And all this is Shakespeare. The most erotic comedy, the most dramatic tragedy, men burning with shame

A new reading of William Shakespeare's plays by the renowned Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith. The book helps to see in the great writer a provocative and still contemporary playwright and explains what makes his works relevant to this day. A genius poet and visionary, whose lines reflect and anticipate the destinies of all humanity. The creator of incredibly rich and complex metaphors. A master unmatched among contemporaries and descendants. And all this is Shakespeare? Well, almost. But this is still far from the whole truth. Much of what we commonly say about Shakespeare is incorrect or simply unimportant: these words are no more than a smokescreen that distracts from Shakespeare's silences and inconsistencies. In Emma Smith's book, the ambiguity of Shakespeare's plays is not hushed up, but revealed in its fullness. Smith presents Shakespeare as a provocative author who knows about discrimination just as much as about Ovid, and about the economy as much as about poetry; whose thoughts on free will, responsibility, politics, fame, sex, and private life resonate remarkably with our time. The book takes us into a world of intrigue and plagiarism: we see how Shakespeare adopts the experience of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd—the Spielbergs and Tarantinos of that era; how he virtuously plays with slippery themes of succession, religious conflicts, and technological changes in his works. Shakespeare does not offer ready-made answers—he poses sharp and sometimes uncomfortable questions that will require reflection—and perhaps for centuries. This is what Shakespeare is. And he is waiting for you.