William Shakespeare Books

While Wilson's book is an interesting and worthwhile read, a far better book is The Heart of Hamlet by Bernard Grebanier (now sadly out of print). By a close reading of the play, particularly in terms of plot structure, coupled with a knowledge of the Elizabethan mind, Grebanier convincingly dismantles many of Wilson's interpretations. Some of Grebanier's major points, which are opposed to Wilson (and many commentators): Hamlet is not mad and never pretends to be; Hamlet does not procrastinate or hesitate, except for good reason; his tragic flaw is that not that he hesitates (or can't make up his mind) but that he is too rash; Hamlet is a man of action, capable of brutality, caught in extraordinary circumstances, not an etherial, delicate romantic philosopher; "To be or not to be" is not about suicide.

Having studied the play, reading many commentaries on it prior to directing it, I found Grabanier's book to be generally (not always) on target, where Wilson's left me very unsatisfied. Read both, and make up your own mind.

A magnificent book! I'm so glad they came out with a new edition of this book so I had the chance to purchase it (even if I was a bit dismayed to see Mel Gibson on the cover instead of Kenneth Branagh)! My friend had the older edition, which I borrowed frequently while taking a Shakespeare course. Each scene is covered in depth, almost like a summary. It might actually be better titled "What Happens TO Hamlet" because once you finish the book, you feel like you know the man! Great for any student of Shakespeare, or for that matter, anyone interested in Shakespeare or the Prince of Denmark at all!

This is of course a very well known book, which set a new standard for textual criticism of Shakespeare's plays. It performs the remarkable feat of casting a completely new light on the most familiar and apparently best known of the plays, and although one does not necessarily agree with all his interpretations one is immensely stimulated by the author's brilliance in extracting new meanings from familiar lines. Strongly recommended to any one with the least interest in Shakespeare the dramatist.

As has been said in other reviews, if you buy one book on Hamlet make it this one. I too was dismayed to see Mel Gibson on the cover - fortunately I have an earlier version.

This is an absolutely essential book for any student of Shakespeare. This had a profound influence on my understanding of the play.

I can't recommend this highly enough!

For many years I questioned myself about Shakespeare's greatness and I did not find any answer in italian translations , perhaps because of the treachery nature of the translation itself: the Wilson's precise and meticulous analysis of Hamlet's tragedy enabled me to fully appreciate plot,carachters, and witty shakespearean art.
I strongly recommend this book to beginners, expecially of non-english-native language

This book proves it: William Shakespeare was a brilliant man. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan and I'd love to get the chance to meet Macrone. Brush Up Your Shakespeare is intelligently divided into sub sections including Famous Quotes, Words Coined by the Bard, Words often misattributed to Shakespeare, and Titles Borrowed From Shakespeare. Not only is this book easy to read, it also is concise. It's great for a student who's just curious to learn a little more about Will, who doesn't have the time to pore over hundreds of research papers on him. It was also extremely interesting to me (a Linguistics minor) because of all the lexicography. A great book to own--at a reasonable price!

This book is a great introduction to various plays of Shakespeare. Each couple of pages consists, first of a few lines of a play or sonnet, and then a few paragraphs describing the context of the scene and play, and then the meaning of the particular Elizabethan wordings and expressions. I found it took some concentrative reading that I normally do not use in reading and it conveyed some truly valuable gems of insight.

For instance on from pages 152 to 157 consisted of various Buddhistic teachings I have read from the East such as page 152, "That Within which Passes Show," - Hamlet, Act I, scene I, observes the insight of an inner self within us that surpasses the transient show of our physical lives, the silent observer. And this is why Shakespeare could say that "All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts." - As You Like it. To be human one must play the many roles, as the world is the stage, while within there is a self that surpasses show.

"There are many more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio", Hamlet, Act 1, theres the world of symbols (Jung), mantras, metaphor, quantum, and spiritual, all beyond science and philosophical discursive reasonings and university education, like Marlowe and Goethe's Doctor Faustus consulting a ghost, a demonic spirit.

"Thinking too precisely on the event" from Hamlet is letting go in thinking, that is, first steering the ship, but then ceasing in thoughts to rest in mindfulness, where you become one with the object where all conscious deliberation, fears and anxieties cease. This particular problem of thinking is one many despots and tyrants have argued against democratic participatory deliberations and indecisiveness.

And the famous "To be or not to be" from Hamlet, can be interpreted in something as this: To live is to die in inertia and to die is to live by taking action against the weariness of life into the world of the unknown, the dangerous unknown, go there - that is living. Ah, but here's the rub (catch): That while our mortal life is turmoil, unbalance and hard in work in weariness, to journey to the unknown by dying is something permanent, and we do not know of anyone who has ever returned. And so it is our thinking minds, that which cause us to deliberate in stagnant conflicting thoughts, which causes fears, preventing us from the courage of seeking the unknown.

Ah, but I'm not trippingly on the tongue here, but can say that Prospero's words and later Bogarts, show this life, this world, are the mental catoregoriztations created by man (Kant) and maya (illusions) in which such stuff as dreams are made on and nature itself, not the elaborate teachings of man, are the sweet we find from adversity.

Buy and Keep this book only for thee!

The perfect size book to keep with you to brush up on your Shakespeare. A unique list of illustrations is followed by "At First Brush," which helps you to dive right in to subjects such as: Spelling and punctuation, organization and dating (A list of plays and dates, with revision noted).

The second section is called: The Quotable and the Notable. This area is a larger section devoted to famous phrases. Each phrase is followed by a small paragraph to give explanations and background for say...how Shakespeare wanted the actor to express the phrases. These sections are filled with tidbits worth reading and also help to "set the stage" or point to where the phrase is used in the play.

"King Lear has cut a deal with the two more flattering of his three daughters: he will turn power over to them as long as he can keep the name and respect due to a king......" pg. 131

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!" then makes more
sense after we understand that his "snakelike daughters
represent a quality he feels all women possess."

The section on Household Words explains common and uncommon words coined by Shakespeare. Here the author lists a partial list of words for which Shakespeare is said to be the first authority according to the Oxford English Dictionary. "well-read" is in this list. ;>

Faux Shakespeare is a list of phrases often misattributed to Shakespeare. So, who really said: "Fool's Paradise?" It is interesting how "I wold not be in a flis paradyce." turns up in Love's Labor's Lost and Romeo and Juliet.

