Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Samuel Beckett to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his works.Each essay assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of that figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, providing a sketch of its subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context.