Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW! series

and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the minigraph form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism.

A number of the most exciting and authoritative writers on Shakespeare examine and scrutinise their deepest, most personal and intimate responses to Shakespeare's plays and poems, to ask themselves if and how Shakespeare has made them the person they are.

Their responses include autobiographical histories, reflections on their relationship to their professional, institutional or familial roles and meditations on the person-making force of religious or political conviction.

The book aims to inspire readers to think and write about their ever-changing personal relationship with Shakespeare: about how the poems and plays - and writing about them - can reveal or transform our sense of ourselves.