In his book, originally published in 1981, John Bayley discusses the Roman plays, Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens as well as the four major tragedies. He shows how Shakespeare’s most successful tragic effects hinge on an opposition between the discourses of character and form, role and context.

Shakespeare’s last plays, the tragicomic Romances, are notoriously strange plays, riddled with fabulous events and incredible coincidences, magic and dream. First published in 1987, this book offers a reading of the plays which invokes the findings and methods of post-psychoanalytic semiotics.

First published in 1989, the distinguishing feature of this book is that it tries to convey a clear idea of the relationship between the characters and events in Shakespeare’s plays and the narrative sources on which the 4 Roman plays are based, while also undertaking a critical analysis through the perspective of Shakespeare’s Roman worlds.

First published in 1989, this book focuses on the handling of the relationship between the onstage world and the offstage world, between the world that Shakespeare shows us and the one he tells us about. It examines Shakespeare from a director's viewpoint and explains why dramatists must explore the proportions and weighting of interactions.

During research into the musical element in English poetry, Dr Wilson read the work of the Elizabethan sonneteers chronologically and had a suspicion that Shakespeare’s sonnets were parodies. Later after more thorough investigation, first published in 1974, this is the result: her early impressions were justified beyond all expectation.