Good Enough to Call Your Own is a list of titles borrowed from Shakespeare and many a catchy phrase has turned into a title.

An Index of Words and Phrases and an Index of Characters by Play will make it easy to find phrases and set them in their original context.

Another favorite: Shakespeare's Insults by Wayne F. Hill, however..the quotes are mostly insults. I much preferred this work, but did find the Insult book amusing when I found a quote I just knew I could use!

Similar books by Michael Macrone: It's Greek to Me! By Jove! Brush Up Your Bible!

These are perfect books to carry along with you
so you always have something to read. They fit
nicely in a purse or coat pocket.

A book you could give to anyone who loves Shakespeare or
to those who are just being introduced to the most famous and quotable words and phrases from the Bard!

~The Rebecca Review

BRUSH UP YOUR SHAKESPEARE. By Michael Macrone. With Illustrations by Tom Lulevitch. 235 pp. New York : Harper Perennial, 1990 and Reprinted.

There are many possible approaches to Shakespeare, and in the present book Macrone has hit on the new and interesting idea of giving us, not yet another standard anthology or ponderous critical study, but a lighthearted "tour through the most famous and quotable words and phrases from the bard."

Macrone writes : "We're here to give you a handle on the famous lines you already know are Shakespeare's, and to alert you to our quieter, less conspicuous borrowings. . . . In the meantime, you'll be offered an incidental introduction (or reintroduction) to famous passages, concisely explained. . . ." (page xii).

In other words, to paraphrase Moth in 'Love's Labor's Lost' - 'He hath been at a great feast of language, and stol'n the scraps.' The main body of the book - 'THE QUOTABLE AND THE NOTABLE : Famous Phrases from Shakespeare' - gives us well over one hundred of these glorious 'scraps,' scraps such as Othello's :

"My story being done, / She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; / She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; / 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful. / She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished / That heaven had made her such a man" (page 108). Each of the passages, which have been kept "as short as possible ... while still providing enough of the context to make the key phrase intelligible" (page xiii), has been chosen to highlight an original usage of Shakespeare - in this case "passing strange" - usages which seem to have set the course of the English language. They are accompanied, on average, by about two thirds of a page or so of Macrone's interesting comments, some of which may hold surprises even for the seasoned Shakespearean.

Despite his light touch, the book is a work of careful scholarship, and is rounded out with several interesting extras : a 10-page list of 'Common and Uncommon Words Coined by Shakespeare;' a list of 'Phrases Often Misattributed to Shakespeare;' and a list of famous 'Titles Borrowed from Shakespeare.' We have also been given two useful indexes : an 'Index of Words and Phrases,' and an 'Index of Characters by Play.'

Truly surprising is the first list. Who would have thought that we owe to Shakespeare such common words, for example, as - admirable, amazement, bloodstained, coldhearted, dewdrop, employment, eventful, hostile, laughable - and a whole host of others?

Finally, to further enrich what is already a rich mix, interspersed throughout are thirty-nine clever and amusing drawings by Tom Lulevitch, drawings which remind me a bit of Tenniel's illustrations to the Alice books, and which add to the cheerful atmosphere of the book.

Macrone seems to have spared no pains in making BRUSH UP YOUR SHAKESPEARE as pleasing, useful, and interesting as he could. It would make a wonderful gift, not only for those who already like Shakespeare, but also for those who, probably as the result of an unpleasant earlier experience, think that they don't. Macrone's joy in Shakespeare is infectious. His touch is light, and he has the art of teaching without seeming to teach. His book is hugely entertaining, and can be read straight through or simply browsed in an idle moment.

It would, among other things, make a great book for the bathroom, and it might just lead at least a few anti-Shakespearians to rethink their position, and maybe even go on to savor the full feast by reading a play or two. In fact, I suspect that this was probably Macrone's secret aim. He wants others to fall in love with Shakespeare too. Let's hope his Love's Labor's weren't Lost!

I wasn't all that sure until I read "Brush Up On Your Shakespeare" by Michael Macrone. Did you know that "Such stuff as dreams are made on" is from The Tempest, spoken by Prospero? Or "Wild goose chase" was said by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet? Well, now you do! This guide to William Shakespeare's most famous words and classic phrases are now in one entertaining guide. Listed by the phrases themselves, with in-depth explanations as to its original meaning and how it was used back in its time. Macrone also includes in the back, some "Household Words" coined by the famous Bard and "Faux Shakespeare: Phrases Often Misattributed to Shakespeare".

People have used these expressions in everyday interactions as well as in the media. The book is even sprinkled with delightful illustrations by Tom Lulevitch. This guide is an easy way to learn a bit more about Shakespeare, for just about anyone.

I'm really lazy so when forced to take a class on Shakespeare (which I still have problems spelling) I decided to take the easy way out and buy this book instead of reading his actual plays. I was just going to watch the movies they were all based on but I figured it would be a little bit less lazy if I actually incorporated some reading in with my studies. While I am not recommending this strategy for everyone it worked really well for me.

This gives you the finer points of all of his major plays, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, etc. So you don't have to read them at all! It sums up the plots, tells you the deeper meaning and symbolism and gives you information on other stuff you might have missed if your attention span is like mine, four seconds long, and you have a hard time focusing on the writing style that Shakespeare used. Plus its actually kind of funny in some parts.

While I am not an advocate of using this book for cheating in any way it actually allowed me to get an A- in the class without opening my text book and my teacher never said no study guides, so there. Works great for college courses or if you just don't get what all of those thous and thees mean. It helps you keep track of all of the characters in his many plots and dumbs it down really nicely.

Okay, being a profound NON-lover of Shakespeare I never attended to lessons about him in school, and pointedly avoided him out of school. Then I decided to get a Master's in English Lit... I passed the GRE, and all the Shakespeare I had to go on I got from this book. Higest recommendation I can give it.

The book is not only informative, but so humorous, easy and fun to read. First part of the books which sets the stage for the plays and explores history, background and some on-going controversies about the authorship of the plays reads like an engaging spy novel.

