Shakespeare : The Man and His Achievement

Los Angeles Times

This portrait, this account of the period, this reading of the plays in terms of Shakespeare's known experience, his native town, his education, the works likely read by him, the London where he flourished, is the most persuasive I have read. It grips the reader.
— Robert Kirsch

New Statesman

[A] book alive with crisp inquiry. As a writer, Speaight has the perspicacity of a man of divided interests. He brings to his subject the flair and experience of the Shakespearean actor and producer and the insights of a critic of wide reading. He weighs the disputes and conjectures of the best Shakespearean scholars and knows how to excite conversation in the reader. He adotes the poet and, as a professional, he is especially aware of the practical dramatist.
— V. S. Pritchett

The New Republic

With warmth and graceful phrasing—this is a highly readable book—Speaight guides readers unpatronizingly through the canon....The author is so wise a guide that his audience will return to [Shakespeare] with a renewed sense of his ever-fresh vitality.