This stimulating book asks how both text and performance are construed as vessels of authority, and finds that our understanding of Shakespearean performance retains a surprising sense of the possibility of being ''faithful'' to Shakespearean texts, and so to ''Shakespeare.'' After an opening theoretical chapter, Worthen examines the relationship between text and performance in three activities: directing, acting, and scholarship. The book contributes to the scholarly study of acting and directing, and to the wider discourse of performance studies.