William Shakespeare Reviews

Shakespeare Set Free: Teaching Hamlet and Henry IV, Part 1 (Teaching Hamlet & Henry IV, Vol. 2)

Published in Paperback by Washington Square Press (1994-09-01)

Author: William Shakespeare

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Outstanding teaching resource

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2000-05-16

I found this book to be useful in getting across the ideas in Hamlet and Henry IV. The activities are directly related to understanding the text. Instructions are written out to the letter, and a number of outside resources are suggested. This has been one of the most useful aid I have used in teaching either play. The ideas are clear and inventive. My students responded positively to the activities that I used from this book and came away with a clear understanding of plot, characterization, and language.

The only negative comment I have is O'Brien can get a little flighty once and awhile. In truth, however, she gets to and stays with the point better in this book than in any of her others. I find myself going back to this text to supplement her others. She stretches a bit too far into the artistic than my taste allows, and I don't feel that she goes into enough detail in some parts of Hamlet, but these are things that are easily supplemented. Nevertheless, this book sets up the premise for teaching in a very effective way.

Once again, this is learning through movement and acting. No wallflowers or shrinking violets allowed.

A very good teaching resource.

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 12 total.
Review Date: 1999-02-17

I found in teaching Shakespeare that this book was very valuable. It allows the teacher to combine both drama and literature into one lesson. Students have a remarkable response to its techniques. They seem more interested and have longer retention of the material. The variety of exercises that are written out for you appeal to a number different kinds of learners; especially my resource students. I find the book a valuable aid either as supplemental material, or as a lesson planner in-and-of itself.

Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"

Published in Paperback by Tynron Press (1990-03)

Authors: M.A. Venturi and William Shakespeare

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Romeo and Juliet for Young People

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-06-12

An alternative to the same old Romeo and Juliet for young people! Certain classes seem to dive into Shakespeare, while others drift over him, never really sure what his most famous tragedy is truly about. This comic/manga version, is a useful tool for students struggling with the reading of Shakespeare's language, making the play accessible while still requiring the student to read key passages. The pictures capture the student's attention and often times get the hesitant student to read what they normally wouldn't. I used this version to teach last year and was amazed at the response! Very helpful and well done!

Love, defiance and tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, a cursed love.

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 1997-04-23

In a world locked behind Verona walls, the story of Romeo and Juliet questions the very meaning of love and the importance of it.. It puts forward the notion that a life without love is not worth living, and explains the decisions, the conflicts and tragedy that illustrate the journey in between. Trapped within an ongoing feud that denies the love that Romeo and Juliet posses, it is a struggle in itself to defy their parent's authority, which to some may seem adolescent, but in actual fact is quite honourable. It describes a tragedy so moving, so gripping. It lets us feel the emotionally charged characters, their beliefs, loyalties and values, in such a way that grips our very souls to feel such pity for the end result of their cursed love. They loved only for some hour's time, but sacrificed a lifetime's worth

Shakespeare's Daughters

Published in Paperback by McFarland & Company (2003-03-25)

Author: Sharon Hamilton

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soooo good

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-03-09

Ladies and gentlemen, anybody who has yet to read Shakespeare's plays, read them FIRST. But... what next? This book is a good choice. As its author notes, Shakespeare didn't do too much with female characters (out of every 8, only 1 is female) BUT he gave the daughters "quality time" on stage!
Shakespeare was father of three, two girls and a boy. The boy died early (age 11) and may have been sickly- possible evidence being, sick boys who die like Mamillius in THE WINTER'S TALE. His daughters outlived him.
This concise but detailed (how does she do it?), fabulous book brings to vivid life emotionally-deprived doomed daughters like Juliet, compared against paternally-blessed daughters like Miranda- you will see Shakespeare illuminated in a bright light by a gifted teacher (and mother of daughters), Sharon Hamilton.
I nominate her book as The Most Underrated Recent Shakespeare Book.
It is terrific.
You will never regret buying it.
You will want to re-read it and hand it on to others.

A knowledge of Shakespeare and human nature

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2003-07-25

Sharon Hamilton evidently knows her way around the works of William Shakespeare and, as she demonstrates in this analysis of Shakespearean depictions of father/daughter relations, around human nature in the raw. Any reading or re-reading of the plays will be immeasurably enhanced by the insights she winkles out. This is a book that thespians especially will benefit by.
Happily Ms. Hamilton's attempt to equate the English language's greatest wordsmith with a certain Will Shakspere of Stratford - a dreary and litigious businessman and one-time actor scarcely able to write his own name and sire incidentally of two apparently illiterate daughters - detracts but little from this invigorating volume.

