In 1961 a Polish critic, Jan Kott, published a book which, when translated into English under the title Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964), seemed to herald a brave new world of Shakespearian study. With a preface by Peter Brook, the most daring theatre director of the time, it struck a note which led away from tradition into uncharted but exciting 'contemporary' waters. Now it seems dated and influenced by the theatre of Samuel Beckett, but it remains true that as an 'event', Kott's book was a symptom of change in the 1960s. Attempting to explain the changes, Hugh Grady wrote in 1991 of Shakespeare criticism, 'Around 1970 . . . doubtless under the impact of the Vietnam era and the student insurgency which marked the late Sixties and early Seventies in both American and British universities - a fundamental change begins to occur: a paradigm crisis, usually the preliminary stage of a paradigm shift, can be observed to begin.' However, there are as many continuities as discontinuities between 'modernism' and 'post-modernism', which call into question Grady's notion. We should avoid the all too seductive course of denying any significance to earlier critics and celebrating a new maturity in Shakespearian criticism, or alternatively of berating theory-driven criticism and returning nostalgically to an earlier, cosy consensus. This is not to deny the possibility of a paradigm crisis or shift having occurred as Grady suggests, but I leave the question open.