The Shakespeare Papers

Filed under Books, Resources on October 4 | Comments welcome!

If you like Shakespeare (as I percieve by your being here none of you hates him) you must check out The Shakespeare Papers. Each of these 16 page marvels are a wonderfully designed exploration into a specific theme of Shakespeare’s works, and worth having.

To give you an example of the sorts of things covered, the first issue covered the motif of “…Morning and the diverse ways Shakespeare describes it to us, sometimes without ever using the word.” Each page includes a couple quotes involving morning from various plays. But it’s not just a random list… they’re all beautifully poetic passages that you may not fully notice or appreciate when reading or seeing the play as a whole. The Shakespeare Papers are kindly asking you to stop, take a look at the little things that make up the whole of Shakespeare’s canon… you will be amazed and know not what to say.

Also included in the first issue is an explanation of the quotes. In fact, each issue includes some sort of analysis of the topic covered… you’re getting some scholarship too in a great looking packet. I should mention that the graphic design is really well done. It’s nice to have something this good looking beside the bland scholarly journals that I receive.

Speaking of scholarly journals, that’s not what you’re getting and it’s a great thing! Too much scholarship can take the fun out of Shakespeare, so you get just enough info to educate you on a small subject. These are very easy to follow along in (it’s only a few pages!) and if you want more, you can get extra tidbits through email every now and then if you’d like. I only wish I could get more issues more often!

It’s very easy to got lost in the forest of knowledge of Shakespeare’s works, the Shakespeare Papers is a wonderful guide to exploring the beauty contained in each tree. At $38 a year for 6 booklets, I would strongly recommend getting a subscription for yourself and one for a friend.

Asimov’s Guide To Shakespeare

Filed under Books, Resources on May 2 | 1 comment

William Shakespeare has been given more titles than can be counted: The best British Playwright, most influential English author, most accomplished author in history, best writer in the history of the English language, the best writer ever, the list goes on. Shakespeare also has the reputation of being rather thick, wordy, sesquipedalian, and just plain hard to understand. There are plenty of dictionaries, lexicons, and other books for dummies on Shakespeare that have been written to help the average person understand the greatest of playwrights. But boring teachers in schools across the world are continually giving students the impression that you have to be a genius to fully understand and appreciate Shakespeare.

Isaac Asimov shows us that one must only be a genius to single-handedly write a book that can really help people really understand what is really going on in the many works of William Shakespeare. And he does it quite nicely.

This book is not a bunch of footnotes put together. It is not entirely composed of word definitions, translations of the text to modern English, and not a summary. It is, as we are told in the title, a guide. Just as a tour guide walks us safely along the path explaining and educating, so too does Asimov with the entirety of Shakespeare’s plays and even a couple of his poems.

In the introduction Asimov reminds the reader that Shakespeare, although a writer “for all time,” was initially writing for an Elizabethan audience. The history, mythology, and other knowledge is what he was writing about. “Any yet, if we did know a little more of what that writing was about, would not the plays take on new dimensions and lend us still greater enjoyment?” And through the course of the rest of the book Isaac Asimov lets the reader know much more of what the writing was about - leading to greater enjoyment. Much greater. This reviewer, in fact, nearly leaped for joy after reading the chapter on Hamlet. A play regarded by many as Shakespeare’s greatest and most complex writing is made crystal clear. Each play is put into historical context, obscure passages and references are explained, and enjoyment of these plays increase exponentially.

The books can be used two ways. Primarily, a guide through the entirety of Shakespeare’s plays to be read from cover to cover. A tour guide requires you to be on the same path they are on, so if you haven’t read a play some of the chapter on that work might not be as helpful as it could be. The book can also be a reference. Each chapter need not be read in order. Each applies to a specific play, so during or after the reading of any play you may reference the appropriate chapter. Either way, be sure to read the introduction!

There’s a lot that can be said for this book, but in the end it really speaks for itself. Isaac Asimov doesn’t just prove his immense knowledge of Shakespeare’s language and history, but that once you know a thing or two about what The Bard is talking about you will have an appreciation for the plays. This work is strongly recommended to teachers and students of Shakespearean works both in the fields of Theatre and Literature. With Isaac Asimov as your guide you will truly find that William Shakespeare is a writer “for all time.”

Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare

Review: The Essential Shakespeare Handbook

Filed under Books, Resources on January 29 | Comments welcome!

by Leslie Dunton-Downer and Alan Riding

When DK named their Shakespeare Guide Essential Shakespeare Handbook, they weren’t kidding: it’s definitely a handbook. It’s also about Shakespeare, and I think it’s essential!

