I cannot say enough about Chute's work: its scholarship, its humor, its contextualization of Shakespeare's life and work. There are memorable insights in every chapter, particularly about the audiences for which the playwright worked. "Elizabethan London was the home of the short-cut, with each of its inhabitants wanting to know as much as possible as quick as he could," she writes, in explanation of why so many gravitated to cities in the late 1500s; Shakespeare shared this ambition with those who paid to see his plays (64). Chute emphasizes that Shakespeare's ear for language may have been a natural-born gift, but his plays were the result of hard work and art. Don't miss the Appendix explaining the publication of the First Folio as his friends' and colleagues' most important memorial to Shakespeare.