Shakespeare Books

I was almost overwhelmed by the beautiful simplicity of this book... perfect as an introduction, priceless as a reference, and it has great pictures too! Hurrah for Martin Fido!

You won't find much scholar/deep research information in this book, it's more for show, but what a beautiful show it is! I would describe it more as a big coffee table book about the bard's life with chapters entitled "Shakespeare in London", "Shakespeare in Stratford" or "Shakespeare Returns to Stratford". It has blurbs here and there (like one about Ovid having a strong influence in the bard's work).

The VERY UNIQUE feature is the reprinted documents of his life, it definitely has a "treasure" feel as you unfold these pages with papers on Shakespeare's baptism, his marriage bond, his will, first playbills. Printed on glossy paper, but in the original handwriting color and print, it gives you a feel of the times. I consider it a great visual aid.

Think of the CD as a bonus... it has about 17 tracks of excerpts from the Arkangel Audio series. Now, this is more of my opinion, but I'm not always thrilled with Arkangel's performances. Scenes on the CD include the Balcony Scene from Romeo & Juliet, the ending of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and of course, "To Be Or Not To Be" from Hamlet, etc. Let's just say none of them were particularly breathtaking to me, but nevertheless, enjoyable.

So I say again, wonderful gift for the Shakespeare enthusiast!

Filled with humor and illustrations, this book covers a variety of topics about Shakespeare and his time. The author makes it interesting for 9th and 10th graders, although some of the humor is aimed at British students. An excellent overview or introduction, appropriate for History, English or Drama students.

"A classic in the field; in fact, it has the field to itself. Every scholar in Shakespeare studies knows about this volume."--William Carroll, author of *The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy*
I am certain that this book does indeed have the field to itself; and the assertion that every scholar in Shakespeare studies knows about this volume is probably no exaggeration either. This is a truly excellent publication, and it can safely be said that every serious scholar in Shakespeare studies SHOULD know it. The book has a final section on the writing of a research paper which is very sound and helpful, but the bulk of the material is, quite rightly, concerned with the task of guiding anyone who wants to get a good idea of what kind of thing has already been said about Shakespeare by scholars who, whether "right" or "wrong", have made a substantial contribution in their work on the author. Obviously there is a real difficulty deciding what should be included in a book of this nature, but the selection has been wisely made. Very sensibly, there is no over-emphasis on what is recent. Thus S.T. Coleridge, for example, who remains one of the most important of the early commentators, is included, but so is e.g. Stephen Greenblatt, who is among the best-known modern ones. It is striking, too, how objective, accurate, and clear the authors are in their descriptions of what scholars have to say. This is no mean feat, since they are dealing with a very wide range of material, and include authors whom many would not be nearly so objective and factual about. As for the fact that the book is now a few years old: that is no reason for not buying it. After all, the few years NOT covered are only a very short span in the wider scheme of things, and it is certainly possible to find out about more recent publications by consulting e.g. reviews in *Shakespeare Quarterly*. At the least, this guide will direct one to the more important publications until the time of publication, and it is possible to decide from the descriptions supplied whether or not an item discussed here is likely to supply one's need. The book thus saves one a good deal of time as well as informing one about major statements and trends in Shakespeare scholarship; it is an essential tool for anyone doing serious work on the author - certainly if not a beginner, though even a beginner willl find the book accessible and informative enough to be of use. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University (South Australia)

There are lots of academic studies of Shakespeare in popular culture coming out at the moment, but many are written by people who wouldn't know popular culture if it banged on their door trying to sell them cookies. The contributors to this volume are intelligent deep cultured people but listen this does not HAVE to mean you don't know how the mass market thinks, and this team does. Laurie Osborne is divine on Shakespeare in Harlequin romances and Burt is at his leg-biting best on the strange eery tameness of Taymor's *Titus* movie. This book really advances the argument about what and how Shakespeare means in America today -- buy it.

