Catherine M.S. Alexander is an Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and has also worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the International Shakespeare Association and the University of Cambridge where for many years she directed the annual Shakespeare Summer School. She is the editor of Shakespeare and Sexuality, Shakespeare and Race, Shakespeare and Language, Shakespeare and Politics, the three-volume "Cambridge Shakespeare Library" and The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Last Plays and lectures on Shakespeare around the world. A former Director and Trustee of the English Association, she lives in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Introduction; The Elizabethan Age: The Court; The Elizabethan Age: The Country; Elizabethan Stratford; Shakespeare in Stratford; Shakespeare's London; Shakespeare's Contemporaries; The Elizabethan Stage; Shakespeare's Texts; "The Play's the Thing"; The Comedies: Happily Ever After; The Comedies: Distorting the Conventions; The History Plays: The First Tetralogy; The History Plays: The Second Tetralogy; Tragedies: The Ill-Fated Heroes; Tragedies: The Fate of Nations; Tragedies: The Roman Plays; Late Plays and Collaborations; Shakespeare's Poems; The Jacobean Stage; Shakespeare's Return to Stratford; Shakespeare During the Restoration; Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century; Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century; Shakespeare Today; Shakespeare Around the World; Shakespeare on Film: From Curtain Calls to Celluloid; Shakespeare on Film: Stretching the Boundaries; Shakespeare in Other Media; Timeline.