William Shakespeare Books

We shall not cease from exploring, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot-

We can now have voice over narration with movies that make DVD's well worth buying and we can enjoy the mover more after seeing what the artist or writer or director was trying to accomplish. I my self need someone to tell me when my show is untied.

You may notice a few drawbacks to the DVD extra rout that this book addresses. First even if the media lasted for ever the DVD will become unreadable with newer technology. Unless you have a portable device about the size of a book a DVD can be clumsy to carry around. People that are book oriented can get more pleasure from this medium.

The book its self is conveniently divided into logical sections as:
Introduction
Synopsis
The screenplay
The cast
The film
The shoot

All the movements and dialog are clearly written. There are plenty of color pictures as visual aids. After enjoying the different view both Shakespeare and the movie, this book makes a great conversation item.

Much Ado About Nothing

This film is Branagh's best ever. Easy to follow with excellent acting. Great casting of both English and American actors.

The book to accompany the movie. There's nothing new here, really, although one can take the screenplay and check it against the play to find out the changes that were made to the text.

Branagh says in the foreword that having the American actors was his idea. Perhaps. I had heard a rumor that he had included them for a wider U.S. distribution. In any case, it's worth noting that the Americans, with the possible exception of Denzel Washington, just can't hold a candle to even the meanest bit parts played by the British. I still think Keaton was way too "Beetlejuice" for Dogberry, although the explanation for his interpretation herein gave me new insight into it. If you're a Branagh admirer as I am, you shouldn't pass this book up.

I just can't say enough good things about this book. The pictures are fabulous--I'd pay the price of the book for them alone! And for those curious about stage production and screenplays, this book is a MUST HAVE! Much Ado is definitely my favorite play by Shakespeare. Kenneth Branagh's movie version is the most fun version of Much Ado I've ever seen, and this book captures Branagh's magic. You will not be disappointed!

Reviewed By: Jean Hall - Eclectic Homeschool Online

While I tend to avoid abridged versions of the classics, I am happy to report that this is an excellent adaptation of a famous Shakespeare play aimed at elementary-aged children (or younger!) and their parents. Large print for easy reading and pictures of scenes on most of the facing pages help to make this famous work accessible to younger readers. The illustrations are carefully drawn, showing details of period costume, while retaining the charming simplicity of coloring pages.

Although this is an "edited" version, it is by no means "dumbed-down" or modernized. The author has taken pains to preserve the beauty and poetry of the Bard's original language. Simple, but clear, prose descriptions explain the action taking place in each scene and unusual word usage is explained in footnotes.

This book could be used in several ways: the parent reads to the child or the child reads the book, different family members take on parts and act out the play, or small children color the pictures while hearing the story.

Discussion questions at the end of the book are designed to explore the themes in this work that transcend time and place and help make the play relevant to a modern child's life and times.

Altogether this is an excellent introduction to Shakespeare and a spring-board to further study.

By judicious selection of the necessary text, he abbreviates the play without destroying it. And he does it without changing language at all.might this be the start of a new Renaissance in children's literature?" -Louise Marder, Ph.D., Editor of The Shakespeare Newsletter and C.E.O. of The Shakespeare Data Bank

"Through judicious editing, the interpolation of descriptive passages and footnoted definitions, and through the use of lushly romantic illustrations, he has found the perfect complements to Shakespeare's own words." -Resources For Historical Theatre

i find this version too heavily edited, losing all of theemotional nuance and plot twists. with so much summary, the reading isfar too dry, and i will not offer it to children i teach. as a guide for those who want clarification so they can explain scenes to young readers, this book is ok, but again, the guts are missing. i'm quite disturbed by the weak attempt at a multi-cultural cast, as implied by the artwork (p 7). the misguided token gesture loads the story with unfortunate subtext: (stereo)typically the "african-american friend" is killed off. as mercutio, his death is a guilty burden for romeo, and incites the duel that begins romeo's demise. the only other pivotal character of hue is friar john, also african-american, who of course fails to carry the note to romeo that would have explained the plan and spared his and juliet's lives. finally, there is the archaic use of the term "man and wife" regarding r&j (in the accompanying art, he is shirtless while she is draped in cloth). check it out at the library. spend your money on a far better kids version in the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series by Lois Burdett.

