Shakespeare is a major influence on poets writing in English, but the dynamics of that influence in the twentieth century have never been as closely analysed as they are in this important study. More than an account of the ways in which Shakespeare is figured in both the poetry and the critical prose of modern poets, this book presents a provocative new view of poetic interrelationship. Focusing on W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Neil Corcoran uncovers the relationships - combative as well as sympathetic - between these poets themselves as they are intertwined in their engagements with Shakespeare. Corcoran offers many enlightening close readings, fully alert to contemporary theoretical debates. This original study of influence and reception beautifully displays the nature of poetic influence - both of Shakespeare on the twentieth century, and among modern poets as they respond to Shakespeare.

‘This book is an outstanding achievement, full of brilliant readings of both important careers and individual poems, and written in a lucid, acute and witty style. It is both accessible to the undergraduate and informative for the expert. It is deeply sympathetic with its subjects, and yet always judicious and cold-eyed in its appraisals. It is the work of a critic writing at the height of his powers.'

Justin Quinn - Charles University, Prague

‘Full of insightful and often powerful close reading of both the poetry and criticism … The best literary analysis turns one back to the poems; this book also encourages one to return, fresh-eyed, to each poet’s critical insights.’

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'… few will better Neil Corcoran's penetrating, elegantly written, and sharply argued Shakespeare and the Modern Poet.'

Jonathan F. S. Post Source: Modern Philology