Shakespeare Books

I used a variety of sonnets at my high school speech contest for my poetry contest. As hard as shakespeare is to understand, and interpret, i needed some help. I bought the cliffs notes to help me. They helped me understand so much. I would have been lost without them. Besides summarizing the sonnet, the Cliffsnotes provided real insight to the interpretation and meaning of Good ol' Willy. When we had discussions in english class, i already knew everything. But they were the most help to me when i competed with them. Without them, i could not have been state champion in Poetry last year...the four dollars you pay is so worth it. I would have payed forty. If you need any help at all to understanding the beautiful language of the Shakespeare, these Cliffsnotes will do that for you.

I have just finished a research project for my Masters class. The project was about the Philosophies found in Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edmondson's book was very helpful. Every sonnet is diagrammed through a chart so you know which theme applies to each sonnet. This was extremely important because I was studying the "young patron" and "dark lady" sonnets. There are even charts which map the sonnets that are addressed to male and female companions. The language Edmondson uses is easy to read and follow and very quotable. I was glad to have this book as a reference during my project on the sonnets. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has studied or wants a companion to Shakespeare's sonnets.

"The vogue for composing sonnets arrived in England in the late sixteenth century. These short verses told a story and were typically dedicated to a lady; standard themes were the lady's coldness and the poet's despair. William Shakespeare's efforts are distinctive in that many of them are admonishments to a young man (to marry, to pro-create, to forswear vanity and cruelty), rather than the more usual expressions of distress or delight attending romantic love. Whomever they were intended for, the forty-eight sonnets in this deck deftly, delicately convey the spirit's confrontation with time, change, death, love, lust, and beauty.

"These 48 fact-filled Knowledge Cards™ are a great source of condensed information-all in a deck the size of a pack of playing cards! Discover the heights of historic wit and wisdom in this stimulating compilation. An inspiration to the writer, philosopher, dreamer, student, teacher, or language lover, this deck is sure to spark the imagination, and may even inspire you to feats of personal creation.

"Click on the small picture for a sample card. ISBN: 0-7649-0892-8; size: 3 1/4 x 4"."--© Pomegranate

The debate surrounding Shakespeare's Sonnets has raged on for a long time, and much of the scholarship on them has remained nebulous, repetitive, and overworked. James Schiffer's volume, however, is refreshingly brilliant and provocative: the essays he includes address an array of topics that are often overlooked, while many of the arguments are simultaneously revisionist and visionary, challenging the conventional wisdom that has guided the criticism on the Sonnets for so long. And what's even better, the arguments are beautifully and meticulously presented, crafted by some of the foremost Shakespeareans of our time.

Professor Styan had provided an invaluable service in bringing Shakespeare's plays alive, not for the actors or director, who tend to add their own touches to the stagecraft, nor even for the playgoer, who is a witness to the result, but for the reader of the plays, who must struggle with the fact that what few stage directions survive in the quartos were in many cases cobbled together from memory by the players and are not necessarily Shakespeare's own. Styan looks for clues to what the Bard envisioned in the texts of the plays themselves, as, for example, in this scene from "The Winter's Tale," wherein a father wipes his son's nose: "What! hast thou smutched thy nose? / They say it is a copy of mine. . . Come, captain, / We must be neat. . ." as well as in the physical appearance of the Elizabethan stage, which allowed for a much greater flexibility in terms of blocking and grouping (not to mention violations of the unities) than the Victorian picture-frame stage of the last century. Professor Styan's knowledge of the plays, which is encyclopedic, may lead to the occasional excess, but his analysis is difficult to argue with. I am left with only one question: why doesn't the professor deal with what is undoubtedly Shakespeare's most famous stage direction, also from "The Winter's Tale": "Exit, pursued by a bear"? Maybe he just didn't want to get into a discussion of whether or not a real bear, from a nearby bear-baiting arena, was used for the effect, and whether the bear could be relied upon to chase Antigonus upstage or downstage.

A wonderful book for kids & adults. Fascinating to learn the stories that inspired Shakespeare. We read them with the kids and the compare them to Shakespeare stories (condensed and written for kids of course). Our 5 & 6-year olds (so far) seem to be enjoying Shakespeare! Maybe they won't hate it when they get to high school.

It's hard to peg the age range for this retelling of Shakespearean drama: Stephen Lambert's color drawings break up the text and Birch's modern retellings makes it accessible for a younger audience than the traditional stories would; but much print makes it an unlikely picturebook choice. Parents will want to consider Shakespeare's Tales for read-aloud to kids beyond the picturebook age: Shakespeare's Tales brings the Shakespeare concepts to life with modern tellings and accessible plots.

Coming from an English Master's student and having worked with Professor Shoaf I can vouch that this book gets used by me again and again. His concepts are genius and his writing style both exciting and intellectually inspiring. I have yet to find a Shakespeare critical resource that compares to this one for usefulness and applicability. Theater of Likeness has pulled out what seems trivial and shown its absolute importance and relevance to the entire body of Shakespeare's work. Every time I go to class I am thankful for having read his chapter on that play before hand. Truly a wonderful project and an even more wonderful (and creative) scholar.

I recently became interested in the anti-theatrical movement during the time when my two favourite playwrights, Marlowe and Shakespeare, were writing. I knew I needed to read anti-theatrical writers like Munday and Gosson, but where to start? Well, thanks to this "Sourcebook," I have a place to begin my research. Pollard has collected the essays of the "major" anti-theatrical writers, as well as the response-essays of the pro-theatre writers. Each writer is introduced by a mini-bio of 1-2 pages, which situates him in his proper time and place. I was struck by how many of these anti-theatrical writers (like Gosson) were once actor and playwrights themselves (sour grapes, anyone?). The collection is well-balanced and comprehensive. In short, this book will be helpful for advanced, Elizabethan drama students, interested in the theatrical controversy of the late 16th and early 17th century.

This seems elementary at first but there is a surprising amount of information here about Elizabethan Theater. The pictures really bring the text to life.