Kiernan Ryan (Foreword) is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, an Emeritus Fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of Shakespeare, 3rd edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), Shakespeare’s Comedies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Shakespeare’s Universality: Here’s Fine Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2015), Shakespearean Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2021) and the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of King Lear (2015).