Oddly enough, words seem completely inadequate to describe Patsy and her teaching. She is an absolute hero and beyond extraordinary...there are few who understand the human being and their voice better than she. If you don't have the opportunity to be in her presence, and learn from her in person (an undeniably mind-blowing experience), then her books are definitely next best thing. Her writing is always incredibly concise and powerful, but this one is particularly full of wonderful examples and imagery. Her structure and method is so clearly laid out, and her passion is always present in her writing (no matter the book), it is almost as if you are in the room with her. This book would be an invaluable addition to any library, as would any or all of her other works. Patsy Rodenburg is quite simply one-of-a-kind amazing!

I'm not sure why I purchased this book in the first place--something told me I wouldn't understand Shakespeare simply by reading it unless I really learned to speak it.

It's blown my world wide open. This is an astonishing book--which even if it apparently looks like a workbook for actors, is more importantly a guide for anyone who'd like to know what planet she's landed on. Because you can't know much about planet earth if you don't know much about Shakespeare--and the secrets Shakespeare is willing to share with you aren't available unless you can hear his lines, and you can't hear them if you can't speak them.

Understand, I've been reading Shakespeare for 40 years. this book has doubled the pleasure and depth of the experience for me.

I had to use this text as part of a class at VCU called Speaking Shakepeare. It is wise to realize that this text, since it is voice and movement related necessitates that one must use the material outside just reading it. Reading Rodenburg can be repetitive at times. However, her approach and detailed examples accentuates the translating of the foreign language of Shakespeare into a palpable and manipulative text. This practical approach takes the hindering and fright out of the playwright's words. I have had great success, thanks to using this book as an aide in tackling Shakespeare. A worth while investment. Just make sure that you apply it step by step, not all at once.

Nothing new here. Seems to be a re-write of the ideas in Cicely Berry's books on speaking Shakespeare. Was looking for some new insights. Did not find any.

I am a highschool freshman in an intro to theater class. Our teacher uses this book as his only reference to anything related to theater. It's a great resource. Currently, i have done 2 monologues and 1 scene from this book. It's such a great tool to use, i recommend this for any drama teachers or students. i own a copy myself, just because it's that great.

What more can be said about The Stage and the School? S&S has been around for generations and is the groundfloor-cornerstone-base-first/last words of secondary school dramatics in the United States. Harry Schanker has brought new life to the Ommanney classic and has done an excellent job updating this work. The teacher resource edition is also outstanding.

I've been using this book as the main text for my Theater Arts class, and our school has used it for decades. If you plan to teach a comprehensive theater class--one that includes both performance and production--this is an excellent choice.

This textbook has many features in it that I would include if I were to write my own book. It has illustrations on every other page showing actual production photos from various professional theatres. There are also diagrams showing material that is easier shown than just talked about. There is a glossary and index in the back, as well as a specific table of contents in the front.

In addition to material covered in chapters, there is also scenes included for student and teacher use. There are 2 person scenes, multiple character scenes as well as monologues for men and women. It's a good place for students to start their searches for material.

The material covered is a wide range. There are sections on Interpreting the Drama which includes Improvisation, Voice and Diction, and General Acting Techniques. A section on Appreciating the Drama talking about History of Drama, the Structure of Drama and the Varieties of Drama. Then there is also a section on Producing the Drama which includes the musical, the set, lighting, costuming and even make-up.

I believe this book gives students a great introduction to theatre and drama which concrete information they can take with them. Some students come to theatre and drama classes with a basic knowledge of the material, and this can help build on that knowledge. And if students have no knowledge, this book starts with the basics like stage directions and different parts of a theatre.

