Appropriation and transformations that "talk back" to Shakespeare offer alternatives and fill in gaps while challenging what they see as the plays' ideological premises. Among the many works discussed here are relatively unknown plays (Arnold Wesker's the Merchant. Charles Marowitz's Shakespeare collages), fictional transformations of women writers (Mary Cowden Clarke's Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, Lillie Wyman's Gertrude of Denmark, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres), and the Shakespearean transformations of the 1960s.