The National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male <i>As You Like It, </i>the Berliner Ensemble's <i>Coriolanus</i> and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, <i>Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead</i>. Drawing extensively upon the company archives, this book tells the interlinked stories of the National's relationship with Shakespeare through a series of production case studies. Between them these illuminate Olivier's significance as actor and director, the National's pioneering accommodation of European theatre practitioners, and its ways of engaging Shakespeare with the contemporary.