List of illustrations; 1. Shakespeare's language and the language of Shakespeare's time Stephen Booth; 2. 'I'll plague thee for that word': language, performance, and communicable disease Keir Elam; 3. The language of the spectator Dennis Kennedy; 4. Marlowe's Edward II: penetrating language in Shakespeare's Richard II Meredith Skura; 5. Hamlet's ear Philippa Berry; 6. Secrecy and gossip in Twelfth Night John Kerrigan; 7. Shakespeare rewriting Ovid: Olivia's interview with Viola and the Narcissus myth A. B. Taylor; 8. 'Voice Potential': language and symbolic capital in Othello Lynne Magnusson; 9. Household words: Macbeth and the failure of spectacle Lisa Hopkins; 10. Erring and straying like lost sheep: The Winter's Tale and The Comedy of Errors Brian Gibbons; 11. The 'Shakespearian gap' in French Jean-Michel Deprats; 12. Reading the early modem text Marion Trousdale; 13. Shakespeare and the metamorphosis of the pentameter Kenneth Muir; 14. Rereading illustrations of the English stage John Astington; 15. Nietzsche's Hamlet Peter Holbrook; 16. 'Strange and woonderfull syghts': The Tempest and the discourses of monstrosity Mark Thornton Burnett; 17. Shakespeare performances in England, 1996 Robert Smallwood; 18. Professional Shakespeare productions in the British Isles, January-December 1995 Niky Rathbone; 19. The year's contributions to Shakespeare studies Janette Dillon, Mark Thornton Burnett and John Jowett; Books received; Index.