By using only the First Folio text, this book acts as an original guide to performing Shakespeare’s plays.

This book is the accumulation of the many Clues from the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays (as opposed to any edited version) that help to inform contemporary performances and offers a complete understanding of the text. This study compares the original acting of Shakespeare's plays with the modern method of rehearsing and performing theatre and film productions. It likens today’s screen actors’ limited preparation time for their performances, with the Elizabethan acting company’s restricted conditions for theirs. This book covers in-depth analysis of thirty Clues, some of which have been edited out in modern versions, thereby losing the effect of the useful Clue. Here is a clear and intelligent view of the riches to be mined in the text contained in the 1623 First Folio.

New insights on all the plays are given to actors, directors, teachers and people who care about the works of William Shakespeare and is a companion volume to Patrick Tucker’s Shakespeare’s First Folio Cue Scripts (Routledge 2024).