Shakespeare's flowers

Published in Hardcover by Crowell (1969)

Author: Jessica Kerr

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Much More than Another Book on Flowers

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2005-08-03

If you love gardening and flowers and if you enjoy the beautiful prose of Shakespeare, then you'll love this little book! The colorful botanical illustrations are exquisite. Three seperate indexes help you weave plants names with their romantic meanings and find phrases and quotations referring to these plants throughout Shakepeare's plays and sonnets. It made the perfect gift to my 22 year old daughter after a poignant performance of Ophelia in Hamlet. She loved it.

scents of shere poetry!

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2000-04-11

This book has been a great reference for me of all the flowers referred to in Shakespeare's writings. My daughter Rosemary, is playing the lead in "Much Ado About Nothing," her school play this Spring. I wanted to have the flowers available to give the students and teachers involved and now I have the Best ideas. Thank you so much for advertising this book of colors and scents for the imagination!

Shakespeare's Songbook

Published in Hardcover by W. W. Norton & Company (2004-04)

Author: Ross W. Duffin

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Great sourcebook--with a grain of salt

Helpful Votes: 34 out of 39 total.
Review Date: 2004-05-03

Ross Duffin has performed a mighty feat--coming up with pre-composed music for all the Shakespeare lyrics--including some never before published. This is a wonderful resource and a great starting point for anyone who wants to understand the musical references in Shakespeare's plays, and also for anyone who wants to use period music for actual productions.

That said, there are many traps for the unwary. Duffin has, at the same time, cast his net too widely and too narrowly. He has taken the reasonable step of starting by looking for printed ballads with similar verse patterns to Shakespeare lyrics and then finding which of those ballad tunes that seems to fit the Shakespeare verse the best. This can make for anomalies, however: so often, the best fit is either "Robin Goodfellow," also known as "Dulcina," or "Goddesses." This in spite of the fact that both these tunes seem to originate rather late for the purpose: the first surviving example of "Dulcina," and also the first written record of its existence, dates from 1615, five years after Shakespeare retired from the theather, and "Goddesses" dates from 1650 or thereabouts. Duffin generously acknowledge these facts in each individual case. But he uses both these tunes far too often in the collection as a whole, given their tenuous existence in Shakespeare's own day. Some other suggested tunes also seem to date from much later.

The idea that most of these verses would have been sung to ballad tunes also seems far too simplistic, given what we know of the variety of theatrical songs in general that survive from this period, songs such as the anonymous "Have you seen but the white lily grow," as well as the works of Robert Johnson and theatrical viol consort songs such as "The dark is my delight." It seems extremely unlikely, for example, that several lines before singing Robert Johnson's setting of "Full fathom five" at the opening of _The Tempest_, that Ariel would have sung "Come unto these yellow sands" to a ballad tune instead of to another song by Robert Johnson that happens not to survive. Or that "Full fathom five" would be used three different times in one play, never mind that it's hard to imagine that a character who is enough of a lowlife to sing "The captain, the swabber, the boatswain and I" would even know such a refined and sophisticated melody to to which to set it. My personal suggestions would be "Heigh ho the cramp" for "I shall no more to sea" and "Sellenger's Round" for "The captain, the swabber. . ."

Duffin was occasionally guilty of picking tunes that fit the words awkwardly at best, such as "While you here do snoring lie" from _The Tempest_ to "The Hunt is Up," or using primarily instrumental tunes such as "Nutmings and Ginger," which contain awkward rhythms for singing English, creating word patterns that resembl neither pre-composed vocal music nore surviving folk song. And at least once, he failed to read the stage directions closely, which resulted in actually ommitting text from the song--in this case, Caliban's song in _The Tempest_, which he begins with the words "No more dams I'll lay for fish." According to the stage directions, the song actually begins with the line, "Farewell, master, farewell, farewell." With the first line restored, the song fits very well to another tune known as "Night piece, or "The Shaking of the Sheets." (For anyone interested to hunt up this one, see _The British Broadside Ballad and its Music_ by Claude M. Simpson or _Old English Popular Music_ by William Chappell.) Granted, the first line is not italicised in the First Folio, but neither is the first line of the "Farewell, dear heart" sequence from _Tweltfh Night_, which is obviously meant to be sung, since it is the first line of the tune that the drunkards use for their banter.

Also, Duffin suggests "Where griping griefs" as a tune for a couple of songs aside from the original in _Romeo and Juliet_, but offers no written-out accompaniment, which renders the tune impractical. It contains leaps of a dminished octave, which would be rather awkward for actors who haven't had extensive musical training (or even many singers who have) to manage alone.