I highly recommend this book to any teacher with an introductory or intermediate theatre and drama class.

This is a show piece for Shakespeare's ability to portray the human condition. It is about wanting what isn't what we think it is, not wanting what is as it seems, marrrying out of pragmatism and finding love, loving blindly and not finding love, the impact of social pressure on love, the impact of love on social pressure, some utterly blind fantasy about women, and some clear understanding of women. I enjoyed it immensely once I caught on to the sarcastism and irony of the depiction.

This play is easily misunderstood, as irony always is (cinema fans will note that Paul Verhoeven swore off irony after people falsely accused him of glorifying a totalitarian society in "Starship Troopers"). Things aren't what they appear, people change, men in love (or lust) have a diminished capacity for rational thought, and women are not property or predictable.

My favorite character was Bianca, the bookish but beautiful woman who had men falling overthemselves for her for all the wrong reasons. She deserved better than she got, and I suspect that this character was intended as an homage to Queen Elizabeth. Katharine was a little too shallow, swinging from all fire and venom to meek and subserviant all too quickly, but she was the core of the irony and sarcasm of the play.

A great work from the Bard!

E.M. Van Court

This play is one of Shakespeare's most ribald, but I enjoyed it just the same. It's lusty, earthy and somewhat farcical. It's a very popular play because it is funny and fast-moving. And Shakespeare's wordplay is at its best here. I defy anyone not to laugh out loud numerously as they read this play. It is wonderful!

First off let me say that this is my first and only Shakespeare play that I have read so I have nothing to compare it too, author wise. I had to read this for my 9th grade english class, and my first thoughts on the text were that it was hard to understand, it was boring and I hated it. Looking back, I was wrong. The plot is a little lacking (I won't bore you with the details, you have read them elsewere), but the dialouge is very clever if you can understand it. Also, this edition has scene summaries and word definitions to help you understand it. Once I let it sink in after I completed it, I relized the underlying messages, the quick witted dialouge and the absurd (although a little weak, as mentioned before) plot make this a pretty good read. If you are up for a challenge I would recommend The Taming Of The Shrew. If you are new to Shakespeare, this seems as good of a place as any to start with his works.

Maybe it's because i read this through a class that it is not so good, but for some reason i didn't connect with this book. IT just didn't capture me like other Shakespeare books. King Lear was fantastic, Romeo and Juliet superb, Othello was fantastic, but the Shrew just didn't cut it for me. I think it's because it is a comedy. I enjoy the sirious Shakespeare better. OF course, besides all that the universal themes that shakespeare can recognize is amazing, so it still makes THe Shrew great. There are fantastic scenes of comedic wit, in which arguing scenes are taken to a whole new level of jabs and stabs with words. Overall, the story is weak, but does contain great writing.

This book is simply outstanding when it comes to figurative language. Shakespeare uses 7 stages to describe the human process of life. The whole book is an extended metaphor.The sound devices used are onopatopeia, alliteration, and parallelism. I would definitely recommend this book to people like Ms. Stewart and for people writing a paper on it like Shannon Van Dyke. Peace,

This beautiful tape can be acquired for a fraction of the cost from Amazon. co.uk

Sir John Gielgud must have one of the most well-trained, beautiful voices of any modern actor. His reading of passages from the world's greatest playwright (greatest author? greatest artist?) is a treat, one I've enjoyed over a dozen times without beginning to tire of. Although Gielgud is simply reading his favorite passages and sonnets with only minimal (and rather lame) introductions and transtitions, the greatness of the material still shines through. The lines alternately exude bitter sadness, biting humor, intense excitement, and always an unmatched understanding of what it means to be human. I'm glad that there are several passages from HAMLET, my favorite play, but less familiar passages are equally memorable--Clarence's recounting of a horrible dream foreshadowing his imminent death from RICHARD III, Leontes's bitterly jealous rant from WINTER'S TALE, Cassius's magnificent denunciation of Caesar from JULIUS CAESAR, and Prospero's renunciation of his magic from THE TEMPEST. The last passage works on several levels--as the resolution of the play of course, as Shakespeare's symbolic farewell to the "rough magic" of writing, and as a great actor's triumphant goodbye to the stage. Listening to Gielgud deliver these speeches is as close as we will likely ever come to hearing the words of the bard as they should be delivered, I can't recommend this tape too highly.

