'Breath-taking in an imaginative audacity tempered only by scholarly scruple, this study shows just how much of the modern Irish mind Shakespeare invented. Nick Taylor-Collins's text crackles with new ideas: it is a work of passion and truth. It shows just how deeply Irish writers illuminate the Bard who in turn lights up their texts. The author has the gift of explanation without simplification. Its writer combines a fine alertness to the nuances of language along with a deep understanding of the socio-cultural matrices out of which all literature springs. The result is a magnificent evocation of the ways in which writers take fire from one another ... and even reinvent their predecessors.'
Declan Kiberd, Professor Emeritus, Notre Dame University