Brubaker's little book has been one of the best secrets in the business of acting shakespeare for almost a quarter of a century. It is a no nonsense approach to the mechanics and reasons behind the mechanics of blank verse. Almost everyone in the professional theatre under forty knows of it, and it is the underground book of choice for instructors of verse acting throughout American Universities and conservatories. A must in helping inexperienced actors getting Elizabethan drama from the page to the stage, it is also a refreshing reminder of first principles in verse acting for seasoned professionals.

I found this book a wonderful examination of Shakespeare's treatment of love in his plays. Kirsch has an impressive reputation and is one of the top Shakespearean scholars currently writing. If you are a serious reader of Shakespeare, this book will deepend your understanding and enhance your appreciation.

I haven't read any Ben Jonson plays, but I am interested in the entire English Renaissance genre so I took a flyer with this book. It is one of the best Shakespearean Scholarship reads I've found, I am usually disappointed when the Scholars feel a need to write above 'popular' scholarship (where they believe they need to dumb things down). To me, this book hits a challenging happy medium of thoughtful argument without flights of fancy indecipherable literary rhetoric. IOW ...

It is thoughtful and accessible without all their esoteric jargon. Be prepared to think because the Arthur has done some homework. I don't always see things the same way as him, but his arguments show some determination at reasonable analysis, rather than blindly endorsing some flavor-of-the-month view, regardless of how outrageous many of them are.

Unfortunately, I cannot use this review as a basis for recommending other books by the same Arthur.

"Shakespeare and Joyce" will open your eyes! Did you know that "riverrun" is the first Shakespeare reference in "Finnegans Wake"? You'll know this and hundreds of other choyce titbits after reading this excellent, fun, and well-written book on the author who most impressed Joyce (Dante was second to the Englishman).

Douglas Lanier provides a fascinating account of how the man Shakespeare has been lionized, sanitized, and satirized over the three hundred years since he was first promoted as England's national poet in the 1730's. Since then, Shakespeare and the plays he wrote for the popular Elizabethan theatre have been appropriated by different cultural factions, both high and low, to advance particular ideas of what constitutes (or does not constitute) "proper" cultural ideals. Lanier examines how this has happened in the past and continues to happen in the present.
Each chapter of Lanier's book focuses on a different aspect of what he calls "Shakespop." Lanier skillfully portrays the long historical process of elevating Shakespeare's plays to the peak of English high culture. This process began with the publication of the First Folio in 1623, thereby preserving plays written to be performed in the Elizabethan playhouse as timeless literature. Before long, Shakespeare's works were promoted as emblematic of a natural English realism against the classical standards of dramatic economy in time and action as represented by the Englishman's perpetual enemies, the French. Lanier offers extensive demonstration that since that time Shakespeare's plays-and increasingly the image of Shakespeare himself as a "natural genius"-has continued to play a leading role in cultural warfare. Alluding to Shakespeare's works or citing them is a means of indicating a connection to high culture or making a protest against that culture. The plays have been used and abused in adaptations and parodies, while the constant reinvention of Shakespeare the man has served to suit different cultural needs, either for the cultural elite or those who feel dispossessed by them. Lanier concludes with a fascinating overview of the phenomenon of Shakespeare tourism and Shakespeare theatre festivals that serve to give tourists both a quick dose of high culture and a sense of getting to know the "real" Shakespeare, either by visiting his hometown of Stratford or seeing one of his plays performed in an recreated Elizabethan theatre with historical costume. Lanier illustrates his points admirably with a host of pertinent examples from British and American culture, high, low and middling, and insightfully dissects those examples to expose their hidden assumptions and agendas.
Because this is a short study, many readers will wish Lanier had addressed their own particular interests in popular culture. Although he cites examples from television, books, comics, and animated cartoons, I would have liked to read more of his reflections on the ways Shakespeare works are mediated to children in American popular culture. As a non-specialist, I'm also interested in the connection between Shakespeare and the ham actor, as for example in Ernst Lubitsch's film "To Be or Not to Be." But the reader's desire for more is an indication of how provocative and interesting Lanier's study is for both the professional and the amateur Shakespearean. (And Lanier makes his readers aware of how fraught with meaning those two designations are!) Ultimately, we find, most of us don't know the man Shakespeare at all-only his image and the place he's been assigned in our cultural hierarchy by admirers and detractors alike.