Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University

'Perhaps the most brilliant of the Shakespearean historicists is Richard Wilson.'A.D.Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker

• Introduction1. The picture of nobody: Shakespeare in the time of the political2. Welsh roots: Shakespeare’s brute part3. O world: The echoes of Rome in Julius Caesar4. Denmark’s a prison: Hamlet and the rules of art5. Great stage of fools: King Lear and the king’s men6. Double trouble: Regime change in Macbeth7. Your crown’s awry: The visual turn in Antony and Cleopatra8. Like an eagle in a dovecot: The intrusion of the time into the playEpilogue: No sovereignty: Shakespeare’s voyage to Greece

Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University

'Perhaps the most brilliant of the Shakespearean historicists is Richard Wilson.'A.D.Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker

• Introduction1. The picture of nobody: Shakespeare in the time of the political2. Welsh roots: Shakespeare’s brute part3. O world: The echoes of Rome in Julius Caesar4. Denmark’s a prison: Hamlet and the rules of art5. Great stage of fools: King Lear and the king’s men6. Double trouble: Regime change in Macbeth7. Your crown’s awry: The visual turn in Antony and Cleopatra8. Like an eagle in a dovecot: The intrusion of the time into the playEpilogue: No sovereignty: Shakespeare’s voyage to Greece

Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University

'Perhaps the most brilliant of the Shakespearean historicists is Richard Wilson.'A.D.Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker

• Introduction1. The picture of nobody: Shakespeare in the time of the political2. Welsh roots: Shakespeare’s brute part3. O world: The echoes of Rome in Julius Caesar4. Denmark’s a prison: Hamlet and the rules of art5. Great stage of fools: King Lear and the king’s men6. Double trouble: Regime change in Macbeth7. Your crown’s awry: The visual turn in Antony and Cleopatra8. Like an eagle in a dovecot: The intrusion of the time into the playEpilogue: No sovereignty: Shakespeare’s voyage to Greece