Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean drama A new way of accounting for the different sorts of plays that Shakespeare wrote later in his career A detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection, from the eighteenth century to the present day Case studies that, through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, shows the shared concerns of the authors A new approach that differs from the more typical method of looking merely for verbal echoes, resulting...