[headline]Explores the scope, power, and diverse performances of virtue in Shakespeare's drama This collection of essays examines how Shakespearean drama enacts ancient virtues and conceptualises new ones in complex fictional scenarios that test virtues for their continuing value. Contributors approach the virtues as a source of imaginative, affective and intellectual nourishment. Examining Shakespeare's virtuous theatre in tragic, comic and romance modes and from ethical, theatrical and political perspectives, this volume establishes virtue as a framework for a socially, environmentally and spiritually renewed literary criticism. Contributors balance historical depth and philosophical insight with the art of close reading as they contemplate the dynamic field of virtue - embodied, responsive, energetic and dynamic - as it ebbs and flows across time, among multiple wisdom traditions, and in the entangled lives and troubled circumstances of Shakespeare's characters. [author bios]Kent Lehnhof is Professor of English at Chapman University. Julia Reinhard Lupton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. Carolyn Sale is Associate Professor of English at the University of Alberta.