"This is a wonderfully honest book.  We really get to meet the inmates and see how Shakespeare has changed their lives. One cannot help being deeply moved by a prisoner who says, 'Shakespeare still lives even though he's dead. His spirit lives on. A lot of things that he wrote are happening in the world today.' The truth of this insight, and its special pertinence to those who are in prison, is borne out again and again in this totally absorbing and engagingly written book." David Bevington, Departments of English and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, editor of Complete Works of Shakespeare

-Mention. Daily Telegraph/ April 8, 2007

Daily Telegraph

[Scott-Douglass] craft(s) a deeply personal, and engrossing account of the ways in which 'secured Shakespeare programs' confront many of the same issues that trouble Shakespeare scholars... What makes these interviews lively to read, rather than a flat series of transcriptions is Amy's felt presence on the page.  I take the liberty of citing her by first name precisely because she conveys a persona throughout the study that invites familiarity... She manages to connect us even with those whose faces she cannot see in the most chilling isolated maximum-security cellblocks... Shakespeare Inside offers a compelling story that resists saccharine platitudes without curtailing empathy.' Scott L. Newstok, Rhodes College, USA, Review in The Upstart Crow, Summer 2007.

'[this book] is anecdotal rather than analytical, but the scenes she [Amy Scott-Douglass] describes are richly provocative...Prison, we discover, is one of the last bastions of unapologetic bardolatry.' Oliver Harris, TLS, December 2007.  

"Scott-Douglass's book is especially powerful because she captures these prisoners' lives in all of their complexity...Shakespeare provides beauty; catharsis; empathy for their victims; therapy." -Studies in English Literature

Peter G. Platt

"The ambitious project of the Shakespeare NOW series is to bridge the gap between 'scholarly thinking and a public audience' and 'public audience and scholarly thinking'. Scholars are encouraged to write in a way accessible to a general readership and readers to rise to the challenge and not be afraid of new ideas and the adventure they offer. There are other bridges the series is ambitious to cross: 'formal, political or theoretical boundaries' - history and philosophy, theory, and performance." English Vol. 58, 2009