Stephen Greenblatt imbues "The Norton Shakespeare"--the widely used annotated collection of which he is editor--with a new historicism that limits inquiry largely to questions of power as they affect race, class, and sex. Sean Benson considered teaching from the volume, but found that Greenblatt's materialist ideology does not foster an appreciation for the fullness of the language, misses what makes it timeless, and diminishes a student's experience of reading Shakespeare. (Contains 31 notes.)