There is a section dealing with the differences between the Old English, Middle English and Modern English, even an amusing guide for creating your own insults using Shakespeare's English - as in "oh, you bawdy, dizzy-eyed giglet!"

The second part of the book takes you through the plays: comedies, "problem plays", histories and tragedies - the cast, the plot, performances, movies and actors worthwhile checking out (if you haven't yet).

At the end of the book is an overview of Shakespeare's poems and sonnets.

Once, you're done with this book, you can move on to actually reading the entire Shakespeare's plays. You may find them more appetizing.

Even people who aren't idiots may appreciate this book. It's funny, cute, informative, and gives lots of easy-to-understand tips and translations. This is way better than Cliffs' Notes, especially since it gives you plenty of reasons to read the actual plays.

The first few chapters are devoted to Shakespeare's life, the who-was-Shakespeare-really? debate, his theaters, and some stuff about Elizabethan slang terms. Then it goes to the plays themselves. It gives background info on the time period and how it shaped the plays (for example, views on marriage for "Taming of the Shrew"), a cast list, a pretty good plot summary, and then some mild literary analysis.

Sprinkled on every page are bits of trivia about the plays, the writing, and the time period -- they're not really part of the reviews, just side tidbits. Additionally, they include a chart of Shakespeare's dirty language, a lot of funny jokes, and even reviews of the various movie adaptations (all the major ones -- good, bad, and really, really weird!). There are also pics from various movies/plays, featuring major actors like Patrick Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and the all-star cast of the fantastic recent "Much Ado About Nothing."

This is a must-read for Shakespeare buffs and newbies (especially if you don't understand what's going on). Even glaze-eyed schoolkids may be suckered in by the promise of learning some exotic dirty words!

...I found this book practically useless. Its summaries of the plays leave out major portions, the analyses are over-simplified, (even for high schoolers) and the "extras" are usually useless info about 20 year old film versions no one is interested in. It is funny, and at times provided an interesting tidbit or two, but for something meatier, REALLY read the sparknotes version free online or at Barnes and Noble.

Perhaps one of the best of Shakespeare's plays, King Lear is worth a good read. I was introduced to the ARDEN series by a class that required us all to be on the same page as it were, so I was at first weary to use them. Like all editions put out (Penguin, Folger, Barnes and Noble, Arden, etc) They all have valuable notes and references, introductions and essays on various subjects on the content, form and history of the play you are about to read. So half this book is taken up by the introdcution and history. Every Arden starts with the same couple of chapters on Shakpespeare. The editor, R.A. Foakes has a very in depth and interseting introduction to the text of LEAR which is worth a read, but of course, in my opinion, after you have read the play and tried to understand it for yourself.

I personally prefer the way the Folger series of shakespeare is set up with text on one page and the notes for it are directly opposite the page you are reading, making note referencing while you read easy. Arden tends to give you notes on variations between the quarto and folio which is good, but when I'm reading a play I could care less about textual variations or how editors have fussed with changing one word to make sense of a thought. However interesting it sometimes is, I don't like looking down to read a note on a passage and its all about the textual variation, but will not explain the thought further.

Final thought: Great Resource for reading LEAR, not the best for READING LEAR, especially for the first time.

This is a conflated edition of King Lear, with Foakes combining the two original sources. When the chips are down -- that is, when one cannot have both versions -- he tends to opt for the later (Folio) one. This is especially so in the last scene where this choice produces a somewhat less bleak ending.

On each page of the play's text about half the space is taken up with notes. These can, by and large, be ignored if you want to enjoy the play, but can be highly useful if something puzzles you. They cover a variety of matters, such as the meaning of now obscure word, interpretation when it is not clear what word is actually meant, choices where the two originals have difference words, often explaining the choice, possible stage direction or ways of staging the play and so on. They are usually well done, though possibly excessive.

A long essay introducing the play explains the editor's approach, comments on some critical issues, and comments on various stagings of the play. These are informative and often stimulating, with Foakes not being stridently attached to any one interpretation. There is available elsewhere an incredibly large amount of comment on all aspects of King Lear and how to interpret it, most of which Foakes wisely ignores. The play is the thing, and one of the advantages of reading it (as opposed to atending a production) is that one can contemplate the different interpretations and emphases that are possible. To a large extent Foakes sets this up, and then lets the reader proceed, rather than forcing a particular version, as happens (often very badly when directors want to demonstrate their originality) inevitably with a staged -- or filmed or audio -- production.

It is a truism of any review of any edition of Shakespeare to proclaim that what follows is not a review of Shakespeare's writing but of the edition that presents that writing; yet I will rather spend the first few paragraphs discussing the general perspectives of my experience with the play, very shortly, I warrant you, and after that proceed to the review itself that which I hope is what will be of use to those buyers who know the worth of "Lear" and are hoping to find a worthy edition. This is, after all, the main reason you read these user-submitted reviews: to know whether to buy the Penguin, the Folger, the Oxford or the Arden. Yet, the truth be told, I have found out that no matter how great an edition you will find, with Shakespeare one edition is rarely enough. If there were another edition I would recommend, that would be the New Cambridge edition.

"King Lear" remains, on a personal level, the most disturbing play I know, even surpassing "Othello" and the cruel machinations of Iago, because in "Lear" there is no single character as decisively in charge of what is happening as Iago is in his play (to the extent that we are able to call "Othello" his play); this world has been emptied out of itself, and whilst I refuse to see this as a nihilistic play (godless, perhaps, yet not nihilistic) perhaps the cruellest idea is that there is not an evil mind scheming in the background that makes Lear fall, but rather his own fallacious disbelief concerning the nefariousness not only around the world but also on a domestic level. Of course we have Edmund scheming in the subplot that is interwoven with the main story-arch later, but if we only read "Lear" as Lear's Fall - yet Shakespeare is too celerious a thinker to be thus constrained - then it is painfully obvious that Lear is not subject to anything else than his own miscalculation. In fact, Lear is much like what Timon is in Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", as he too expected to find goodness in others because of his goodness unto those others. Ironically Shakespeare has Cordelia offering the only blissful act of goodness, and she is of course the antithetical agent when compared to her sisters: whereas Lear expects goodness from those who "love" him, he receives only coldness, and whereas he offers coldness to Cordelia (whose reply is, no matter how I spin it and no matter her honest heart, very egrecious concerning the formal pattern at play in the scene) it is Cordelia who, as her sisters, offers back to him the exact opposite, yet naturally her role is reversed in relation to those of her sisters'.

