Except as marvelous examples of bog-standard mononic orthodox academic Stratfordian Shakespeare scholarship, this book, and a companion volume by the same editor (Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories: Anglo-Italian Transactions (Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies)), is worthless junk—a waste of paper, ink and grant-money, all resources which other scholars who have insight and intellectual talent are left to do without.

The contributors to these volumes comprise a little band for the mutual praise and promotion of the echo-chamber-thinking which produced this drivel. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other scholars just like them at varying stages of their careers: some are close to retirement, having spent a lifetime conning innocent university students and making a comfortable living doing it; others are waiting for their turn as assistant or full professors. Ready to take up where these academics leave off. This is an example of the digital age's version of an old, long-standing industry, the academic equivalent to "pork-barrel politics," and legislative "log-rolling," the current heir to the worst of medieval scholasticism’s religious theorizing.

If you have from $55 to $150 (USD) to spend on this (and the other) text and you can really think of nothing better on which to spend that money then, my friend, I feel sorry for you.