Leading Shakespeare scholars from around the world gathered at the First World Shakespeare Congress held in Vancouver in August 1971.This volume presents a carefully selected edition of twenty of the papers presented at the Congress, including all available papers in the plenary sessions, a few of the pecial sessions papers, 'an address at a banquet,' and the reports of the chairmen of the Investigative Committees.The contributors focus on eight general themes: C. Walter Hodges and Herbert Berry on the Elizabethan playhouse; M.C.Bradbrook, Charlton Hinman, and Fredson Bowers on text and canon; Jonas A.Barish and G.R. Hibbard on verse and prose; Norman Rabkin on critical approaches to Shakespeare; David Bevington and Wolfgang Clemen on Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries; H.D.F.Kitto and Michel Grivelet on Shakespeare and the dramatists of other ages; Jean Jacquiot and R.W.Ingram on Shakespeare and other arts, and Grigori Kozintsev and Bernard Beckerman on Shakespeare in theatre and film in the twentieth century.Three papers presented at special sessions are included: Jill Levenson on the silences in King Lear; Robert Wrimann on Shakespeare's wordplay; and John C.Meagher on editorial annotation in relation to a few problems in King Lear. The high level of scholarship and remarkable diversity of approach in Shakespeare studies are clearly demonstrated in this collection.