But that is that about the impressions the play continues to evoke, amongst other things, in this particular reader. Let us now move to the question that bothers people who browse through these reviews in the first place. Is this a good edition of "King Lear"? I can offer the most frivolous stock-phrase there is when I answer that "yes and no". I would say that this third edition of Arden Shakespeare's "King Lear", edited by R. A. Foakes, is a good and useful conflated version. The introduction, although it is almost Bloomian in its pomp at times, is otherwise very helpful especially in the textual issues I am implying to all along. For those who are not aware, there are basically two versions of "Lear", that of the 1608 Quarto and that of the 1623 Folio. The Folio text was for a long time the only available version until the Quarto was rediscovered. The problem is not only that it would be shorter similarly as the bad quarto of "Hamlet" from 1603 is an abridged version in comparison to the 1605 Quarto or the 1623 Folio text, the problem is that there are passages that are exclusive to either version. This is why some editions, most notably the Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al., goes further by providing not only the 1608 and 1623 texts but a conflated version, as well. Or rather, most editions give either Q or F.

But even if you are looking for a version of "Lear" that would give both versions I would not dismiss this as an outright impossibility even if Foakes offers a conflated edition. This is because I find his editorial methods quite useful, as the edition was first published in 1997, quite in the middle of the heated debate whether to give a separate form to the two versions. In fact, Arden did just that with their third edition "Hamlet" almost ten years later when Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (eds.) prepared the standard Arden edition based on the 1605 Quarto (Q2) and then published a separate volume that included the 1603 Q1 and 1623 Folio texts. The Arden 2nd series editor Harold Jenkins, on the other hand, offered us a conflated text in 1982. I know I would have bought two editions had they done the same thing with "Lear": a conflated text like this and another volume with both Q and F separately, but I can understand that many people could care less and, especially if they are new to Shakespeare, could not even comprehend why they would be offered three texts of the same play instead of just one.

What makes Foakes' editorial methods as useful as I proclaim them to be is that even though he conflates, he points it out very clearly in the text. In fact, I would buy this edition for that characteristic alone, as Foakes gives in the text information whether the passages are common in both versions or "Q only" or "F only". He does this by offering, in superscript, either the letter "Q" or the letter "F" that encircle the words that are exclusive only to either edition. This is actually very useful, but in no way am I arguing that this could somehow replace individual editions, as there will be editorial choices made especially when we start assigning lines to characters that are in conflict in the two source editions.

This brings us to the present question of annotations. I am partial to the whole idea of very extensive annotation, because on one hand I like to read a play with minimal guidance because naturally stopping to read the bottom of the page breaks the rhythm you get yourself into. But on the other it is exactly the scholarly annotations that Arden gives that I look forward to when I have specific questions in mind whilst reading the play. There are four basic principles a good edition, to my mind, should generally follow: understanding the way productions were performed on the Elizabethan stage has become an essential requirement of any edition; difficult obsolete words should be glossed; nuances/puns exposed; textual variants discussed. What I gather from Foakes' annotation is that he fulfills the first and fourth categories very well. There are many instances where he discusses the ways certain scenes have been played and how the text provided can affect those changes, as well as many editorial practices that do not follow either Q nor F (neither have a scene-break after 2.2 where Edgar enters, yet most modern editions do, and Foakes treats it both as a continuous scene and an individual one by placing the so-called "2.3" scene-numbers in square-brackets from null upward, while prevailing the 2.2 scene numbering).

Foakes glosses well, but whilst his glosses offer insight to the play's thematic language (clothing, sight) and also refer nicely from one point in the play to another, he does not trace these themes as well as I would have liked. This is the only serious drawback that bothers, yet an indepedently attentive reader is worth more than a hundred glosses. By this I do not mean that he glosses far less than what to expect from a scholarly edition such as the Arden; this is nowhere comparable to the work Foakes did, for example, with the New Cambridge Edition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream ", whose strength is in the minimalism of the glosses and the unobtrusiveness; Ardens we buy for the abundance. The glosses here rarely inhabit less than half the page. And Foakes gives as an appendix discussion about the Q/F differences in 3.1 and 5.3, and he also discusses the ending in his Introduction. Thus you do get textual criticism that should be sufficiently useful for many.

The great general editorial principle of the third series in the Arden catalogue is that no longer are the Act divisions so prominent as in the second editions; throughout the third series we have a continuous text with act and scene changes marked in square brackets. And we do get full names in the headings for who is speaking instead of the abbreviations of the second editions.

In short, what is my advice? My advice is not to be content with only a single edition, and consider the Ardens not so expensive that this would be an impossibility; that is, if you do not want the hardback, which you can occasionally get at a reasonable price in the Marketplace. But if you need one edition, and do not shriek at the thought of a conflated edition, this is a very nice edition to have. Yet if you are a student who has to have an edition yet are not into Shakespeare that much, perhaps then the New Cambridge edition is sufficent. Pragmatically at least it is more convenient in the classroom where you perhaps have to browse the play and search for that certain passage. It annotates less, which is both its strength and weakness against an edition like Arden's. If you know that you will not need all the footnotes, then you will not need the Arden. The Folger is an obvious edition for students and for the most part its glosses are simply not enough. Arden is an edition that is studious. If you consider, as I do, both Shakespeare and finding that great Shakespearean edition a life-long quest, and are interested, as I am, in the textual problems in Shakespeare, then this edition is a worthy purchase.

This is a terrific play, and the characterization is remarkable. It's considered a masterpiece, and for good reason.

But there is still one small comment I would like to make. Read the play. Then ask yourself who on Earth the character Goneril was. Um, she was the Queen of England. Not the wife of the King. The Queen. Albany was her consort.

Lear was no longer the King. Regan was not the Queen. Cordelia was not the Queen. Goneril was. And had a Man with her attitude about power been the ruler, no one would think it strange.