To sum up, the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music--but they haven't closed it.

Listening for the Music in Shakespeare's Plays

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2006-06-21

It is with pleasure that I recommend Ross Duffin's Shakespeare's Songbook. Foregrounding the musical allusions in Shakespeare's plays, Duffin asks us to radically re-conceive our understanding of the Elizabethan experience of attending plays. By demonstrating how Shakespeare at times cites, at other times extracts the popular music of his time, Duffin makes a compelling case for Shakespearean plays as multimedia events. While we think of a play as a series of acts comprised solely of spoken dialogue, Duffin shows us how Shakespeare uses musical excerpts and allusions to ballads and other "pop music" of his day in order to amplify his meaning. Duffin's findings suggest that the Elizabethan experience of going to a play would be akin to our experience of watching a film like Moulin Rouge, which cuts and pastes our pop music into a narrative. (Except, of course, that Shakespeare did it so much better!) Part of what makes this book so amazing is that Duffin has reconstructed tunes and songs to which Shakespeare only alludes! The companion CD allows us to get a taste of what the music would have sounded like--performed, I might add, on period instruments!

I do want to clarify something mentioned in the previous review. The writer ends by noting, "the authors have definitely opened the book on the subject of Shakespeare's music." Perhaps this is a typo, but there are no authors (plural). Ross Duffin is the author. Perhaps the reviewer doesn't understand that someone (in this case, Stephen Orgel) could write the foreword for a book without being its author. At any rate, clarification is in order.

This book has changed how I think about and teach Shakespeare. I hope that directors and actors take it up, so that they can return at least some of the music to Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's Stories: Comedies

Published in School & Library Binding by Peter Bedrick Books (1988-11)

Authors: Beverley Birch and William Shakespeare

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Fantastic adaptation

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2003-03-06

This book contains some of the best adaptations I've ever read. This book contains modern English versions of Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Tempest. They are very comprehensive, yet very easy to read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who either has trouble with Shakespeare or who has to read one of these comedies in a hurry!

This is a very funny story of Shakespeare.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 1997-11-26

I read 'SHAKESPEARE'S STORIES -Comedies-', and this book has five stories and I read 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

There were four young people and one of them, Hermia had to marry Demetrius, but Hermia loved Lysander. Harmia also had a best friend Helena who loved Demetrius. If Hermia chose Lysander, she have to be a nun or be killed, so she decided to tried to escape so they promise to meet in the wood.

In a city, six men met in a workman's house. They practiced a play to the most important event for celebrations. Their play was a comedy. Their play was practiced in the wood secretly.

In the wood, many fairies lived and king of them, Oberon, and his wife Titania was there. Titania loved an Indian boy so much, so Oberon angry with her. Then he hit an idea.He tried to use a flower 'love-in-idleness'. It could makes them madly love when they see first creature if they sleep and are put dews on their eyelids. First, he put it on his wife's eyelids when she slept and then, she woke up, she saw a man who wore ass head doll. He was one of the man who practiced a play in the wood. So, Titania fell love with a crazy ass head man.

Then, Oberon told a Puck, a fairy, to use 'love-in idleness' to fall in love with Harmia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius. But Puck mistaken, and Lysander and Demetrius became love Helena.

Last is secret, because I want to read this story everyone. It is funny story, but I felt human's jealousy is very ugly and Shakespeare was great because but he expressed ' jealousy ' in comedy story in spite of it shows dark image.

Shakespeare's Understanding of Honor: Understanding of Honor (Studies in Statesmanship)

Published in Hardcover by Carolina Academic Pr (1990-06)

Author: John Alvis

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Average review score:

The Best!

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2000-08-08

Dr.Alvis' study is truly remarkable. Honor is the theme of politics - there are few motives that drive man to serve the common-weal. This said, Alvis is not satisfied to sift through the verities of political life, he is also interested in the life that is beyond the political stage. The true merit of this book lies in Alvis' ability to see the noble within an emaciated Denmark or a womanized England.

For those interested in the true greatness of Shakespeare, this is your only stop. What kind of knowledge do the great ones have? What is the motivation for the philosopher to engage in public life. No one understands the theoretical life, as presented by Shakespeare, as well as Alvis.

