Michael Neill writes:

The great strength of David Schalkwyk’s book, which sets it apart from other studies in the field, is its steady determination to understand the effect on Shakespeare’s poetic and dramatic imagination of his personal investment, as both humble servant and shareholding master, in the culture of service. Service, Schalkwyk sets out to show, became ‘the informing condition of everything’ Shakespeare wrote, matched in psychological importance only by the affective bond that was supposed to inform all of its operations: love.

(LRB 22 October 2009)

Cambridge | hardback 317 pp. |ISBN: 9780521886390