Shakespeare: A Hand

by Cedric Watts

If you need a helping hand with Shakespeare, this book provides it. Dr Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Sussex University, offers a broad introductory survey of Shakespeare’s works and techniques. Every play is discussed critically – even Love’s Labour’s Won! Matters of prosody and rhetoric are explained. The Sonnets are interpreted provocatively. ‘An ideal book for those coming to Shakespeare for the first time and for more experienced readers. Watts offers the most lively and cheering company’, says Professor David Hopkins of Bristol University. The eminent novelist Ian McEwan ‘Cedric Watts is a superb critic in the liberal tradition – highly readable, open and generous in spirit, broad and deep in his reading, and wise in judgement.’ Cedric Watts has written numerous books on Shakespeare’s works, and has edited 21 of the plays for the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series.

414 pages, Paperback

Published March 26, 2018

About the author

Cedric Watts (1937 - 2022) was an English literary scholar. He served in the Royal Navy, took a B.A. at Cambridge University, and was an Emeritus Professor of English at Sussex University. He published twenty-six critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Test (1984) and Literature and Money (1990), and edited twenty-one plays by Shakespeare. His Final Exam: A Novel earned Ian McEwan's praise.

An internationally renowned and prolific scholar of the writings of Joseph Conrad, he played a leading role in Conrad studies as editor, critic and biographer.

Watts' biography of the Scottish writer, adventurer and friend of Conrad, R.B. Cunninghame Graham, rancher in South America, co-founder of the Scottish Labour Party and of the Scottish National Party, drew attention to an important but hitherto neglected figure, while his full-length study Literature and Money revived a largely neglected topic.