Shakespeare's Understanding of Honor

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2000-04-14

John Alvis' book, Shakespeare's Understanding of Honor, is not simply an in-depth study of Shakespeare's plays, it is also a comprehensive survey of the perennial issues facing political societies which claim to be committed to both justice and equality. Alvis notes that, "We seem to have good cause to distrust honor as a principle of moral and political life, yet our depreciation of the motive entails costs. The ideal of equality is our best guide to justice but perhaps not by itself sufficient to nourish other strengths of mind and heart." What does it mean, for instance, that the signatories to the Declaration of Independence pledged their "sacred honor" when founding a nation which now associates the word honor with, as Alvis suggests, designs against our liberty? This is not an antiquarian study, but instead one which is highly relevant to today's political discourse, and it is refreshing because it invites us to read Shakespeare as a guide through the complexities of politics.

Above all, however, Alvis' work is an intelligent and close examination of some of Shakespeare's principal works, including the Rape of Lucrece, the English History plays, the Roman plays, Hamlet, and the Tempest. Alvis believes that Shakespeare's dramas compel readers to test moral principles by tracing through the consequences of acting on those principles. He increases one's appreciation for the depth of Shakespeare's engagement with the major themes of western philosophic thought at the same time that he enlarges our own understanding of these topics.

His book has the added benefit of teaching us how to read Shakespeare, that is, with the greatest care and attention to detail and nuance. Reading Shakespeare as Alvis does is like sleuthing a great mystery where every utterance of the characters must be compared against the background and action of the play in order to adduce their motives and intentions, their successes and failures.

Alvis' work testifies to the worth of such study. He gives the reader a glimpse of the precious coin such care in reading repays. Readers of this book will come away with a refined education in politics and a deep understanding of Shakespeare's works.

Shakespeare: A Popular Life

Published in Hardcover by Applause Books (2000-02-01)

Author: Garry O'Connor

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The Glories of 19th century melodrama

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2000-10-19

The late Myron Matlaw was one of the foremost historians of the American stage, with a particular predilection for those amazing, phenomenal successes which criss-crossed the country in touring productions, bringing crowds back season after season with the devotion of theatergoers who imagine that a visit to New YOrk is incomplete without Cats. The plays in this volume include many such smash hits of the 19th century: Anna Cora MOwatt's FASHION (1845), a satirical condemnation of American nouveaux riches eagerly aping continental savoir-fair; Dion Boucicoult's THE OCTOROON (1859), the tale of a forbidden love between a beautiful octoroon slave and the white man who adores her but cannot marry her; Joseph Jefferson's RIP VAN WINKLE (1865), a re-telling of the Washington Irving story which Irving would hardly have recognized, but a glorious vehicle for a character actor; the play made Jefferson famous and kept him rich, as his audiences returned year after year to see him slyly rationalize each drink he takes after he has sworn it off forever. "I won't count this one," he explains each time, unable to resist the familiar pleasure. This book is a treasure house of pleasures which were once as familiar to their audiences as Andrew Lloyd Webber is to us today.

A good approach

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2000-08-05

When I first found this book, I visited Amazon to look for reviews and recommendations. Finding none, I thought that I would offer my thoughts. I like O'Connor's approach. He does not wade through conflicting scholarly theories or get bogged down analyzing obscure English public records searching from traces of Shakespeare. He makes use of what we know from the spare records of Shakespeare's life; and he extrapolates from his own insights into the plays and his knowledge of the plays in their historical context. O'Connor also makes use of a varied and extensive bibliography.

O'Connor puts the plays and the life of Shakespeare in the context of their time, and Shakespeare emerges as an astute, talented, subtle, and versatile man in a vibrant and turbulent time. We see Shakespeare as a contemporary Elizabethan who had his finger on the pulse of society but who was smart enough to keep his fingers out of the pie. O'Connor shows how Shakespeare also used theater as an outlet to express personal struggles and discord. O'Connor's use of excerpts from the plays and sonnets illustrates this excellently.

One of the drawbacks of the book is that O'Connor's tone is of an insider not only of the theatrical world but also of Shakespeare's world. I got the sense that I am supposed to understand all of the obscure references and the oblique tongue-in-cheek quips. On a few occasions in the book when I got the reference, I could not tell if O'Connor was making a mistake or making a joke. He refers to a novelized interpretation of Shakespeare's love life by Anthony Burgess as "Brighter than the Sun," but the actual title is "Nothing Like the Sun." It was difficult to tell if O'Connor was in error or if he was poking fun at the brilliant, stylized, and occasionally pedantic writing of Burgess. O'Connor also suggests that in "King Lear," it was not Lear who confused his Fool with Cordelia at the end of the play ("And my poor fool is hanged"), but rather that the tired playwright mixed-up the two characters because they were played by the same actor.

Another drawback is the general style of writing. O'Connor's sentences are often very long and complex. I found myself rereading sentences more than twice in order to get his point. This drawback is minor and has much to do with the British style of punctuation, but it is also obvious.

