Introducing Shakespeare
By Nick Groom. Illustrated by Piero
Icon Books pound;9.99

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-pocketednbsp; 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.

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.

A longer version of this review appears in this week’s Friday magazine