This book is well-organized, nicely printed with the headings in large bold letters. This makes finding a quote under a specific topic easy. I am using it for my college Shakespeare class. BUY THIS BOOK over any of the others.

THE ARDEN DICTIONARY OF SHAKESPEARE QUOTATIONS. Compiled by Jane Armstrong. 396 pp. London : Thomson Learning, 2000 (1999).

The present compilation contains 3000 quotations, both well-known and lesser-known, from Shakespeare's plays and poems. The quotations vary in length from short sentences such as "For he was great of heart," through to longer passages such as Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be," which can run to almost a page or more. Most quotations, however, are quite short, and many consist only of "a strikingly expressed thought or resonant phrase" such as "Do you smell a fault?"

Speaker, addressee, and act/scene/line references are keyed to the Arden Shakespeare series, and some are followed by brief annotations which help clarify the context. The book is rounded out with a 4-page Life of Shakespeare; a 12-page Glossary; an extensive 45-page Keyword Index; and an Index of References to Plays.

In her Preface, Editor Jane Armstrong writes that, as in "the 'commonplace books' in which Shakespeare's contemporaries recorded memorable extracts from their reading," her book has been organized by topic - e.g., ABSENCE, DESIRES, GUILT, HASTE, LOVE - since she feels that this "often clearly reveals the concentration round a subject in a particular play; and ... sometimes shows ideas recurring through Shakespeare's work, either in similar form or in a progression from the more straightforwardly expressed to the increasingly complex and embedded" (pp. xi-xii).

The book, in other words, has been designed to serve a twofold purpose - primarily as a commonplace book or compilation of themes, and only secondarily as a dictionary - and because it contains only 3000 quotations readers are occasionally not going to find what they may be looking for.

I was surprised, for example, to discover that a key line from 'Titus Andronicus' - "When will this fearful slumber have an end?" - has not been included. In fact, SLUMBER doesn't even appear as a topic, since the single line containing it has been subsumed under SLEEP. I was also, until I carefully read Armstrong's Preface, surpised to find that, although there are twenty "heart" quotations, HEART itself does not appear as a topic.

To locate the line "For he was great of heart," which has been included under the topic NOBILITY, you will have to search the Keyword Index. In other words, if you are searching for a particular line you should FIRST CHECK THE KEYWORD INDEX, since the book has not been arranged as a dictionary of words but as a commonplace book of topics or themes, and a more accurate (and less misleading) title for it would have been 'The Arden Commonplace Book of Shakespeare Quotations' or 'The Arden Dictionary of Shakespeare's Themes.'

A truly complete 'dictionary' that would perfectly satisfy all readers and in which we would all find all of our favorite passages and lines could of course only take the form of a rearrangement of Shakespeare's complete works, something clearly impracticable in a handy-sized book of just 396 pages.

Within its limits, and given its aims, I've found that in use the Arden compilation is an interesting book that does a fairly good job on the whole. Many of my favorite lines are there, though others aren't, but in compensation I've been guided to interesting new lines and have enjoyed exploring certain themes. The main frustration I've encountered is that many passages seem too truncated, and I would have liked to have seen more of the poetic context. But this of course would have meant a much larger book.