O'Connor presents assumptions about Shakespeare's family relationships that I can accept, in particular the relationships with his mother, father, wife, and son. These assumptions are based on the scant historical records, commentary by writers and actors, and excerpts from the plays and sonnets. O'Connor also writes that despite the opinion that Shakespeare did not reveal his personal beliefs in his plays, we really can know Shakespeare through his writings. There are speeches and characters that exactly fit their places in the plays, and yet somehow they also transcend the context of the play and speak to us. Through these passages we know the personal musings of Shakespeare. Perhaps that is the most important thing of all, and that is a notion that definitely can be taken from O'Connor's book.

Sonnets (No Fear Shakespeare) (No Fear Shakespeare)

Published in Paperback by SparkNotes (2004-09-01)

Author: SparkNotes Editors

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Average review score:

Strange Love

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2005-09-23

Shakespheare considered his poems works of art and his plays merely entertainment, as I remember from some source in the past. So taking them seriously as works of art, I will say that they aren't bad, although the word order is jumbled up to get the rhymes right , I would suppose. This often makes it hard to read the poem aloud and have it roll off the tongue. I've been trying to used to the Elizabethan English for quite some time now, but still I am little uncomfortable with it. He has the awkwardness of John Dunne, in my opinion.

I will have to say that the poet is a bit queer with all this talk of the beauty of this youthful man he so passionately loves. I suppose a queer theorist would have a field day with what I would consider his neurotic obsession. Nonetheless, the poems have some pathos about the passing of time and how it will destroy the beauty of this young man. The poet seems to be like an old queer admiring the beauty of a young man that he cannot keep faithful to him. He encourages the youth to have children in the first few poems so that he will make a beautiful copy of himself for posterity to enjoy, and so he will not go to the grave wizened by time. The first few poems are a highpoint along with the poems in the in the sixties which have ruminations again about aging, death, and decay, and the destroying of youth by these three, which is one of poets' best themes-- we don't want any cheery, frivolous escapist poetry, but poems that expresses our rather sad, pathetic, little lives where even the best and most favored are eventually devoured by death and decay. Escapism is the realm of entertainment, facing harsh reality head-on is the realm of great art.

But is the poet really homosexual, or bi-sexual, or straight, or does it matter? Perhaps he has a higher aristocratic love that we cannot understand. In the latter poems, a woman becomes the object of discussion, but this woman is sometimes false to the poet and he doesn't seem to have the same enthusiasm for her as the young man.

Spark Notes has come out with a series of No Fear Shakespheare works translated into modern English and I liked the translation very much. The translator was able to convey the subtleties of the poems such as gentle wit and forlorn gloominess in a poetic fashion, but the translation is not done in poetry. I would have liked to have a brief critical summary of the themes of the poems and who they may have been written about. I hope they end up translating all the plays, not just the popular ones, so my Skakespheare project won't stall when I have to read them solely in the Elizabethan English. Afterall, Shakespheare deserves such attention, right? He's supposedly the best, but I`m impudent and skeptical.

Great Way to Make Shakespeare Accessible

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2007-11-05

This line of books was recommended by the older sibling of our child's team mate. She is in high school and the No Fear Shakespeare books are being used to help teach Macbeth. I purchased this as a first step into the whole line. I love it. It does not diminish the beautiful poetry of Shakespeare's sonnets, but it enhances them by providing straight forward explanations in modern English on the facing page. I feel more able to absorb and appreciate these works now. We will be purchasing more of these wonderful books.

Tales From Shakespeare

Published in Hardcover by Scholastic (2004-04-01)

Authors: Tina Packer, Kadir Nelson, David Shannon, Barry Moser, Leo Dillo, Diane Dillo, Chelsey McLauren, and Mary Grandpre

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Good Interpretaion for kids.

Helpful Votes: 14 out of 16 total.
Review Date: 2005-04-21

I was happy that there is something available for kids that would introduce them to Shakespeare. However, I still had to use my own words even for narrative. You really can't do much about Shakespeare's words and you would not want to, but the narrative and other explanations should have been made easier to read. They read more like narratives for operas with "dote", "sprite", "vowed", "disdainful", "enarmored", "braying", "loathsome" etc all over the place.

My kids are under 10 and I was hoping that with my help they will enjoy the book. They did, but I had to really work on it.

Tales from Shakespeare

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2005-09-16

Absolutely beautiful! Stunning illustrations and accessible retellings of Shakespeare's most beloved plays. An excellent early introduction for children and a wonderful edition for anyone who cherishes Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare Books