Kozintsev, the director of the prize-winning Soviet film Hamlet, offers here perceptive and stimulating essays on King Lear and Hamlet. While the social perspective is broadly present—especially in showing that various Shakespeare interpretations have been responsive to the respective social pressures of the times—, the book is sensitive to the concatenation of the poetic with the philosophic-psychological, noting, for example, that Hamlet's monologues are “processes of thought, not speeches”—Kozintsev is the only critic I know who sees the less than minor role of Osric in Hamlet.

H. S.