"The sweep of Hackett's narrative is impressive and includes the visual arts as well as literary adaptations. It is replete with local gems, the author excelling at close literary readings... At its best this attractive, searching book brings to mind Samuel Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives."
Rene Weis, Around the Globe "[An] engaging, clearheaded study."
Choice "This is a scholarly yet wonderfully entertaining book ... Read moreabout a modern myth: the belief that Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare met, talked and admired each other... Helen Hackett provides a witty survey of the extraordinary variety of ways in which this curious supposition has been reiterated and elaborated in the cultural artefacts of the last 200 years. Not just in works of biography and history, but in novels, paintings, plays, films, and book illustrations, the encounter between man and woman who have come, with hindsight, so be seen as the two greatest figures of the Elizabethan age has been depicted again and again... Sharp, learned, lively and amusing, this is an illuminating and engaging study. It is not easy nowadays to write a book about Shakespeare which is both fresh and substantial. Helen Hackett has done so."
Nicholas Shrimpton, The Brown Book "[Shakespeare and Elizabeth] is charming, thought provoking, and richly informative about the way cultures and myths interact to shape national identities and ideals."
Helen Heightsman Gordon, Journal of Social and Psychological Sciences "[Helen Hackett] manages her material with considerable engagement and lucidity in a book that is original, striking, and highly recommended."
Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 "There have been plenty of Shakespeare forgeries in the past
anyone looking for a laugh should dig up a copy of the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries, which include a series of manuscript poems and letters supposedly written by Shakespeare, along with Shakespeare's 'own' print editions of his own plays... Ireland even introduced a letter from Elizabeth I confirming a close relationship between the two icons, a mythic element of the Shakespeare brand brilliantly explored by Helen Hackett in a recent book, Shakespeare and Elizabeth."
Kate Maltby, Spectator.co.uk Show Less