The book is bound in a decorative glossy wrapper, stitched, well-printed on good thin paper, and is quite a handsome production. As a small 8vo in size (8 by 5 inches) it's not too big, has a nice look and feel to it, and is easy to consult and read. Although it isn't perfect (what is?), I'd say it's a useful (though occasionally frustrating) reference that will also provide interesting browsing material for the Shakespeare enthusiast.

In sum, this is a book with many attractive features, but don't expect to find everything you look for in it : only a Complete Shakespeare or perhaps something like the Schmidt Lexicon could provide that. And to avoid the possibility of confusion, don't forget to read Jane Armstrong's Preface, in which she makes it perfectly clear that this book is _not_ primarily a dictionary of words. It's intended to be something more interesting!

The price is right for this well-indexed, well-organized reference. It boasts 3,000 entries and all are in a logical context. The print is adequately sized and the margins are wide. There are no annotations, which would have been helpful.

My problem with the book is the selection of quotes. Many famous quotes do not appear, and some very obscure ones do. It could be the authors wanted to stay off the beaten track, and draw attention to the less familiar. The result is quotes you don't particularly want to quote. It seems as if a computerized word-search was done, and this was the outcome.

Surprisingly, there are not too many Shakespearian Quotation Dictionaries available. If you wish to have such a reference, you will not find many alternatives. I would give Arden's a lukewarm recommendation in that it could fulfill a need, and there are not many choices.

The three books that cover the life Henry VI are each masterpieces in their own right. They are each important parts of the multi-facted life of Henry VI. Wonderful history lesson.

This is not quite as good as 1 or 2, but it is still excellent! Shakespeare grabs us with the dispute between Henry VI and York. While it seems to end peacefully it does not, and the war goes on! York's death in 1.4 is another landmark in Shakespeare's writing. The scene (2.5) where Henry finds true terror is horror, sorrow, and yet beauty and yet another moving part of the play. (The son that hath killed his father and the father that hath killed his son.) The war pauses in disaster for Henry and some comic relief is offered. But the horror starts all over again when Edward IV and Warwick have a falling out. The war starts over again, and the King of France gets involved! The scene where King Henry VI is reinstated is a scene of beauty and hope. While all of this is happening, Shakespeare carefully prepares the monstrously satanic character of Richard III. From here, the play just gets more and more bloody. A final moment of horror is offered when the eventual Richard III proudly compares himself to the one who betrayed Christ. In part 4 "Richard III," the real terror begins!

This was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. (possibly his third) Yet, there is nothing to indicate he was only starting out. Right away he grabs our attention with the funeral of King Henry V. Henry V's brothers Bedford and Gloucester help us to see the virtues and strengths of the deceased king. The Bishop of Winchester is well drawn as a comical villain who plots and plans, but never succeeds in doing any real damage. (Not until the next play anyway.) Talbot is memorable as the selfless hero of the play. York is memorable as the hero who defeats Joan of Arc. King Henry VI himself is interesting. First we see him as a helpless infant. By the third act, we see that he has both strengths and weaknesses. He makes the mistake of dividing the command between the rivals Somerset and York. But also, we see that he does not tolerate treason or neglect of duty. There are also many memorable scenes. The garden scene that foreshadows the War of the Roses is well drawn. The scene where York comforts his dying uncle is tragic beauty. Bedford's death in 3.2 has almost a divine tone. The death of Talbot and his son is very lamentable. York's sudden rise to power is captivating. Perhaps Shakespeare's greatest achievement in this play is that he simultaneously shows us England's war with France and the dissension with England itself.

There is an excessive amount of highlighting that I did not expect of.

Over the years, despite the fact that The Riverside Shakespeare is my primary course text, I've found the third series Arden paperbacks as an indispensable source for my college-level Shakespeare classes (the second series versions, of course, feature an older and often quite out-of-date understanding of the criticism and characters). As You Like It is one play that I teach consistently, semester by semester, so I was naturally very pleased when this volume arrived. It does not disappoint: the introductory material is superb and, as always, the notes quite helpful. Viva Rosalind!

