Shakespeare Books

This audio book provides biographical information about William Shakespeare, background information about Elizabethan England and a short, succinct synposis for each play with bonus readings by Timothy West and Judi Dench, one of the very best Shakespearean actors of the latter part of the 20th century. Good Shakespearean actors "obey the metre." The dramatic readings from the plays allow you to hear spoken Shakespeare while learning about each play, one bonus being that you can listen as you drive.

What motivated me to hear (Audio Partners) was the presence of Judi Dench and Timothy West in "performances from 33 plays," as the cover states. I have long admired Mr. West ever since an old Masterpiece Theater portrayal of Edward VII and many appearances on other British TV imports. Of Ms. Dench, little has to be said--she is the supreme actress.

I really doubted if the contents of these two cassettes or CDs with a running time of only 2.5 hours could do justice to either Shakespeare's life or work; and of course it does not. What it does accomplish works on two levels. For both beginner and Ph.D. holder, there are the readings of the two stars. Granted, each selection is very short indeed, sometimes only two or three lines. But what a joy it is to hear Mr. West take on so many roles with so many voices from the young Coriolanus to the ancient Lear. And Dame Judi's enunciation should be a lesson to all actresses who are taught to mumble and whisper by recent directors who wish to keep the dialogue a secret from the audience.

There is little new for the advanced English major in the portions that are narrated by the authors, Richard Hampton and David Weston, both of whom are actors and directors with the Royal Shakespeare Company. At best, their script is a miracle of concision, telescoping both the life and works into a cohesive narrative that must leave out so much of the life to leave time for the works. Yes, every one of the plays (except "Two Noble Kinsmen") is treated with varying degrees of brevity; and a listener totally unfamiliar with any (or all) of them can get a decent idea of what the play is about both in plot and theme. Those thoroughly familiar with the plays might smile at some of the simplifications required to carry off this recording (is Iago really the most evil villain in the plays?) while still admiring how the writers got right down to the essential points without too much editorializing.

All in all, I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in our language's greatest poet or in the art of reading his lines. Thank you, Audio Partners.

Great begineer book for those just being introduced to Shakespeare. It is small and unassuming, yet packed with Shakespearan info.

This is a fast, enjoyable read to learn what you don't know or can't remember about Shakespeare's craft. Relying heavily on specific examples, Widdicombe covers all the bases in a conversational mode. Wit and current references keep his voice immediate and accessible. Still his pages are packed with detailed information and explanations. While he leans heavily on Hamlet, Othello, the Henry plays, and Lear, he makes enough references to the others, with the exception of Romeo and Juliet, to be useful to all students and instructors.

Reviewed By: Kelly Crespin, Eclectic Homeschool Online

Twelfth Night is one book that is part of a series titled Sixty-Minute Shakespeare. This series takes some of Shakespeare's most famous works of literature and reduces, condenses and abridges a long, detailed piece of literature into an ideal alternative for the reader who doesn't have the time, resources, or attention span to tackle Shakespeare in its original form.

This carefully edited series works well for individuals or classrooms where the integrity of the work must be kept intact. While the language is condensed, the writing's main ideas are kept the same, as are the beauty of the verse and prose.

I, for one, have never been a fan of Shakespeare, yet this book was readable for me. While I still might not want to pick up more of Shakespeare's works, I at least don't feel so overwhelmed at the idea of picking up one of the huge, massive volumes I've only used as paperweights or doorstoppers before this.

Twelfth Night is part of a series, so if the reader enjoys this version of the story, others are available to keep the magic and love of Shakespeare alive and well.

The Sixty-Minute Shakespeare series is an ideal alternative for those who lack the time or resources to tackle the unabridged versions of the world's most widely read playwright. This smooth-flowing and carefully edited series works well for fully mounted productions, scene work in the classroom, and the study of Shakespeare's plays in general. While the language is condensed, the integrity of Shakespeare's writing is kept intact so students of the Bard can experience the thrill of the story as well as the beauty of the verse and prose.

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Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
(Sonnet 26.)

