William Shakespeare Books

The Plays of William Shakespeare are great Literature, but they are PLAYS!, not Novels. That is, they are intended to be PERFORMED, not READ.

This edition of the "Othello" resolves this problem very nicely, by combining the COMPLETE text of the play, with footnotes explaining archaic terms, with total illustration of the events of the play. Combining the written word with images is a powerful storytelling tool, & Shakespeare was, first & formost, a storyteller.

If you can't see the play performed live, this is even better than a video.

NOTE TO TEACHERS & HOMESCHOOLERS!--
This edition, with both the images & the complete text of the play, gives a student a much better understanding of the events in "Othello" than the words alone.

Yes, it can be done! This is an excellent treatment of the Othello story, told so that an average 4th or 5th grader can understand the plot. Vocabulary words, comprehension questions (and games!), and a list of interdisciplinary teaching suggestions, too! Yes, some of the beautiful flow of Shakespeare's original language is missing... but would you really like to explain to your chilks what "the beast with two backs" means? My 6th grader found the text quite easy to follow, and it prepared her well when she saw Othello performed on stage the next week. I suggest using this text as a jumping off point before exposing your child to the live stage version. The other work texts in this series are also just as finely crafted.

For more than four hundred years, Shakespeare's tragedy Othello has fascinated and challenged so many minds evoking a web of configurations and endless questions on the issue of race, love, jealousy, cruelty and evil. Can Othello, a man of such great heart and open nature become so consumed by doubt and jealousy, and turn on the woman he loves without heading her plea for innocence? Is Iago so evil just for evil sake?

While art cannot yield any concrete answers, it allows the imagination to respond in a medium whose visual expression blends feelings and ideas with shapes and forms that transform emotions and sensations into free, fluid and evocative images. Nabil Kanso's paintings project a dynamic perspective that reveals an overwhelming energy and abundance in the expression of the human figure and its potentiality for liberating creativity from social constraints.

Recently, I was the dramaturg for A Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the primary jobs of the dramaturg is to research the production history of the play, and as my teacher once told me, "There's no point in re-inventing the wheel." This being said, Our Moonlight Revels is a great place to start.

Beginning with the original production and moving to the present, Williams explores several productions of this classical play. He hits all the major productions, such as Peter Brook's 1970 production, Beerholm Tree's 1900 production, and productions by Kean, Vestris, and Reinhardt. The book is divided by theory rather than chronologically. There are chapters devoted to the Wedding-play myth, Modernism and Post-Modernism, Scenic images of the "Empire." Of course no book, can be able to explore every single production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the last four hundred years, but Williams' book gives one landmark productions that can be used for further research. One book can't tell you everything, you have to do some research on your own, but Williams at least can point you in the right direction.

The book contains several production photos both in color and in black and white.

The reason for the existence of this book is the fascinating theory that William Shakespeare didn't really write "Shakespeare's" plays. The theory is that they were mostly written by a man named Edward de Vere, who was the contemporary Earl of Oxford. Like most such ideas, this theory is considered "controversial" by those who believe it, and "a lot of hooey" by those who don't. Eleanor Brewster's interesting book takes the position that the theory is in fact true, and she marshalls an endlessly tantalizing array of known facts, about the women who figured prominently in Edward de Vere's life, to support her contention. She argues that these known, historical, female figures provided the source material for many of the women in "Shakespeare's" plays. She is able to assemble a great deal of material to support her ideas, because most of these women lived some of the most thoroughly documented lives of their time. This is the case because they were considered to be at the very pinnacle of Elizabethan society -- indeed, Queen Elizabeth herself is accorded one of the most interesting chapters in the book. As this theory gains ground in our universities, as I personally believe that it is destined to do, Eleanor Brewster's innovative book can provide a fascinating window into the problem. After all, what greater source of inspiration does any creative person have, than the women in their life??? That would be... none.

This book is laid out as follows. First, there is a helpful introduction, which lays out Brewster's essential claims. She provides useful, carefully compiled information here, to suitably prepare the minds of readers who may not be conversant with the basic de Vere theory. Don't skip the introduction, if you aren't a de Vere buff. It also provides information to help the reader visualize the setting of the Elizabethan period.

After the introduction, Brewster walks us through careful descriptions of the lives, and personae, of the women in de Vere's life. We learn about his mother; his sister; his unhappy first wife; Queen Elizabeth; his mistress; his second wife; and his daughters. Each person is given a chapter, and we see over and over again the range of references in "Shakespeare's" plays which seem to refer to these women. It's usually pretty convincing, frankly. Now and then I feel like Brewster might be reaching a little, in her enthusiasm over the topic, but not often. She does a lot of very impressive detective work here.

The book concludes with sections about Shakespeare's First Folio, and with some issues raised by the known portraits of Shakespeare and of de Vere. There is a very useful bibliography for further reading. Also, each chapter concludes with a subject-specific bibliography, which is often quite useful.

People who are interested in this subject need to know about the original book that put forward the basic theory. This book was "Shakespeare" Identified as the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford," by J. Thomas Looney, published in 1920. Please don't be too put off by Looney's last name (ha ha) -- his ideas are sane, lucid, and compelling. This idea is sort of depressing to me in many ways -- one likes to think of Shakespeare as an untutor'd genius who simply made up all the plays based on trips to a local library of some kind. Well, for examples of that kind of genius, there are always scientific geniuses like Ben Franklin, Einstein, or Edison! Sadly, Eleanor Brewster has convinced me that Shakespeare can't be counted among their ranks. Oh well. This is still a great book, however, and I give it two thumbs up.

