Believing in Shakespeare

Claire McEachern is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590-1612 (Cambridge, 1996); and editor of eight of Shakespeare's plays including the Arden 3 Much Ado About Nothing (2015). Her essay collections include the Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 2015), and, with Debora Shuger, Religion and Culture in the English Renaissance (Cambridge, 1997).

• Preface; 1. An apology for belief; 2. An anatomy of believing; 3. Feeling your knowledge 4. Genre, or the tipping point; 5. Person 6. Plot – or, the promised end; 7. Place; Index.

'Written in an engaging style, sparkling with astute observations and humorous aperçus, … Many are the times the reader can be grateful for McEachern's recognition of us, as she strives to guide us through the complicated terrain of early modern belief.' Rana Choi, Renaissance Quarterly