'This capacious and beautifully modulated book addresses “virtue” in all its early modern senses: force, potential, the power inherent in things, codes of human behavior, personal character, displays of skill. The forty contributors have produced many books in one. Shakespeare and Virtue combines philosophy, social history, theatre history, and political critique, considered across time from classical antiquity to the political conflicts of Shakespeare's day to the competing ideologies of today's world. Shakespeare and Virtue is a handbook to ways of thinking and acting in the early modern past but also in the here-and-now.' Bruce R. Smith, General Editor, The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare