William Shakespeare Books

This is a beautiful piece and looks wonderful in our library. Add class to any room.

As a lover of Shakespeare since high school I have a fairly large collection of Shakespeare books, audio cassettes and videos, and I regularly visit the festivals around the country. However ALL is surpassed by my One Page Book of Macbeth. When I opened the tube and unrolled the play, I was blown away ... it really is the whole play on one page. I took it to Deck the Walls to have it framed and now it sits in pride of place in my study. It works as a work of art and I can just walk up to it, look for familiar lines. I love it. I will eventually have the whole collection, if I can find enough wall space!!

It's such a great idea and I would recommend it to anyone, whether you're a Shakespeare scholar or just someone with a casual interest.

I tell you, if your short of ideas for a Christmas, this is definitely something different.

Zuesse's translation is understandable, while still retaining Shakespeare's original message. While reading MacBeth, I could comprehend the literature and imagine what was happening in the play better than the other works by Shakespeare I have read. Eric Zuesse has mastered the ART of translation.

Eric Zuesse is doing for Shakespeare today what the Bard would be doing for himself today: making his plays accessible to everyone.

Shakespeare's appeal 400 years ago was due not only to his profound insight into the workings of the human heart and to his ability to express the range of universal human emotion from agony to joy in unforgettable words BUT ALSO TO HIS USE OF THE COMMON MAN'S LANGUAGE--the vernacular. However, some of today's Shakespeare is no long available to the average reader because some of his language has become archaic.

Is there a solution? Enter Eric Zuesse.

His translation of MACBETH avoids the pitfalls of today's would-be modernizers: bowdlerizing, simplifying, and paraphrasing.

In contrast, Eric Zuesse has remained so failthful to the meter, rhyme pattern, and content of every line of the original text that Shakespeare himself himself would have given his endorsement!

William Shakespeare. Real Name: Christopher Marlowe? "The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question" is a look at something that some literary critics would dismiss as heresy - that legendary author and playwright William Shakespeare did not exist and all of his writing was in fact done by supposedly dead contemporary Christopher Marlowe. With evidence to back up the outrageous claim, Blumenfeld will have readers too, contemplating that William Shakespeare is more legend than man.

Blumenfeld has made a highly persuasive and thoroughly gripping case that the mere concept of Shakespeare as eminent playwright and poet is a real stretch of the imagination. One cannot, and should not, dismiss the author's thesis that Marlowe--child prodigy, scholar, literary genius, and highly valued spy--is the author of the brilliant poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare. The chapters on the Deptford incident and the sonnets are fascinating, and the linkage Blumenfeld makes between Marlowe and some very intriguing people who could have staged his death is extremely convincing. This book is a momentous contribution to the authorship debate.

Mr. Blumenfeld's erudition and detective skills are most impressive. Ecce signum: look at the proof.

Just to clarify (Midwest Book Review below is a bit misleading): Blumenfeld maintains that Shakespeare the man DID exist, yet he was a frontman and didn't write the plays.

Some of you probably remember this as the play Marlowe managed to complete before he was killed in "Shakespeare In Love." It is interesting that even though many critics do not see this as one of Marlowe's better plays, Marlowe (in the movie) said that this was even better than his "Dr. Faustus." The play begins with the Protestant Prince Navarre marrying a Catholic Princess. While some are hoping this will make peace between the Catholics and Protestants in France, many see the approaching war as inevitable. Anjou (the eventual King Henry III) teams up with the overly ambitious Guise and they decide to eliminate the Protestants. Most of the scenes that follow are short murder scenes, but Marlowe knew what he was doing. By keeping the scenes short, he emphasizes that murder is a vile act. (Hollywood has always looked for ways to justify and even glorify killing.) Well, action movies are here today and gone tomrrow, while the classics from Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Dickens will survive time. Quoting a bit of Shakespeare: 'the truth should live from age to age.' Moving on, King Charles IX is understandably sad at the bloodshed. Upon his death, Anjou is crowned King Henry III. Marlowe keeps the tension as the Protestants (under Navarre) start to strike back. Then, there comes a rift between Henry III and Guise. And should we be surprised about this? Ambition seldom knows loyalty. Henry III realizes that Guise is popular, so a secret murder is his best bet. And Navarre is sharp enough to realize that if he helps bring down Guise, he may win Henry III's gratitude. It is interesting that someone even tries to warn the ego maniac Guise of the danger he is in, but Guise compares himself to Caesar and foolishly walks into the death trap. (Undoubtedly Shakespeare had this in mind when he wrote his "Julius Caesar.") Moving on, Henry III plots the murder of a cardinal who he sees as dangerous. (But as in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," some enemies are more powerful after their death.) The death of this cardinal brings about a successful attempt on Henry III's life. And we can see that Henry III's death was revolving in Shakespeare's mind as he wrote his "Hamlet." If we accept Marlowe's words (in "Shakespeare In Love") that this is even better than "Dr. Faustus," we'll have to fight many critics. But the argument is that this play is historical and completely plausible. And the more believable something is, the more scarey it is likely to be. In the movie, Shakespeare choked a bit when Marlowe just said the title. It's sad that this play will probably never get the attention it deserves.

I CAN NOT understand why this play of Marlowe's was never popular. In this chilling masterpiece, not a single page is wasted. This play offers several dramatic passages. Guise's soliloquy in scene 2 is especially powerful. Another aspect of this play that Marlowe handles with the utmost of genius is Anjou's rise to King Henry III, and later his fall. Throughout the play, Guise presents us with chilling moments and his death is handled with dramatically appropriate lines. The reconciliation between King Henry III and Navarre also demonstrates Marlowe's mastery of literature. Finally, King Henry III's death really helps us to see that Marlowe paved the way for Shakespeare in every sense of the word. If you liked Marlowe's "Faustus" and "Edward II," you WILL NOT want to miss this one!

Though I enjoy the Gielgud/Richardson recording, this is simply a superlative recording. All three of the principles: Roger Allam, Simon Russell Beale, and Stella Gonet turn in incredible performances. This recording, compared to the forementioned Gielgud/Richardson recording, is full of vitality and energy. The clarity and accessibility to a modern audience, and the incidental music adds perfectly to the mood and theme of this play. I highly recommend this, an exemplary performance of perhaps Shakespeare's most underrated play.

This reading is completely accessible and delightful - I've listened to the whole thing six times through already

The seller shipped the book quickly and it was in pristine shape. It's a good edition of the play and has helpful notes.

I recently re-read THE MERCHANT OF VENICE prior to attending The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of this play under the summer stars here in Boulder. Shakespeare (1564-1616) produced this comedy on an uncertain date between 1594 and 1597 and published it in the First Folio in 1623.

The play tells the story of a merchant, Antonio, and the more famous villain (and the more interesting character), Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When a young, charming Venetian, Bassanio, requires money to travel to Belmont to court the beautiful and wealthy Portia, he approaches his friend Antonio for 3000 ducats. Because all of Antonio's merchant ships are at sea, he approaches Shylock for a loan on Bassanio's behalf. Shylock, bitterly resentful of Antonio because he spat on him previously, proposes a malicious condition on the repayment of the loan: if Antonio is unable to repay the loan on time, Shylock will be entitled to take a pound of Antonio's flesh. Antonio confidently accepts the abhorant condition. Bassanio leaves for Belmont, and Antonio's ships are then lost at sea, leaving him unable to satisfy the bond, and exposing him to Shylock's revenge. (Meanwhile, Shylock's daughter Jessica flees his home, converts to Christianity, and elopes with Lorenzo.)

In a romantic subplot, in Belmont, Portia's numerous suitors are required by her late father's will to choose between three caskets for an opportunity (i.e., Portia's portrait) to marry Portia. Each suitor must agree, if he chooses incorrectly, to live out his life as a bachelor. After two unattractive suitors choose incorrectly, Bassanio makes the correct choice and wins Portia's hand in marriage.

The drama between Antonio and Shylock is resolved in the court of Venice, where Portia (disguised as a lawyer) successfully nullifies the agreement between Antonio and Shylock just as Shylock is about to cut Antonio with his knife. This utterly destroys Shylock. Antonio learns that his ships have returned safely after all. By the end of the play, all wrongs are righted, and all couples are united by love and happiness. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE is a fascinating play--a romantic comedy with the danger of a knife at its heart, giving it a dark side.

G. Merritt

Knight's theories have become commonplaces. The idea that Hamlet is a bad guy? The theories the Duke of Measure for Measure and Timon of Athens are Christ figures? All those are propounded for (as far as I know) the first time in this eloquent book. Aside from having famous theories, Knight supports his claims, which at first can seem absurd, with mountains of evidence gathered from a fine-toothed reading of the text. He never makes obvious points or fallacious arguments; he starts out by noticing fine details in the text and then draws these into a coherent, convincing whole. I don't agree with every word he's ever written, but all his words are brilliant. Knight is the best literary critic I have ever read, by a wide margin, and this may be his best book.

G. Wilson Knight is one of the great pioneering Shakespeare critics. As he explains in his introduction in the essays in this work he does not speak about Shakespearean 'theatre' about all that has to do with playing the plays. Instead he reads the text, not simply in time, but what he calls 'spatially'. This means in a sense thematically, finding a unity of mood and atmosphere, of motif and meaning.
For instance in his provocative reading of 'Hamlet' he sees Hamlet as a kind of sick soul set over against the healthy world of others, including that of usurper Claudius. At Knight sees it Hamlet is the death- obsessed dark dreamer who cannot be saved for life, not even by the love of Ophelia. Knight searches through the play as a whole in order to make Hamlet a character set apart from all the others, the one whose indecision, despair, brooding are signs of his deep disturbance of soul.
In another essay in the work Knight compares this moody , despairing Hamlet with the Tolstoy who at the moment of greatest triumph and well- being fell into a depression over his sense of life's meaninglessness. Knight claims that Tolstoy did not ever really get beyond this sense of meaninglessness, while Shakespeare in Lear and other late works does.
There are also outstanding essays here on Lear, Othello, Measure to Measure.
Shakespeare like all great writers is reinterpreted and added on generation by generation. In his generation Knight made a major contribution to this. His work is still not simply readable but instructive and inspiring.

In a Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's loveliest comedy, the world of four lovers collides in a magical woods one night during midsummer with hilarious results. Pandemonium reigns and misunderstandings abound; nothing is as it seems, or should be, and that is what makes this play so perfect.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's extraordinary talent for creating poetry that is unrivaled is effective in both establishing character and demonstrating the theme. The characters of this play all speak in poetic form with the exception of the English rustics who speak in prose. This helps to place the fairies and the lovers on a higher and more transcendental plane that the artisans. The artisans, as a result, become even more comical and serve to heighten the misunderstandings of love.

The poetry of Shakespeare's genius also helps to clarify the play^s theme of the extreme confusion and blinding power of love. The rhythmic words help to create a magical setting while the rhyming scheme serves to portray the confusion each character feels while under the power of love.

Those who think that love is only a blissful dream, will find that Shakespeare, in this play of clever intrigue, shows also that love can be a place of extreme confusion. As the audience ponders the revelry they have just seen on stage, Puck steps forth to conclude the confusion:

If we shadows have offended/ Think but this, and all is mended/ That you have but slumbered here/ While these visions did appear/ And this weak and idle theme/ No more yielding than a dream.

The audience is left in as much ambiguity as it felt throughout the performance; the play appropriately ends in a puzzling state of confusion.

The majority of events is this play take place during the night, even the rehearsal for the farcical play-within-a-play. All of the mishaps occur during the nighttime hours and the confusion is not cleared up until the next morning when the four lovers are discovered. This setting of night allows the audience to drift into the idea that the entire play could well have been nothing more than a fantastic dream.