I recently re-read AS YOU LIKE IT prior to attending The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of this play under the summer stars here in Boulder. Shakespeare (1564-1616) produced this romantic comedy in 1599 and published it in the First Folio in 1623.

Summarizing the play is rather challenging. It basically tells the story of Duke Frederick, who has banished his brother, Duke Senior, into the Forest of Arden, thereby usurping the kingdom. In his exile, Duke Senior has found a humble life of merriment with his court. Following a wrestling match, Duke Frederick also banishes Orlando (son of the late Sir Roland de Boys) and Rosalind (daughter of Duke Senior) into the forest. At the match, the two have fallen into love at first sight. Out of friendhip, Duke Frederick's only child, Celia, and the court jester, Touchstone, follow Rosalind (now disguised as a boy, "Ganymede") into the forest. Soon, Orlando, Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone are all welcomed into the merry life of banished Duke Senior. Orlando, however, is lovesick for Rosalind, and Rosalind (still disguised as a boy) decides to cure Orlando of his lovesickness. While counseling him in the ways of true love, Rosalind (disguised as Ganymede) finds herself falling deeper in love with Orlando. Meanwhile, Celia has fallen in love with Orlando's brother, Oliver. The two decide to get married the next day. Even witty Touchstone has fallen in love with a dull-witted goatherd girl, Audrey. In the final scene, and after many hilarious mixups, all romantic entanglements are resolved by marriage; and after a sudden religious conversion, Duke Frederick returns the throne to his brother--thereby righting all wrongs and uniting all couples by love and happiness.

G. Merritt

I absolutely love Shakespeare and considering him a great genius of the English theater. However, if even those of us who love the Bard are honest, it must be admitted that his reputation did not spring full-blown from the Globe Theater at the turn of the sixteenth century. It took time for him to become Shakespeare as we understand him today. Professor Lynch does an excellent job at sketching out the outlines of this transition in this book.

Professor Lynch reminds us that Shakespeare, though successful in his day, was not considered the greatest playwright of his day. Johnson and Marlowe were much better regarded in most circles. Shakespeare did not adhere to the classical structure of the dramatic form well enough and he often stooped to crude humor. With the closure of the theaters during the Protectorate, it seemed very likely that Shakespeare and his works would be lost to history. Fortunately for us, the Restoration saw the rise of some of the great Shakespearean actors--Garrick, Cibber, Siddons, Kemble, etc.--who really began to move Shakespeare to the fore.

Professor Lynch also reminds us that, until the twentieth century, Shakespeare's text was not as sacrosanct as it is now. He discusses the fact that the most popular forms of Shakespeare until very recently were adaptations and bowdlerizations. (In fact, the word "bowdlerization" comes from Henrietta and Thomas Bowlder, who made a career out of deleting the "naughty bits" from Shakespeare.) Additionally, there were many attempts to forge and otherwise pass off plays as written by Shakespeare. So much so that it is difficult, even to this day, to ferret out some truths.

It may be hard for some to accept in a culture where Shakespeare is so revered, but it did not have to be so. Professor Lynch does a fine job of showing this transition from successful playwright to demigod. There may be some who feel Lynch is merely trying to bring Shakespeare down a peg but I don't see that at all. He is looking for an honest assessment and he tries to give us one. He illustrates his point well in the closing paragraphs of the book: "Shakespeare was unappreciated not because the world was stupid, unable to understand his true greatness until centuries passed. By the standard of 1650, Shakespeare really did deserve his B-plus, and not much more...the biggest testimony to Shakespeare's greatness may be that he changed what it means to be great." It shows respect to his greatness that we try to understand what really happened. This book is definitely worth reading.

