<p>As I've just discovered, after reading his chapter on King Lear<a href="which%20I%20just%20saw%20a%20production%20of">/i</a>, some of the most rewarding critical commentary on Shakespeare's plays - lucid, imaginative, sympathetic, provocative, and just downright pleasurable - was that penned (they didn't have computers back then) by Harold C. Goddard, who headed Swarthmore's English Department for most of the first half of the twentieth century. His commentaries are available in a two-volume set, *The Meaning of Shakespeare, published in paperback by the University of Chicago Press. Wonderful stuff!</p>