Yes, Lear is a tragic character, and it sure is tragic when he holds his beloved but dead Cordelia and asks if she is still alive. But Goneril is a tragic character too, and it is tragic when, upon getting clobbered in a battle, she decides to kill herself. And when asked how the battle is going, right before she dies, she replies, "Not so hot."

The Arden edition of King Lear (I believe this one is in its third printing) is a combination of both the Quarto and the Folio editions of the play. Of course, when you end up with a conflated edition (one that is made up of both) you are left at the mercy of the editor but, for my money, R.A. Foakes does an excellent job of integrating the manuscripts and often points out in the notes which and why certain choices were made.

Other people have summarized the plot of King Lear here at amazon.com so I won't engage in that sort of review. I will concentrate instead on the particular edition and why I think it's among the best and then I will point out some things to look for in the play, things that I believe deserve close attention, things that will add to your enjoyment of the play.

First of all the Arden edition - the book is basically divided into two major parts: the essays and the play. The play occupies the top half of each page, while the editorial notes and "translations" are found on the bottom. So, for example, when King Lear first lets us know about "divesting" his kingdom, Foakes tells us that this word is important because it sets an important pattern regarding clothes throughout the play.

Sometimes the observations are incisive and surprisingly good, sometimes not as good. For example, when Lear starts talking about "By all the operation of the orbs / From whom we do exist, and cease to be", Foakes points out that the orbs are the planets (during Shakespeare's lifetime, the alignments of the planets was important - the word "disaster" actually means stars out of alignment - the kind of worldview that held the earth as the center of the universe was the worldview that Shakespeare inherited and lived in). But Foakes fails to mention that the orbs are also our EYES and in their full operation, opening your eyes can make one "exist" (as in we see them) and closing your eyes can make one "cease to be" (as in you don't see them). Furthermore, the orbs can be seen as being the eyes of God and us existing in them. Bishop Berkely's philosophy relied heavily on the idea that everything exists because God perceives it.

Anyway, just realize that the greatest of notes are nowhere near as good as the greatest of care and attention when reading. Especially when reading the greatest writer that ever lived.

Now onto some things I believe everyone should pay attention to. The word "love" appears in the play more than any other word of meaning (obviously I'm excluding words like "the" in the search). Now if you combine language that are related to eyes (sight, orbs, look, see, etc) you will also notice a great preponderance of these words. The same thing will happen if you combine the other senses (touch, feeling, smell, etc). Why is this of any import? Well, if you're going to write about something, you're going to have to use words. If something is important, you're going to want to drive that point home so you will be using some words more than others. This is an indication that the play you're reading is going to be about those things. So "love", "seeing", "nature", "clothes" and animals such as "dog, snake, wolf, etc" are words that appear a lot and are important.

Sometime Shakespeare is so goddamn clever that you could spend a lifetime and not catch everything. For example, it wasn't until my 2nd reading of the play that I noticed he tells Kent
"Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee, for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world;
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following,
Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked."

Notice the word "provision". The root of the word is pro-vision. It means to look ahead. Later on in the play Kent reappears, in disguise! Is Shakespeare having fun with us or am I reading too much into what could be an unintended use of the word? Let me put it this way - if I'm going to find morsels like this one, Shakespeare gets the credit.

The words relating to seeing and feeling are especially important if you take tragedy to be an epistemological problem. If the tragic figure is one that denies a kind of knowledge (Lear and Gloucester certainly do this) then one can deny it by not seeing or feeling, hence the words that relate to the acquisition of knowledge through empirical means. Notice in the above verses that Kent will be told to re-appear, but he can only reappear in disguise. Lear has already denied his love and devotion. Kent must reappear as something else to allow Lear to "love him" again.

Lastly, pay close attention to Shakespeare's doubling and mirroring. This is a favorite thing of his to do. I remember that the first time I read "Measure for Measure" I noticed doubling and mirroring on every page. Then I read it again and noticed these things every 5 lines. Then I read it again and started noticing them with ever increasing frequency! In King Lear the mirroring is much more subtle and even more rewarding. Notice how Goneril ends up "confusing" Gloucester with Lear when she tells him to "smell" his "way to Dover". From that moment on Gloucester and Lear become doubles and possibly even more and the reader becomes a party to the confusion.

Reading Shakespeare is a mind blowing experience and King Lear is probably his greatest play (and that's saying something considering he also wrote "Hamlet", "Othello" and "Macbeth").

Shakespeare wrote this play towards the end of his playwright's career. He had two daughters, one of which was a bit of an embarrassment to him. It's fun to hypothesize whether retiring was on his mind and if it was his own intent

"To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death."

I cannot leave a review of King Lear without mentioning some important essays on it. A few years back philosopher Stanley Cavell wrote a review called "The Avoidance of Love". His reading of King Lear is revolutionary beyond belief. No student or lover of Shakespeare's plays should be without it. The essay has been combined with other Cavell essays on other Shakespearian plays and is available in the book "Disowning Knowledge". Amazon has it. It will blow your mind. Also, A.C. Bradley wrote a famous essay on King Lear that should be read as well.

P.S. check out the cool and artistic cover which features a tree trunk splitting into three branches. Is it an allegory for the play? By golly, I think it is. That's Arden for you - quality cover to cover :)

If you want to learn more about a brief moment in WS's life, and a good deal more about London of that time, then this will be a good book for you. It is definitely for folks with some background and an interest in WS, and its tone (while never dry) is more to the scholarly end of the spectrum.

Not for the Fox News crowd...

Charles Nicholl's earlier book, *The Reckoning,* about the spy-murder of Christopher Marlowe, combined historical research with the conventions of the detective novel to tell a compelling story. Essentially, Nicholl established that Marlowe hadn't been killed in an Elizabethan bar fight. (That was only the cover story.) Instead, Marlowe was murdered because he was an international spy who knew too much and who'd been trapped between the political factions of the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh.
*The Lodger Shakespeare* tries to be the same kind of book, but it isn't as good.
As his starting point, Nicholl takes the fact that in 1604, Shakespeare rented a room in London from a family of French émigrés whose livelihood involved making elaborate women's headdresses. Years later, a deposition revealed just how involved the playwright had become in the lives of the Mountjoys: The mother had urged Shakespeare to intervene in the daughter's betrothal. The father had refused to pay the wedding dowry; a lawsuit had ensued.
Much as James Shapiro does in *A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599,* Nicholl meticulously tracks down scenes and objects that the playwright witnessed, along with then people he knew, then draws parallels to the plays. Shakespeare had chosen to lodge with foreigners in a part of London not convenient to the playhouses; we don't know why, but we do know that Sir Thomas More (for which Shakespeare wrote a scene) . Brothels show up in *Pericles* because Shakespeare collaborated on that play with a hack writer who was also a pimp. The plays' many detailed references to dressmaking; the dowry in King Lear; the preoccupation with the technicalities of Elizabethan law regarding betrothals in *All's Well That Ends Well* and *Measure for Measure*; the several late plays that examine father-daughter relationships -- all of these, Nicholl suggests, may well have emerged from the years he lived with the squabbling Mountjoys.
But only suggests. Nicholl conjectures a great deal about what might have happened; while he uncovers new connections, conclusive proofs simply aren't available. *The Lodger* doesn't have the suspense or high stakes of the story of Marlowe's murder. About a minor episode in Shakespeare's life, we're left with some intriguing maybes.

I heard about this book because of Michael Dirda's Washington Post Book World review, and I knew I had to read it. Sometimes Michael Dirda's reviews are better-written than the book he's reviewing, but in this case the book is as excellent as he says. If you love Shakespeare and the history around him, you will really enjoy the painstaking detective work that went into putting this book together. It's a glimpse into what life was really like for Shakespeare and the people around him -- the work, the milieu, the perils...it's a great read!

This book offers a fascinating look into everyday life in Shakespeare's London, specifically the few years Shakespeare lived as a lodger on Silver Street. The book is very well researched, and while Mr. Nicholl sometimes speculates on how events in Shakespeare's life may have affected his work, Mr. Nicholl is always cautious about doing so. Because any information about Shakespeare's life is so precious, I highly recommend this book, even though it is more about the people who surrounded Shakespeare than about Shakespeare himself. Finally, I always find it interesting how the sleazy side of life went hand in hand with perhaps the greatest literary renaissance of all time. It certainly adds to my belief that great literature is not reserved for the few, but for the many.

THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE starts with a clever insight. While we have millions of words written by Shakespeare, we have only a few words--a deposition in the case of Belott versus Mountjoy--that may reflect Shakespeare's spoken words. In TLS, Charles Nicholl builds from this deposition to create a story about the world of Shakespeare in 1603-1605, when the Bard rented a room from Christopher Mountjoy on Silver Street and had a role in persuading Stephen Belott, Mountjoy's apprentice, to marry his daughter. In the deposition, Shakespeare testifies about the shortchanging of the dowry.

Overall, I'd say Nicholl has mixed success with this story. On the plus side, Nicholl makes ingenious use of old maps, church registries, court records, and contemporary descriptions of Elizabethan and Jacobean London to create a plausible version of Shakespeare's life on Silver Street. In particular, I enjoyed his chapters on the probable appearance of the Mountjoy house, its neighborhood, its household stuff, and even Shakespeare's chamber--including the books on the Bard's shelves. This stuff is fantastic.

Further, Nicholl explains Shakespeare's decision to rent from the Mountjoys--a French couple in xenophobic London--with great insight. And, he shows how elements of the Mountjoy's trade--the creation of stylish and elaborate female headgears called tires--became metaphors in Shakespeare's plays. In TLS, Nicholl also offers perspective, establishing that the GREAT MAN was, in his days in London, a person in the entertainment business with a mere foothold at court. He was a good match for the Mountjoys who counted the Queen as a client for their tires.

On the other hand, the book does develop information about the Mountjoys, as well others who were deposed in this case, at greater length than this reader needed. While Shakespeare clearly knew and worked with these deponents, these were also ordinary people that Nicholl has pulled from history's dustbin. Yes, their stories enable Nicholl to identify subjects influencing Shakespeare's work. But the plays themselves get pushed to the side, as we learn about tire-making, prostitution, marriage customs, and so on in Jacobean London.

THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE is based on conscientious and inspired research and is a good read. Still, I think I learned more from A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, and Shakespeare the Man.

"The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare," is a terrific overview of Shakespeare's plays, and just about anything you can think of pertaining to our greatest playwright. The scholarship is up-to-date, the articles are clear and insightful, and the illustrations are plentiful. This user-friendly book is highly recommended for anyone wanting to better appreciate some of Western Civilization's greatest literature.

This is an excellent source for any English major or literary scholar to have--a great supplement to any collection. But I bought this with the impression that it would contain more critical information on the works of Shakespeare so I was a bit disappointed when the critical summaries were just blurbs. If you are looking for a reference book that is more encyclopedic in nature, then this is an invaluable purchase.

I bought this based on the Amazon.com reviews. I haven't been as impressed as others. It's written for a high school or a very general audience. As a high school reference, it's probably very good. At anything beyond a basic level, however, the book falls short. For example, the entries for many of the minor historical characters are so brief as to merely mention the play in which they appear -- even though I know these characters have relevant familial ties, particularly to royal families. I'm not sorry I bought it; I was just expecting a bit more depth considering its cost. It's fun to browse through (lots of interesting facts to stumble upon, and many beautiful illustrations) but the bottom line is that this book rarely provides sufficient answers to my specific questions. It doesn't really qualify as a reference book beyond an elementary level. I doubt this is the best source of its kind. I plan to do what I should have done in the first place, go to a library and compare the available Shakespeare handbooks. I'm certainly not going throw this book away, but I'm going to have to look for one that better suits my needs.

This book I recommend to anyone who is well knowen to shakespear or some one like me who is just getting started. I bought the book to help me understand more about shakespear and things are becoming a lot less greek to me. The Author has done a excellent job with the book very easy to use and understand. A great insight to the history of Shakespearian Art and the theater.

A great service has been performed by the publication of this wonderful book. In case anyone is interested in the latest scholarship regarding the authorship question (which will greatly enhance your appreciation of Shakespeare), please visit these relatively new books: "Shakespeare by Another Name" by Mark Anderson; and "The Monument: "Shake-Speares Sonnets" by Hank Whittemore.

