The Writers and their Work series already contains the essays by ten different contributors on the subject of Shakespeare's life and the various categories of the plays and poems, each equipped with a separate bibliography. The present booklet has been specially commissioned to offer the reader a compendious and attractively illustrated survey of the complete works, together with a single select bibliography. Following a biographical chapter and a sketch of the English drama and theatre of Shakespeare's time, the main body of the essay offers a scholarly account and a critical survey of the plays and poems. Shakespeare's writings are divided into four sections, those composed before 1594, 1594-1600, 1600-1607, and 1607-1612: the plays within these divisions are grouped by genre. Dr Wells' appreciation combines a keen awareness of the literary and poetic qualities of the plays with an understanding of their theatrical effectiveness. The final chapters review the publication and editing of Shakespeare's works, their theatrical history, and the development of Shakespearean criticism over the past four centuries. Dr Wells is General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, and Head of the Shakespeare Department at the Oxford University Press. From 1962-1977 he was a Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham with special responsibility for the Institute's activities in Stratford-upon-Avon where he lived. He is the author of Literature and Drama (1970), Royal Shakespeare: studies of four major productions at Stratford-upon-Avon (1977), and Shakespeare: An Illustrated Dictionary (1978). He has edited three of Shakespeare's plays in the New Penguin series and has published extensively on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. From 1980 he will be the editor of Shakespeare Survey, the leading annual journal of Shakespeare studies in Britain.