Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter One: Shakespeare's Playwrights; Chapter Two: The History of the Shakespeares and the Shakespeares in the Histories; Chapter Three: 1592-1594; Chapter Four: Greene, Harvey, Nashe, and the "Making" of Falstaff; Chapter Five: "Look in the calendar"; Chapter Six: "But I have that within which passeth show"; Chapter Seven: "Those lips that love's own hand did make"; Chapter Eight: Shakespeare's Churches; Chapter Nine: Shakespeare and the Rhythms of Devotion; Chapter Ten: Outbraving Luther; Chapter Eleven: Shakespeare among the Jesuits. Chapter Twelve: Was Shakespeare a "Church Papist" or a Prayer Book Anglican?Index; About the Contributors.

"While over the past four hundred years numerous opinions have been voiced as to Shakespeare's identity, these eleven essays widen the scope of the investigation by regarding Shakespeare, his world, and his works in their interaction with one another. Instead of restricting the search for bits and pieces of evidence from his works that seem to match what he may have experienced, these essays focus on the contemporary milieu-political developments, social and theater history, and cultural and religious pressures-as well as the domestic conditions within Shakespeare's family that shaped his personality and are featured in his works. The authors of these essays, employing the tenets of critical theory and practice as well as intuitive and informed insight, endeavor to look behind the masks, thus challenging the reader to adjudicate among the possible, the probable, the likely, and the unlikely. With the exception of the editor's own piece on Hamlet, Shakespeare the Man: New Decipherings presents previously unpublished essays, inviting the reader to embark upon an intellectual adventure into the fascinating terrain of Shakespeare's mind and art."

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