“This coolly scholarly study digs into the insults, slanders, vituperation and cursing that Shakespeare used to enliven and empower his prose. Its dark and noisy passages give defamation a good name.” 

William Safire | New York Times

“Kenneth Gross's Shakespeare's Noise is easily among the most incisive and elegantly written books of the year. . . . Brilliantly tracking the image and force of slander in the popular imagination in the period, what is finally impressive about Shakespeare's Noise is Gross's ability to capture the ordinariness of insult, cursing, and slander, and how the destructive power of such noise informs our own most desperate moments of self-creation.”

W. B. Worthen | Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900

“Kenneth Gross’s book Shakespeare’s Noise is a major contribution, not least because he is utterly fearless in thinking through the border between an interiority or subjectivity that is deep and central and its social intrication in a world that affects it at its deepest levels.”

William Flesch | Modern Philology

“Shakespeare's Noise is theoretically informed, but it is an empirical rather than a theoretical book. It is grounded in Shakespeare's texts and the experience of theater. It offers sustained, insightful, and original readings of the five plays it discusses and a thoughtful exploration of the power of theater and its noise. Informative, insightful and provocative, it is also a great pleasure to read.”

Marshall Grossman | Shakespeare Studies

"Kenneth Gross’s acute study goes beyond previous criticism in its illumination of slander, insult, and curse in five of Shakespeare’s central plays and helps chart new ways into the labyrinth of Shakespearean inventiveness."

Harold Bloom, author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

“Language as gesture comes alive in Shakespeare’s Noise, a work redolent of the full Shakespeare brio. Gross gives a long-neglected place to the way our most healing poet is also our most wounding. One of the most original studies of Shakespeare ever to have been written, this book is a gem of strong and subtle interpretation.”  

Angus Fletcher, author of Time, Space, and Motion in the Age of Shakespeare

“This lively and intelligent book dwells lovingly on Shakespeare’s art of defamation in a way that provides a fascinating new perspective on his love of wordplay and his sense of awe at languages power for good and ill. The result is a brilliantly unsettling look at an essential element of Shakespeare’s greatness.”  

David Bevington, editor of The Complete Works of Shakespeare