Shakespeare Books

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.

All the books in this cutting-edge series, Accents on Shakespeare, are well
worth buying. In fact, having a library of each title in the series would provide
any scholar with a comprehensive spectrum of all the best theoretical, historical and
literary work that has been done on Shakespeare in the last ten years. There is so
much variety in these books that it illustrates the fact that when it comes to
Shakespeare, there truly is no "party line."

Kunz co-wrote the ultimate pearl book back in 1908. I always like Shakespeare so this is a fun book, especially for pearl lovers

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In Shakespeare and Women, Phyllis Rackin examines representations of women in historical contexts ranging from their introduction in the early modern English world to their staged presentations in the contemporary Western world. In the process Rackin challenges assumptions that currently influence efforts to understand Shakespeare's representations of women.
The dominant view of women's history is that their achievements in medicine, government, economics, religion, law, and education constitute a triumph over the "dismal past." The reality, Rackin contends, is more complex. Although women in Western democracies can vote, they are not included in high elective offices. By contrast, in Shakespeare's time female monarchs ruled England and Scotland, but women were excluded from universities and the learned professions, they lost control of their property when they married, and were subject to beatings by their husbands. Nevertheless, aristocratic women managed great estates and held economic power comparable to that of modern CEO's, while women on lower social levels were active in trades that today are predominantly male.
Rackin traces the connection between the popularity of Shakespeare's plays to the forces affecting the social and economic position of women. This connection is made forcefully in the contrasting shifts in popularity of The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Despite the lack of evidence that The Shrew was popular when it was first presented, recent scholarship has often been based on the assumption that the play presented contemporary beliefs regarding the place of women in marriage. In recent years, The Shrew has bcome one of the most frequently produced of Shakespeare's plays, and has drawn more ciritical and scholarly attention than any other of Shakespeare's early comedies. Rackin suggests that modern popularity of The Shrew "says more about our society's biases than those of Shakespeare's audience," and cites support for the play by 20th century male critics who responded "wistfully" to the imposition of Petruchian discipline on a rebellious wife. Merry Wives, which presents a more tolerant attitude toward the place of women in marriage, was extremely popular in its early history. It was one of the first of Shakespeare's plays to be revived on stage when theatres reopened after the Restoration, and it remained popular through the 18th century. Its reputation then declined while the reputation of The Shrew grew. The shift, in Rackin 's view "suggests that more of the same culltural forces have been involved." Falstaff is humiliated and punished for past misdeeds by the Windsor wives. He becomes, in Rackin's words, "a beached whale," a transformation intolerable to male critics. That the play addressed the concerns of women suggests the reason for its loss of esteem in a scholarly tradition dominated by men.
Throughout Shakespeare and Women, Rackin reveals the conditions that shaped Shakespeare's women' lives. These conditions and the present history of the world in which women live contribute to their experience of the plays. Rackin believes that this reexamination can help women to free their imaginations from the stereotypes that shaped the characters of Shakespeare's women, and ultimately lead them to a reconsideration of the conditions that shape women's lives in the contemporary world.

John Jones has previously written on Keats (and Embarrassment) on Wordsworth (The Egotistical Sublime) and on Dostoyevsky (Dostoyevsky). He is probably one of the two or three best critics writing in English at present. At one stage of his career he worked in naval intelligence, at another in the law: traces of both disciplines lurk in his approach. He specialises in a kind of poetic-cum-forensic close-reading of text which stays with you long after you have closed the book. All of his books fall into the category of: "If you only read one book on X, read this."

Shakespeare is big game for Jones, the biggest. Most critics give up when they get to Shakespeare. Borges famously suggested Shakespeare in some crucial sense lacked identity. "I am not what I am," as he makes Iago say. It was the Argentinian's explanation for the mystery of how one person could create so many characters. As they used to say about Clapton, Shakespeare was God.

Jones doesn't cop out so easily. He tracks Shakespeare by his spoor, so to speak. The highlight of the book is the chapter where he looks at "Hand D" - a crowd scene in the fragmentary manuscript play "The Boke of Thomas More", echoes the convincing argument that it is by Shakespeare and persuades the reader that it is in many senses deeply revelatory of who Shakespeare was, or at least, how he worked (hence the title). The passage about "watery parsnips" is a gem. It's the most useful work about Shakespeare to be published in many years.

The price is prohibitive, I know, but get your library to order it!

I admit, I've read and re-read Shakespeare, but never quite got the rhythm of the language - the meaning of the prose. I understood the basic plot, and with the help of teachers (whether in High School or college) I understood the basic meaning.

BUT after I discovered what a performance of Shakespeare could do...I was hooked. I've every play that comes to town - and now I'm hooked on these audiobooks.

Listening to Shakespeare (and you can listen anywhere - I recently enjoyed As You Like It as I painted my kitchen) is a fantastic experience - perfect listening for fans of the Bard - or anyone, like me, who knew they should be enjoying Shakespeare and yet struggled with the writing.

These Caedmon Audios - performed by The Shakespeare Recording Society - have all exceeded expectation. I highly recommend.

Shakespeare was meant to be heard, afterall.

Craig Huston makes a strong claim as he presents evidence, turns inconsistencies to shreds, and develops logical conclusions to support his claim that William Shakespeare was the pseudonym used by the 17th Earl of Oxford and not the William Shakespeare of Stratford and "second best bed" fame. He makes one wonder how one has been fooled for so long and why the "hoax" still persists. I saw and heard the author when he came to Guilford College in 1992 to speak about this book. He was as convincing then as he is in this book.

Gibson starts out to dispassionately assess the merits of each theory proposing an alternative author of Shakespeare's work; then he finds out that they don't have any merits. The book is enjoyable and amusing, as well as meticulous and scholarly. It reminds me of Tey's Daughter of Time, but without the detective story trappings.

While making a compelling case for the Earl of Oxford as the writer of the Shakespeare plays, Warren Hope and Kim Holston have also provided an exemplary history of the Shakespeare authorship controversy. What's amazing is that DeVere's name hadn't become prominent in this controversy until the first part of the 20th century. Yet, the ground under the Stratford actor, Will Shakspere, had been eroding for nearly a century. The buildup to the Oxfordian-Stratfordian struggle (now taking place in the pages of Harper's magazine) is both dramatically and lucidly conveyed in this work. I was agnostic on this issue for many years; the combination of The Shakespeare Controversy and other research convinces me that DeVere's time has come. I highly recommend this book for its meticulous scholarship and excellent writing.