'Character' is a word with enormous resonance in theatrical practice, performance criticism, and literary and historical scholarship. It is also a word in need of concerted, interdisciplinary re-articulation. Shakespeare and Character provides a theoretically, historically, theatrically and critically substantial account of character. One of the questions that the authors ask is, 'What is character?' To answer this central question - and to begin to provide a new critical vocabulary for character study - they examine the theory, history, formal properties, and the literary and performance possibilities of Shakespearean character as we;; as the bearing that 'theatrical persons' might have on the situation of actual people. They also emphasize the interrelationship between theory and the particular by connecting theories and histories of the idea of character to concrete, detailed accounts of particular characters as they emerge in the text and on the stage.