David Farley-Hills argues that Shakespeare did not work in splendid isolation, but responded as any other playwright to the commercial and artistic pressures of his time. In this book he offers an interpretation of seven of Shakespeare's plays in the light of pressures exerted by his major contemporary rivals. The plays discussed are Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Othello, Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens, and King Lear.