I rarely find a work of this level of excellence. Every single essay in this book is necessary, accessible, illluminating, compelling, and fulfilling. There are times where I read a compilation such as this one and find one or more of the parts to be lacking, superfluous, or just plain boring. Not this book. Bate and Jackson even had the foresight to include an essay by an actor - Judi Dench. Foakes and Wiggins don't just gloss over what is known about his contemporaries, but challenge and engage new ideas about Shakespeare's first performances. Holland offers a fascinating glimpse at the first superstar reviver of his work, Garrick. Thomson covers subsidized Shakespeare and Smallwood incisively explores the current approaches towards his work, Director's Shakespeare. I could go and on and on, but this book has it all. Recommended for academics and students, professionals and amateurs, life-long devotees and the novice who merely wants to learn more about Shakespearean performance.

It's always hard to read Shakespeare,especially if you are a beginner.But this book made it easy for me.Because it mentions all the plays written by Shakespeare,it tells the story of the play,it's sources,and describes the characters of each play.Buy this book if you find any difficulty with Shakespeare.It's a great help.

This is an outstanding anthology of essays of Shakespeare criticism. Laurence Lerner in his introduction talks about kinds of modern criticism which have emerged in response to the 'Character' criticism of the great A.C. Bradley. He especially focuses on 'The New Criticism' which stresses concentrating on the 'language' of the play. Another group of critics focuses on the spectacle, or the performance of the play. A fourth group is the neo- Aristotelians who focus on the structure of the play.
Each chapter is devoted to a specific tragedy. The final chapter is on the subject of Tragedy as a Genre.
I especially took interest in the essays on 'Lear' And found an essay 'The Catharsis of King Lear' by J.Stampfer especially interesting. He speaks about the ' catharsis ' of the play involving 'the relationship of the denouement to the expectations set up in the play's middle. In 'King Lear' , this middle movement has to do primarily with Lear's spiritual regeneration after his 'stripping' in the opening movement of the play. These two movements can be subsumed in a single great cycle, from hauteur and spiritual blindness through purgative suffering to humility and spiritual vision, a cycle that reaches its culmination in Lear's address of consolation to Cordelia before they are taken off to prison...The catharsis of 'King Lear' would seem to lie, then , in the challenge of Lear's subsequent death to the penance and spiritual transcendence that culminates the play's second movement."
This is one example of the fine critical work present throughout this anthology.

This is the only recording of at the moment, although Harper has plans for a new one. This creaking plot might work in a good stage production; but although we know the first two acts, except for a line or two, to be by a hand other than Shakespeare's, the last three acts are bargain basement stuff. Still this is as good a reading as we are likely to get. (The old, out of print version on London/Argo label was quite eloquent.) The best thing about this version is the God-like voice of John Gielgud reading the narrator role of Gower. He sounds as ancient as the character is supposed to be. An unfortunate directorial decision leaves us without the "dumb shows" (which are simply read on the older recording without apology). Nigel Terry ("Excalibur") suffers well as the Odysseus-like hero and the rest of the excellent cast try hard to make things sound plausible. The electronic music does not help create any atmosphere but merely jars.

Aside from people who just plain hate Shakespeare (and I don't get them at ALL), there are two types of Shakespeare Snobs. 1. The ones who think Shakespeare couldn't have written his plays because he wasn't born to nobility. These people are idiots. 2. The ones who idolize Shakespeare to the point where, if they don't like one of his plays, He Obviously Couldn't Have Written It -- he is incapable of writing something they don't like. Um... right. Let's apply this rationale to a latter day artist: since Charlie Chaplin made "The Gold Rush", he obviously had nothing to do with "A King in New York."

Geniuses grow and change with everything they do. The Beatles of "A Hard Day's Night" are not the Beatles of "A Day in the Life." Shakespeare spent his career shifting with the tides of what was Currently Popular. If he had lived in the mid 1970's, he would have followed a "Five Easy Pieces" with a "Star Wars". He rolled with the flow, but stamped his own creativity on every work. "Pericles" and the other later romances were written because that's what the current popular genre was. Box office dictated form; artistry dictated content.

Having recently read "Pericles", I have to say that it's one of the best, wackiest plays ever written. (I also think "Measure for Measure" is meant to be darkly funny, not brooding and angsty; but that's just me.) "Pericles" is what would happen if the writer of the Hee Haw "Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me" song had decided to make a Hope and Crosby Road picture. Unlike Shakespeare's tragic heroes and their Fatal Flaws, Pericles is just a poor schmuck (who happens to be a king) upon whom Murphy's Law comes down like a 50 pound hammer. EVERYTHING happens to this poor guy; your jaw drops at his second or third consecutive shipwreck.

The opening scene alone is worth the price of admission. Pericles has to guess the answer to the riddle of a very John Cleesian king. If he guesses right, he marries the princess. If he guesses wrong, he dies. Unfortunately, he guesses the right answer -- that the king is screwing his own daughter -- and he can't possibly say it out loud. He'll be killed if he answers and killed if he doesn't. It's a very Ralph Kramden hummena-hummena-hummena moment.

And the Act IV brothel scenes, where Pericles' daughter Marina has been sold into prostitution, are among the funniest scenes Shakespeare ever wrote. She doesn't just hold onto her virginity -- every male who tries to do her is coverted to the path of righteousness and the brothel is losing its shirt.

Nevertheless, you feel for the characters even while laughing at the outlandish sheer enormity of each new disaster; Bambi getting killed isn't funny. Bambi getting squashed by Godzilla is hysterical. The reconciliation scene is one of Shakespeare's most affecting.

If you like quirkiness, this is a wonderful play.