Tartamella casts new light on seemingly quite familiar material -- Shakespeare's Sonnetsand a number of his plays, including Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Antony and Cleopatra. By placing the Sonnets within the context of the literary history of praise poetry, and exploring the underlying influence of early modern skepticism on Shakespeare's writing, this book truly enhances our understanding of the subtleties and complexities in all of Shakespeare's work.