How to do justice to the legacy of literary history's greatest mind -- moreover in such a limited review? Forget Goethe's "universal genius" and his rebel contemporary Schiller; forget the 19th century masters; forget contemporary literature: with the possible (!) exception of three Greek gentlemen named Aischylos, Sophocles and Euripides, a certain Frenchman called Poquelin (a/k/a Moliere), and that infamous Irishman Oscar Wilde, there's more wit in a single line of Shakespeare's than in an entire page of most other, even great, authors' works. And I'm not saying this in ignorance of, or in order to slight any other writer: it's precisely my admiration of the world's literary giants, past and present, that makes me appreciate Shakespeare even more -- and that although I'm aware that he repeatedly borrowed from pre-existing material and that even the (sole) authorship of the works published under his name isn't established beyond doubt. For ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is the brilliance of those works themselves; and quite honestly, the mysteries continuing to enshroud his person, to me, only enhance his larger-than-life stature.

The precise dating of Shakespeare's sonnets -- like other poets', a response to the 1591 publication of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" -- is an even greater guessing game than that of his plays: although #138 and #144 (slightly modified) appeared in 1599's "Passionate Pilgrim," most were probably circulated privately, and written years before their first -- unauthorized, though still authoritative -- 1609 publication; possibly beginning in 1592-1593.

Format-wise, they adopt the Elizabethan fourteen-line-structure of three quatrains of iambic pentameters expressing a series of increasingly intense ideas, resolved in a closing couplet; with an abab-cdcd-efef-gg rhyme form. (Sole exceptions: #99 -- first quatrain amplified by one line -- #126 -- six couplets & only twelve lines total -- #145 -- written in tetrameter -- and #146 -- omission of the second line's beginning; the subject of a lasting debate.) Their order is thematic rather than chronological, although beyond the fact that the first 126 are addressed to a young man -- maybe the Earl of Pembroke or Southampton, maybe Sir Robert Dudley, the natural son of Queen Elizabeth's "Sweet Robin," the Earl of Leicester -- (the first seventeen, possibly commissioned by the addressee's family, pressing his marriage and production of an heir), and ##127-152 (or 127-133 and 147-152) to an exotic woman of questionable virtues only known as "The Dark Lady," even in that respect much remains unclear; including the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the two main addressees, regarding which the sonnets' often ambiguous metaphors invoke much speculation. #145 is probably addressed to Shakespeare's wife; the closing couplet plays on her maiden name ("['I hate' from] hate away she threw And saved my life, [saying 'not you']:" "Hathaway -- Anne saved my life"), several others contain puns on the name Will and its double meaning(s) (exactly fourteen in the naughty #135: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;" and seven in the similarly mischievous #136), and the last two draw on the then-popular Cupid theme. Sometimes, placement seems linked to contents, e.g., in #8 (music: an octave has eight notes), #12 and #60 (time: twelve hours to both day and night; sixty minutes to an hour); and in the famous #55, which praises poetry's everlasting power and as whose never-expressly-named subject Shakespeare himself emerges in a comparison with Horace's Ode 3.30 -- in turn written in first person singular and thus, denoting its own author as the builder of its "monument more lasting than bronze" ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius") -- as well as through the number "5"'s optical similarity to the letter "S," making the sonnet's number a shorthand reference for "5hake5peare" or "5hakespeare's 5onnets," echoed by numerous words containing an "S" in the text.

Of indescribable linguistic beauty, elegance and complexity, Shakespeare's sonnets owe their timeless appeal to their supreme compositional values, the universality of their themes, and their keen insights into the human heart and soul; as much as their transcendence of the era's poetic conventions which, following Petrarch, heavily idealized the addressee's qualities: a form new and exciting twohundred years earlier, but encrusted in cliche in the late 1500s. Indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnet #130 owes its particular fame to its clever puns on that very style, which went overboard with references to its golden-haired, starry- (beamy-, sparkling, sunny-) eyed, cherry- (strawberry-, vermilion-, coral-) lipped, rosy- (crimson-, purple-, dawn-) cheeked, ivory- (lily-, carnation-, crystal-, silver-, snowy-, swan-white) skinned, pearl-teethed, honey- (nectar-, music-) tongued, goddess-like objects. "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;" the Bard countered, proceeded to describe her breasts as "dun," her hair as "black wires," and her breath as "reek[ing]," and denied her any divine or angelic attributes. "And yet," he concluded: "by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare."

Arguably, Shakespeare's very choice of addressees (a young man -- also the subject of the famously romantic #18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day;" the first of several sonnets promising his immortalization in poetry -- as well as the "Dark Lady," in turn introduced under the notion "black is beautiful" in #127) itself suggests a break with tradition; and compared to his contemporaries' poetry, even the equally-famous #116's on its face rather conventional praise of love's constancy ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments"), echoed in the poet's vow to vanquish time in #123, sounds fairly restrained. But ultimately, Shakespeare's sonnets -- like his entire work -- simply defy categorization. They are, as rival Ben Jonson acknowledged, written "for all time," just as the Bard himself immodestly claimed:

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
(Sonnet 55.)

