The oddest thing about this curious book is its title. “Introducing Shakespeare” usually suggests something other than what this volume delivers: a cartoon version of the criticism that established Shakespeare’s place at the pinnacle of English literature.

The book does provide a few sentences on familiar topics: “school days”, “marriage”, “the hireling playwright” and so on. Each is jokily illustrated. “Published plays” has a disconsolate, empty-pocketed Shakespeare remarking in a speech bubble: “The theatre company made nothing else from the sales of these books.”

But Introducing Shakespeare soon settles to its task. A parade of the critics and editors who have created Shakespeare as the world’s “greatest” writer receives thumbnail-sketch treatment. The historical line stretches from Francis Meres in 1598 to Harold Bloom in 1999. Each critic is accorded more illustration than text, and there are recognisable drawings of Johnson, Coleridge, Keats, Hazlitt, Goethe and a host of others. Even Wilde, Freud and Barnum make appearances.

Modern critical approaches are also accorded brief explanations and droll depictions. A caricature Shakespeare does a juggling act for “new historicism”. The parodic sketches for “feminist criticism” include Henrietta Bowdler and her brother, and Virginia Woolf.

A mysterious, cloaked figure appears throughout, his face masked by a huge hat. He comments on each critic or topic, and at the book’s end throws off his disguise to reveal himself as Shakespeare. The significance of this figure eludes me, but perhaps he symbolises the postmodern style of the book itself.

Introducing Shakespeare seems to be aimed at undergraduates or A-level students. The collision of comic-book and academic criticism may prove intriguing, but may also sometimes baffle.