“Read him, therefore; and again, and again: and if you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.” So write the, a collection of his plays published 400 years ago, in their preface to the work. And it’s safe to say that he been read again and again in the centuries since. But while his literary merits are widely exhorted, for historians the plays also provide fascinating . In our feature on page 22, we’ve asked eight experts to reflect on the themes that emerge from eight of his works – from love and death to politics and racism.