William Shakespeare was a genius. Everyone knows it, but he became a genius only after his death. That's the surprising lesson in _Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard_ (Walker) by Jack Lynch. The author is a professor of English who is a well-known scholar of Samuel Johnson. Johnson himself had plenty of admiration for Shakespeare, but also criticism, and told Boswell that "Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault." That's the sort of candor that eventually became forbidden; by the nineteenth century, Lynch says, "Criticizing the Bard - even hinting that he was less than perfect - was becoming the literary equivalent of blasphemy." And yet, Shakespeare had been what Lynch calls a "B plus" playwright during his lifetime, a popular artist who had a lucrative career, but there were other playwrights doing the same thing. Shakespeare made no plans to have his plays published, and his friends arranged only seven years after his death in 1616 for his collected works to be printed. A second edition came out nine years later, and then there was nearly nothing. His plays were performed less often, simply because they were old fashioned, and then in the middle of the seventeenth century there was the closing of the theaters during Cromwell's rule. It could have happened that Shakespeare would take a respected place at the level of his contemporary Ben Jonson who had more critical esteem during his own life, but is now known mostly to enthusiasts of literature rather than to the masses. How is it that Shakespeare became Shakespeare?

Lynch focuses on stories about the plays and their production, appreciation, and alteration over the centuries. It starts with Shakespeare's death in 1616 which got no public attention. Shakespeare's reputation got its initial restoration by a quirk of history. The newly instituted theatrical companies, after theaters were closed down by the Puritans, needed plays to perform but nothing had been written for the stage in decades. Shakespeare's languishing works were still available, and approvable by the Lord Chamberlain, and he came into fashion again. The plays were not good enough for all the uses to which people wanted to apply them. Some felt Shakespeare's plays needed improvement in various ways. "For much of the last four hundred years," says Lynch, "they were rarely presented as he wrote them." As early as 1662, people started blending and changing the texts. Some of the changes were minor and could be charitably viewed as "a helpful tidying-up" to keep the ancient words from being a puzzle to modern ears. There were, however, more radical changes like a _King Lear_ with a happy ending, brought out in 1681 and still performed into the nineteenth century. The funniest chapter here is "Domesticating Shakespeare", making him fit to be presented to children; the the brother-and-sister team of Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler in the early nineteenth century brought out _The Family Shakespeare_, and bowdlerized versions of the play are still the ones found in some school editions.

After a chapter devoted to forgeries of Shakespeare, Lynch winds up with "Worshipping Shakespeare", concentrating on the literary pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon. Stratford was just an English town, and it was not until well after its most famous citizen had died that people came to see William Shakespeare's home. So many came to see it that they annoyed the owner of the property, the Reverend Francis Gastrell. First in 1756, he cut down the mulberry tree that Shakespeare planted in the garden (and Shakespeare may actually have done so) because so many tourists visited and wanted cuttings. (Wood from the tree, or supposed to be from the tree, became carved into trinkets that were hugely valued as icons.) Then, because he didn't want to pay taxes on Shakespeare's house (and because of continued enragements toward tourists) he pulled the house down in 1759. The home is gone, but tourists can come and see Shakespeare's burial place, and birth place, and his wife's cottage, just as did such fans as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Washington Irving. The latter enjoyed being a tourist so much that he did not mind being shown relics of dubious authenticity: "I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am ever willing to be deceived where the deceit is pleasant and costs nothing." Relics and pilgrimages are tributes to religious figures, and at the end of his book, Lynch writes, "Our story is about the long process that turned a very competent playwright into a demigod who transcended the human condition." His book is an insightful examination of a peculiar history. Lynch shows we have always changed Shakespearean texts for different reasons, some of them laudable; that people through the centuries have seen fit to make even silly or inappropriate changes to these ancient works is perhaps one of the greatest of tributes the Bard has earned.

Professor Lynch has written a very interesting book about the steady rise--after a very slow start--in reputation and fame of the finest writer. It will be enjoyed by most general readers interested in Mr. Shakespeare.

The section at the end of this book, which the author's provides on further reading, will be quite helpful for those seeking informed guidance through the thicket of books ever available on the great Englishman.