"A. D. Nuttall, in his admirably Johnsonian, A New Mimesis (1983), suggests that Shakespeare, like Chaucer, 'implicitly contested the transcendentalist conception of reality.'"
Forward, p. 3

"Though you have to read carefully to see it, Petruchio is accurate when he insists that Kate fell in love with him at first sight. How could she not?"
Chapter 2, p. 29

"King Henry VI becomes a figure of authentic pathos, not at all heroic, in Parts Two and Three, but in Part one his true piety and childlike decency are only hinted at, he rarely appears on stage, and only as a presage of future disaster."
Chapter 4, p. 46.

"Tradition has left us no anecdotes concerning any encounters between Marlowe and Shakespeare, but they must have met frequently, sharing the leadership of the London stage until Marlowe's murder by the government in early 1593. Marlowe personally may have frightened Shakespeare rather in the way that...