Shakespeare and His Contemporaries embraces a gamut of dramatists, not only Marlowe, Greene, and Jonson, but also Calderon, Moliere, Cervantes, Racine, and others. It shows how history and theory mix in the Elizabethan Age and how, too, in the age of global expansion, their relation to theater informs their world and ours. A book of immense scope and vision, it reads comedy and tragedy in the same breath, assuring us that the Bard's thespian and poetic heritage forever moves forward. Its elegantly close takes on works in English, French and Spanish draw us into a welter of four centuries of drama. Hart's impassioned and stunning book will be an enduring point of reference for us all. - Tom Conley, Lowell Professor of Romance Languages and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University