Review from previous edition [a] very stimulating and enjoyable book. It is a splendid example of post-modern criticism, mingling a flexible and persuausive use of theory with a vigilant and sensitive literary response.

JACT Review

Daniel Mendelsohn provides a masterful and compelling rereading of both plays and in the process not only challenges standard assessments of their value but also demonstrates the centrality of gender for structuring their political debates.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

[A] detailed, profound, and revealing analysis of the two 'political' plays ... These few examples are all that can be cited here of the strength of the evidence he cites to support his theses and the precision of his critical language; to appreciate the full effect, the reader must go to the book. Suffice it to say that in his sensitive analysis of these and other aspects of the two plays' structure and content he has rescued them from the critical limbo to which so many scholars had consigned them ... The somewhat abstract psychological analysis Mendelsohn proposes here may sound complex but it emerges convincingly from a close reading of the plays ... The review of his book, though selective and inadequate, is enough to establish the fact that his attempt is a brilliant success.

Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books