I really enjoyed this book! I was not expecting the ending, this story really made me think about life. Anyway this is a fine book, I can not wait to read another book by Lucille Fletcher. Keep up the good work.

I have always wanted to rate this item. Sorry Wrong Number is the best suspense book I have ever read in my life. It is unique, it is believable, and it grows.

Unfortunately, I tried to read another one of Lucille Fletcher's books called Mirror Image, and it was very scary, but there was WAYYY too much langauge and sex. Be careful!

I recently got this book out of the library in order to teach a poem on Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the writers Buechner discusses in the text. I was astonished at Buechner's incredible diction, phrasing, and word pictures. I had not read anything else of his before, but now I want to buy this book! His writing has an incredibly mysitcal quality, which he uses to broaden our knowledge of ability to enjoy four notable authors, while showcasing his own unique vision and humility. The book is moving and gritty - it put me in tears on several occasions, and I do not cry easily. If you are at all a fan of Hopkins, Twain, Chesterton, or Shakeapeare you must read this book!

In this book, Buechner describes the lives and discusses some of the literary works of four well-known writers.

Each of the four has incorporated into his writing clues to some of the lessons learnt from the harsh realities of life. Buechner has always been a strong advocate of "telling it like it is", in contrast to a tendency in parts of the Christian Church to "say what we ought to say".

If you're looking for a writer who's prepared to face up to the sometimes very difficult aspects of life, but who maintains an active faith, this book (and Buechner's other books as well) should prove richly rewarding.

Strongly recommended!

I got to see the actual show at the Folger Library in Washington, DC years ago. It was an absolute treat for the ears then, and I jumped at the chance years later to purchase the CD.

There is a very nice mix of selected text of the Bard's from plays and sonnets. The settings are fitting at the voices and accompaniment wonderful.

Great listen and I highly recommend it.

The musical settings of Shakespeare by composer Ray Leslee are wonderful. Tenor Thomas Young is a world class singer, and he enthralls us with his voice. Alison Fraser has charming theatricality, and sings passionately. What a great record.

This is the first of the Archangel Complete Shakespeare series that I purchased, and I am more than pleased. As the previous critic said, from the very first moment, the music and the sound effects take you up and place you right in the middle of it all. The acting is superb, and I must mention Bob Peck's performance, as Prospero, as particularly wonderful. He is, in fact, (as soon as I read of his participation in this) the reason I bought this excellently produced CD. How good it is to have this recording of the sadly late, and truly great actor's work.
I highly recommend this, and all of the Archangel Complete Shakespeare works.

The actors have lovely voices, the music and sound effects are super...what more could you want?

My sons (ages 17, 14, 12, and 10) love this. Without even realizing it, they have memorized whole parts of the play!
When you listen, you can close your eyes and see the action.

The usual quality expected from Naxos - excellent sound recording with special effects - would recommend to anyone especially as good CD recordings of Shakespeare seem difficult to find for some reason.

A Theatergoer's Guide To Shakespeare provides a companion to the plots, characters and themes of Shakespeare's plays, and will delight both beginning theater buffs and those studying Shakespeare. Fallon's treatment avoids the usual jargon and presents a clear picture of the play's events and characters, providing lively commentary on the plots and history. A recommended picks for a wide range of audiences, from students to drama fans.

In this fine introduction to Shakespeare, Prof. Robert Fallon had more sense than to try to "dumb down" Shakespeare. It can't be done--however, you CAN approach Shakespeare simply and cleanly, as the "Dummies" guides absolutely fail to do. The appropriate approach is to present the basics that are required to appreciate Shakespeare's plays, and that is exactly what Fallon has done in an enjoyable, highly readable text with no frills, distracting unfunny cartoons and trivia quizzes. To put my cards on the table, I worked in the recent past in a publishing company where I was not permitted to publish this excellent introductory guide myself, because it did not take a "for dummies" approach. I greatly regretted the stupidity of this decision (ever have a stupid boss?) and I salute Fallon for filling a need on the theater shelves of the bookstores. And bravo to his intelligent publisher Ivan R. Dee for putting out a well-designed volume. So take it from me, a theater lover for ages: This is the guide to choose if you want to begin to feel comfortable with Shakespeare or just want a solid guide to complement your experience of the plays.