Through a revised study of Shakespeare's dramatic heritage in its social context, the author questions the idealizing view that Shakespearean drama enacts an 'Elizabethan world picture' as well as the materialist view that the plays laid the foundation for modern radical ideology. Instead the author locates Shakespeare's skepticism about power in his heritage from medieval religious drama. Always responsive to the taste of the ruling class, Shakespeare, according to Cox, nonetheless repeatedly challenged assumptions cherished by the beneficiaries of power. Ranging over all the dramatic genres of in the Shakespearean canon, this book focuses on plays where medieval drama most clearly illuminates Shakespeare's treatment of political power and social privilege. -- from Book Jacket.