeare, Peter Brook and non-illusion; 12. Conclusion: the critical revolution; Notes; Bibliography; Index.