“David Bevington, one of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans, has given us a highly useful study of the staging of the greater plays. The cognitive and imaginative interplay of language and action is conveyed with insight and joy.”

Harold Bloom

“David Bevington’s probing, spirited, and expansive study shows us acutely how Shakespeare’s plays make theater the engine of life, thought, power, fear, doubt, and love. Even more so, it lets us see just how strongly the plays themselves desire our imaginative collaboration in their relentless and ever-changing theatricality. Holding lightly his great knowledge of his subject, Bevington moves among a vast mosaic of examples, assembled from the long history of Shakespearean performance. He crosses easily and generously between early and late, between traditional and avant-garde, between stage and film, always with an eye for the telling detail, always reminding us of our ongoing, necessary conversation with the plays. This is a book to animate both our reading and our theater-going.”--Kenneth Gross, author of Shylock Is Shakespeare

Kenneth Gross

“David Bevington’s new book belongs to a quite specific genre: the Shakespeare masterwork. He has drawn on more than four decades of experience to produce this genial companion to Shakespeare in performance, a trustworthy and comprehensive guide that will enhance the theatrical experience of a wide range of readers.”

Bruce Smith, University of Southern California

“Informed by a lifetime’s play going and reflection, and ranging from Elizabethan inn yards to a singing bus driver in modern-day Chicago, This Wide and Universal Theater offers a compact yet comprehensive account of Shakespeare in performance. David Bevington’s masterly new book will be an indispensable resource for spectators, stage historians, actors and directors, film critics, and Shakespearians of every description. This is the ideal guide to the labyrinthine relations between the page and the stage, text and performance.”

David Riggs, author of The World of Christopher Marlowe

"An eminent Shakespeare scholar and editor, Bevington offers a concise, lucid, and unique overview of the history of Shakespeare in various modes of performance, from stage to film to television. . . . . This volume will be particularly interesting to nonspecialists. Recommended."

Choice

"Bevington’s accessible study, with its many examples of productions from Shakespeare’s time to the present . . . will be welcomed by general readers. . . . Even veteran Shakespeareans will profit from the varied reminders of how important performance and staging have always been to interpretation of the plays."

Bridget Gellert Lyons | Renaissance Quarterly

"Bevington makes interesting, nuanced and original points about staging and interpretation that reveal the dynamism and complexity of Shakespeare’s canon."

Jerome de Groot | Financial Times

"This Wide and Universal Theater is especially valuable as an introduction to Shakespeare because it urges new Shakespeareans to think beyond the presumption that the drama will necessarily play out in verisimilar terms."

Emily C. Bartels | Text and Presentation

"[Bevington] uses the  thetrical metaphor to think about the plays’ meditations on the theater of the world. At stake, then, is the extent to which we can direct--our lives and worlds, as well as Shakespeare’s plays. . . . .[Bevington] has produced an elegant version of the argument that explores the idea both figuratively and literally."

Studies in English Literature

"This lively, well-informed, and immensely enjoyable book by one of the most devoted and highly regarded of Shakespearians falls into that unique category: the Shakespeare masterwork. Clearly destined (and designed) to adorn the bookshelves of Shakespeare lovers, it contributes to the recent and ongoing shift in approach to Shakespeare’s plays from literary texts to dramas to be performed."

Adele Lee | MLR