This item was in great condition and is just the book I was hoping it would be. Very very useful for Shakespeare study.

If you are a reader, actor or spectator of Shakespeare you must have this book. It is an indispensable guide to the speech and hidden meanings of Shakespeare's words. I especially stress the hidden meanings aspect of the glossary--- a feature you may not find in a footnoted version of the play. This glossary also allows for a fast reference to finding a word in any Shakespeare play. A word will have the meaning and examples of the when it is used in a play. This comes in handy when trying to locate a quotation or a scene. The binding is sturdy and the book is easy to carry and reference to. There is no reason not to have this book if you love Shakespeare. If nothing else it is also fun to just peruse!

This is a good dictionary for Shakespears terms. I was proven wrong when I thought I would never find many of the words I found. I would recommend it.

Any student, reader, or lover of Shakespeare should have this. Every odd term or word in his plays and poems appears here as well as more ordinary words that had a different meaning then or in that context, complete with a sample quotation from the source. The definitions are clear and short, and the layout is the same as it would be with any dictionary. No reading of Shakespeare is complete without an understanding of his words and their often double or triple meanings; this book helps make that understanding possible.

The Onions Glossary is incomplete and out of date. For real help on the words in Shakespeare, the Lexicon or "Shakespeare's Words" (by the Crystals) is far, far superior.

The Slaying of the Shrew is another merry, lighthearted, devious mystery featuring Shakespeare and his friend Tuck Smythe--the second in the series--and the death of a shrew on her wedding day.

This shrew just happens to be the best friend of Elizabeth (the love of Tuck's life) and as their acting troupe, The Queen's Men, were supposed to perform at the wedding. . . Well, they find themselves immersed--yet again--in a mystery.

The dialog is snappy, peppered with Shakespeare-isms, making an enjoyable read. The plot borrows from Shakespeare's plays in a teasing way that makes it doubly fun for fans of the Bard. I found the mystery to be intriguing and well planned, and enjoyed it to the end.

Aficionados of Elizabethan England, or mysteries, or both will enjoy this one. I, myself, am looking forward to the next in the series, to see if Hawke continues his excellent, good-natured Bard barbs.

I could not believe how much more enjoyable this book was than the first one (A Mystery of Errors). I really didn't care for that one because I thoughtit was disjointed and a bit silly. This book is entirely different! It's a rollicking good romp in Elizabethan England. I find Hawke's razor wit very enjoyable. Will and Tuck are wonderful protaginists and their very differences make them a very effective duo. Tuck bumbles around in his innocent way and usually ends up precipitating catastrophic acts. Will sits back and observes and acts as a foil for Tuck. This book has more ups and downs in it than a roller coaster and the ending will surprise you as it certainly did me. I also like how Hawke throws in beloved Shakespeare quotations throughout the story. It's like coming back to an old friend. In this book Tuck and Will set out to find out who killed "the bride" - the shrew in this instance- on the very day of her wedding. They uncover conspiratorial plots, love trysts and more murder as they do so. I really enjoyed this book. It's the most fun I've had since I read my last Lindsey Davis book.

The best part about this book is Hawke's sharp-edged dialogue. For those who want to read Shakespeare but are daunted by sixteenth century English, Hawke retains all the inimitable bard's wit in a modern format.

"The Slaying of the Shrew" is the second Shakespeare and Smythe mystery. Although second in the series, the novels could stand by themselves as intricately clever mysteries that do not rely upon having read the previous story. While Hawke does indulge in some 'this is what happened previously' to flesh out the characters' backgrounds it doesn't distract from the story at hand.

"The Slaying of the Shrew" finds the Queen's Men in the midst of the plague season, traveling the countryside on tour. Their first commission is to play at the highly staged wedding of Sir Godfrey Middleton's daughter Catherine, a shrew by reputation, naturally unhappy with an arranged marriage. Tuck Smythe immediately finds himself involved in scandal when he overhears a plot in which he deduces that Catherine shall be murdered so that the murderer may marry the younger daughter,Blanche,and inherit more money. His involvement in this intrigue naturally leads him to seek the help of his friend and roommate, William Shakespeare. Together they try to solve the mystery but not before several murders take place and serve to throw them off track.

The beauty of Hawke's mysteries is the smooth intermingling of humor and mystery. His fashioning of quotes from Shakespeare's plays as everyday bits of dialogue is delightful and pithy word play abounds in puns - one of Shakespeare's favorite devices. Hawke also combines elements from various plays in the plotline. Fans of Shakespeare will enjoy the characterization of Will, and the all too natural marriage of drama and mystery. I look forward to reading the other mysteries in this series.

It's the exciting second episode of Simon Hawke's William Shakespeare-Tuck Smythe
medieval mystery series. As with the previous, "Much Ado About Murder", "The Slaying of
the Shrew" is a fun read, a story of derring-do, intrigue, comedy, romance, and, of course,
murder!

William Shakepeare is our hero, dropping couplets here, blank verse there, a little more
iambic pentameter over yonder, and on center stage. What a clever--and readable--idea for a
stage-worthy series!

As has been noted, much has been written about the Bard, but no one has made him out
to be an Elizabethan solver of murders as American author Hawke has.

One does not need to be a Shakespearean authority to enjoy the mystery. Hawke laces
his prose with often clever references to the original Shakespeare, tossing in a lines here and
there that, of course, "found" their way into one or more of the original plays.

In this series, Shakespeare has not yet completed one play, although he has now
discovered he can at least pay the bills by writing sonnets on commision. Young twenty-ish
Will works as a minor actor for the Queen's Men. Shakespeare's friend Symington Smythe II
(Tuck), Shakespeare, and the entire troup have been hired to stage the entertainment for lavish
wedding of a noble's daughter, named Catherine. Indeed, she's the byword for "shrew"; alas,
though, the best laid schemes of mice and the Queen's Men often go awry, and this is no
exception. Catherine is found murdered and Hawke's rescuers and mystery-solvers leap to the
case.

There plenty of suspects and it takes the brilliance of Shakespeare to narrow the field and
eventually solve the case.

Solving the case, of course, really isn't the lure of this book (or the series). Just getting to
know William Shakespeare is the fun part (although, of course, readers should remember that
his is purely fiction!).