Sleep in another theme that threads its way throughout the play. All of the mishaps and mistakes occur through the guise of sleep. One of the major influences of sleep is that it allows Puck and Oberon to make use of the magic love flower whose power is only effective if its intended victim is fast asleep. The flower, however, causes an hilarious love triangle that is not set straight until Oberon once again finds all of the confused lovers asleep. When they are discovered the next morning and asked to explain their crazy night, the only explanation that can be given is that it was all a dream.

There seems to be no other way for Shakespeare to end this riotous entanglement of lovers, mythological beings, fairies and artisans but to explain it as a dream. Throughout the play, with its nighttime atmosphere and frequent occurrences of sleep, the dreamy state of the characters is passed on to the audience. The play itself is still in an inconclusive state when the characters leave the stage and many questions remain in the mind of the audience. Puck's closing monologue, however, explains that puzzlement is the appropriate emotion to be felt during the course of the play. Puck then goes on to persuade the audience that the only logical explanation for the ambiguity of the play, itself, is that, just as the characters themselves experienced, the audience has just awakened from a comical and fantastic dream.

Yes, Shakespeare has a sense of humor; he proved it in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I have enjoyed all of his books, especially Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth, but A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in my opinion, his best work. There are many love stories in this book, one of which is about Hermia and Lysander. They hide in the woods because Hermia's father wants her to marry Demetrius, a wealthy man. In order to win over Hermia's father, a woman named Helena tells him where Hermia is, and they immediately go after the two lovers. What happens to Hermia and Lysander? Does she marry Demetrius? You'll have to read it in order to find out. There are other great stories in this book, including the one of Theseus and Hippolyta -- two royals that are about to get married. With Shakespeare's ability to write a beautiful love story with a touch of poetry and precise comic timing, this is a classic that everyone should read. I highly recommend it!

The Arden series was requested as a gift and by someone who knows it well. Shakespearean students will appreciate this publication.

There are many reasons for the popularity of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", not the least among them is the almost unique joining of the humorous misuse of language (by the tradesman actors) and the utter beauty of language and expression (by Puck, Oberon, and Titania). One usually gets a farce of language or an attempt at the sublime. Here the music of the two enriches both.

How can one put together these four disparate plotlines into such a wonderful whole? The quartet of lovers and their mixed and varied attentions forms the basis of the plot in the comedy and it is a delightful enough farce. The squabble of Demitrius and Lysander over Hermia while Helena pines over Demitrius, Oberon and Titania's argument over one of her servants and Oberon's use of Puck to manipulate Titania's affections including Puck's mistaken application of Oberon's potion to Lysander's eyes, the pending marriage of Thesus and Hippolyta, and the wonderfully, magically awful play being put on by the tradesman for the nobles. Putting all this into a wonderful whole is an achievement that I believe is unmatched.

I do want to say that this play has suffered a great deal in our sex obsessed age. We have foisted on this play an eroticism that it does not claim for itself nor display. While the "adult" couples (Thesus & Hippolyta, Oberon & Titania) interact and talk in ways that include that aspect of their lives, the youthful couples always talk and act in ways that are concerned with propriety and modesty. Bottom is hardly the lust blinded brute depicted in modern productions. He is much more interested in eating and chatting with his Fairy friends than Titania. It is Titania who is under the influence of the magic flower who is infatuated with Bottom while he remains quite oblivious to her desires.

In any case, this is a fine edition of the work with many helps for the reader. Almost half the book is filled with introductory essays that provide background on the play and its text. The play itself is full of notes to help the reader understand idioms and definitions of words that are obscure, unique to Shakespeare, or that have changed meaning since 1596. There are four Appendices that cover source materials for the play, realigned text that the editors believe were corrupted in the sources we have for the play and the last one is the prologue to the play that Peter Quince butchers to the amusement of the nobles. The appendix provides us with the prologue with correct punctuation, as Quince should have read it.

All the background material is interesting and enriches our understanding of the play. But it is the play that matters and is so much fun to read.