Introduction David Armitage, Conal Condren and Andrew Fitzmaurice; Part I. Contexts: 1. Shakespeare's properties David Armitage; 2. The active and contemplative lives in Shakespeare's plays Cathy Curtis; 3. Shakespeare and the ethics of authority Stephen Greenblatt; 4. Shakespeare and the politics of superstition Susan James; Part II. The Court: 5. Counsel, succession and the politics of Shakespeare's Sonnets Cathy Shrank; 6. Educating Hamlet and Prince Hal Aysha Pollnitz; 7. The corruption of Hamlet Andrew Fitzmaurice; 8. Unfolding 'the properties of government': the case of Measure for Measure and the history of political thought Conal Condren; 9. Shakespeare and the politics of co-authorship: Henry VIII Jennifer Richards; Part III. The Commonwealth: 10. Putting the city into Shakespeare's city comedy Phil Withington; 11. Talking to the animals: persuasion, counsel and their discontents in Julius Caesar David Colclough; 12. Political rhetoric and citizenship in Coriolanus Markku Peltonen; 13. Shakespeare and the best state of a commonwealth Eric Nelson; Afterword: Shakespeare and humanist culture Quentin Skinner.

Review of the hardback: '… one of the most important new studies of Shakespeare to have appeared this century. It takes the discussion of Shakespeare and early modern political thought to a hitherto unseen level of sophistication. For the first time, we are offered a serious and sustained reading of Shakespeare in the light of the 'Cambridge school' of work on the language of political theory … contributors come from diverse perspectives … and yet they create a strikingly unified image of a Shakespeare who is at once a deep political thinker, a consummate master of rhetoric and a wily refusenik when it comes to orthodox positions … deserves a prominent place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Shakespeare - more than that, of anyone interested in the interplay between literature and the history of political thought.' Jonathan Bate, University of Warwick