Criticism based on literary or formalist conceptions of structure or on the history of ideas, Robert Weimann contends, has removed Shakespeare from the theater, and the theater from society at large. "It is only when Elizabethan socity, theater, and language are seen as interrelated that the structure of Shakespeare's dramatic art emerges as fully functional—that is, as part of a larger, and not only literary, whole."
Internationally hailed upon its original publication
Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater
was revised and updated for this English translation.