Bretzius explores a compelling interplay of theater and theory across a wide spectrum of contemporary critical movements. Individual chapters provide fascinating interpretations of various postwar critical schools and Shakespearean dramas, including the New Historicism and Hamlet, feminism and The Taming of the Shrew, pragmatism and Henry V.

Other approaches, including psychoanalysis, multiculturalism, deconstruction, and nuclear criticism are brought to bear on Love's Labour's Lost, Julius Caesar, and Othello. A final chapter on Shakespeare and the Beatles opens up the question of this theater-theory continuum onto the larger question of the postwar university's place in contemporary culture, providing a lively conclusion to an imaginative and thought-provoking volume.