Shakespeare productions in recent decades have tended to draw attention to their staging, their avant-garde settings, even their unconventional costuming. But a new book attempts to delve deeper into what has always made Shakespeare great: his use of language. The author’s aim is to “bring to the reader a lot of what I find to be incredibly exciting controversies over how to speak Shakespeare, how to play Shakespeare, how to listen to Shakespeare, how to watch Shakespeare. Controversies that have scholars at each other’s throats, that have directors and actors pounding the table.”