But the play's the thing, wherein they're bound to catch the conscience of the thing,
and through diligence, brilliance, and cleverness, well, all's well that end's well, to coin a
phrase.

Indeed, "The Slaying of the Shrew" is a delightful book, whether one is versed in
Shakespeare or not. Kudos to Hawke for creating such a series and here's to future episodes.
(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

Grace Tiffany's WILL is a solid testimony to the rising and flourishing of one of the greatest playwright and poetry in history. The legend of a master began in the library of Will's recusant uncle, whose collection ranged from Ovid's Metamorphoses to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, greatly enthralled the school-aged Shakespeare. Uncle Edward's adamant denial of the Protestant and his audacious refusal to the Queen's Protestant faith had ineluctably, and inveterately imbued in Shakespeare the staunch conviction to speak against the absurdity of monarchy.

The time was 1588 in London, a dark and grim period in which a plague decimated the city at the backdrop of an imminent war. The Catholic Spain, without its stupendous fleet and navy power, threatened to sail its gunboats up the Thames. Struggling Puritans and papists dared to defy the Protestant Queen Elizabeth who relentlessly executed her enemies and pinned their heads on the pikes of London Bridge to rot. With an amazing gift of words and iambic meter, Shakespeare deftly deflected his mocking against the Queen to his poetry, which he embellished with parodies, nuanced words and satires couched in rich metaphor. It was with the pulchritude of poetry's doubleness and roundness that Shakespeare's jests against the reign was left unnoticed, though many of the lines were no less provocative than the incendiary jests spun by the seditionist. Even if the Queen herself might have sensed that he hovered just out of her sight and whispered those lines to her beneath his breath, she found no evidence of treason in his plays.

The making of a master did not come about without a catch. Whether it was really flesh that had intervened, Shakespeare's tight grip of his dream took a toll on his marriage. Anne was plaintively sure that he did not love her when the plague closed the theaters in London and he never came home to Stratford, but instead went to Southampton to write poetry for earl Henry Wriothesley. His prolonged absence from home put as much a strain on his marriage as in his relationship with three children. His beloved son Hamnet, who had always drawn and held his gaze during his brief stay, died in a mishap that sprang from the child's longing for his father. His daughter Judith, who bore the guilt of the death of her brother, yearned to say the verse in order to seek redemption from her father through speaking on a stage. Midsummer's Night Dream yet again shows the playwright's success is fueled by his private tragedy.

Shakespeare's tour-de-force in writing and his gifts in probing his audience won his a fellowship of players, a band of brothers. This blessing inevitably also invited jealousy, rivalry and feud. The baby-faced Christopher Marlowe was one perfect example. He snobbishly jeered at Shakespeare's lack of a university education and stigmatized him as being a mere dishlicker of learning. A thieving knave on Marlowe's part enraged Shakespeare and caused them to be at enmity with one another. Marlowe had the effrontery to steal Will's tit-for-tat idea and used it in his own play. He even buried bribed Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theater, not to show any of Will's plays to the players. Was it not for the phenomenal success of Henry VI, Will's two comedies that were buried at the bottom of a pile of scripts would never be performed at the Rose.

WILL is well-researched, well-written, engrossing, and beguiling novel of a master in the making during a turbulent time. It is a testimony to how indefatigably a man followed his heart to fulfill his dream with an indomitable passion. He took minor parts when suddenly asked, stayed around the theater to watch the plays even when he wasn't. When he played he completely melted into his part and left no vestige of him. He had a knack to grab accurately and pull his audience's heartstring. WILL enlivens the life of London during Shakespeare's time and etches a portrait of a man whose public success of his plays is fueled by his private tragedy.

Unlike with fictional Shakespeares created by other, more famous writers, I could actually believe this fictional Will wrote the great man's plays. He is complex, warm, insightful, funny, ambitious, innocent and sophisticated at once. One can imagine him having penned Shakespeare's greatest lines, yet he doesn't walk around spouting iambic pentameter. The story of his relationships with contemporary playwrights, including Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and their alternately friendly and bitterly competitive rivalries is spellbinding, as are the political subplots. However it is the story of Will's relationship with Anne Hathaway, and the way his plays themselves are shown to reflect his growing maturity and his eventual return to his marriage and his "real" life, that is most compelling and profound. Dr. Tiffany gives us a convincing and extremely entertaining portrait of Shakespeare and the personal and cultural context in which he wrote. Read the first few pages on "Look Inside" and you'll be hooked!

The author has some peculiar ideas about Shakespeare, contrary to accepted ideas; she suggests that it was Marlowe who stole good ideas from Shakespeare instead of near-certainty that it was the other way around; the characters think like modern Americans; the coincidences are bizarre; and the writing is stilted.
If you want to learn about Shakespeare, read "Will in the World". If you want a mediocre historical romance, surely you could do better than this. But don't be snookered into believing you will learn anything about the real Shakespeare by this silly tripe. Ain't gonna happen.

I loved Tiffany's first Shakespearean novel, My Father Had a Daughter, so I had high hopes for Will. I was not disappointed. Tiffany vividly explores the complex personal and historical forces that shaped Shakespeare's life and work, including his contact with fellow playwrights, his relationship with his wife Anne, etc. I was struck by Tiffany's uncanny ability to sketch the bard as an ordinary yet inspired--and inspiring--man. Though it's possible that Will may irk the Marlowe enthusiasts who give Marlowe credit for Shakespeare's plays, I found its account of the competition and friendship between Renaissance playwrights subtle and convincing. I also appreciated how Tiffany's second novel provides us with Shakespeare's perspective on events reported by his daughter in My Father Had a Daughter. Wonderful!

Ms. Tiffany has blessed us with a vision of Williams Shakespeare that is very well researched and imaginatively fleshed out. Her Will is full of ambiguity, self-doubt, mistakes, brilliance, desire, and above all - an obsessive need to write the works that we still love.

The joy of meeting Will and so many of his contemporaries made me run back to my bookshelf to re-read the plays. I have used this book in my English classes this year to fire up my students' imaginations and it has worked!!! Our department members enjoyed the book so much we went out and purchased it for the school libary, considering it a must-have!