It’s about the size of any other handbook. Small enough to fit into a backpack, messenger bag, or suitcase easily; large enough to read and hold comfortably. The difference between this and your Boy Scout Handbook is that there’s no place to check off the merit badges you’ve earned. And the subject matter.

This gem of a book is a wealth of quickly-referenced information. You get a brief bio of The Bard himself, a chapter on Elizabethan theatre, notes about Shakespeare’s works as a whole, and about his language. Then we move on to his plays.

The plays are broken up into four categories: Histories, Comedies, Tragedies, and Romances. Each section begins with a couple pages of talk on that particular category. Each section has a different color header which makes it very easy and quick to get to what you’re looking for.

Within the sections, you get several pages on each play. There’s so many goodies in there, it makes me all giddy. A few paragraphs of intro and history of the play is given. The date it was written is shown on a timeline, along with the length of the play (number of lines of text) in comparison to Shakespeare’s shortest and longest plays - Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, respectively.

Then there’s a page that lists every character with a few lines about them and how many lines of text each has; certain characters are marked with icons to denote a great role, comedic character/villain, dies, and more. There’s a little chart that even tells you how many lines of text are in each act, and another that gives you a percent of verse to prose comparison! There’s a full synopsis of each act, and then commentary about reading the play, the play in performance, and more!

This volume is one of the most useful books on my bookshelf. If ever I need to quickly and easily reference almost ANYTHING about Shakespeare’s plays I check here first. It’s not just great content, it even looks great! Check bookstores around you if you wanna flip though it before you buy it… you will. Trust me.

Essential Shakespeare Handbook

Review: Shakespeare A to Z

Filed under Books, Resources on January 17 | Comments welcome!

by Charles Boyce

When I’m working on one of Shakespeare’s plays there are a few books that I won’t go too far without. This is one of them. Shakespeare A to Z is a sort of encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s plays and characters, along with entries on people, places, things, stories, mythology, times, days, and more that is mentioned in any of The Bard’s works.

This book contains over 700 pages of concise information. I don’t usually label something that’s 700 pages as ‘concise,’ but there’s a lot of data in this work. All the entries are in alphabetical order making everything easy to find. Who needs a table of contents when it’s alphabetical? Not I.

There is an entry in this book for every single character in the plays. All the servants with one or no lines who are on for just a moment get an entry. It isn’t very long of course, but it just goes to show how thorough this volume is. There are 30 entries for a character named Servant. Who knew?

Each play’s entry is a few pages long and offers a scene-by-scene sypnosis of the show, some commentary, notes on the sources of the story, the text, and any notable history if the play in performance. Plus each character is given their own entries elsewhere. The major characters have a nice long passage about them which includes their journey through the plays, perhaps some actual history of the character, and some other general notes about them.

This is a great companion to reading, studying, and acting anything from Shakespeare. A very handy first stop for research. Yes, first stop. Don’t use this as your only source of information. If you want to understand anything really well it needs to come from a variety of sources. Even so this text is amazingly useful and completely indispensable.

Shakespeare A to Z:
The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More

Review: A Shakespearean Actor Prepares

Filed under Books, Resources on January 7 | Comments welcome!

by Adrian Brine and Michael York.

It’s a good habit to be wary of books written by actors (especially moderately well known ones), often they use personal experience as examples and it can detract from the educational information at hand. This is not the case with this book. A Shakespearean Actor Prepares is a great guide for actors, directors, and other Bard lovers for learning to play Shakespeare.

I came across this book in a library (you know, those places where they let you check out books) one day and sat down to see if it would be any good. After getting half way through the foreword I wasn’t too excited. I was getting bored with information about the authors and their relationship, experience, and random other gobs of info I didn’t really want to know. Fearing I would be in for more pain - I cut to the chase, skipping the rest of the foreword and dived into the book. Things took a turn for the better, the much better.

Brine and York go on to guide the reader smoothly and painlessly into the inner workings of Shakespearean text, the relation of the form and content, painting pictures with your words, creating a character supported by the text, and much more.

What fascinated me more than anything is the excellent final chapter: Shakespeare and Stanislavski. One would expect some mention of the famous Russian in a book that is similar to the title of one of his own. This chapter expounds upon the topic of using Method acting in Shakespeare. It effectively asks and answers the question “Is ‘the method’ relevant to acting Shakespeare?” The answer: …You’ll have to read the book!

This book has a lot of great information in it and I would recommend it to anyone who loves shakespeare and wants to be able to speak (and act) his words with distinction. Basic knowledge of Shakespeare is a big help with a book like this, I don’t think this is a great “intro to Shakespeare” text, but it definitely covers things that are essential before you get too far along in your Shakespeare careers. A Shakespearean Actor should prepare with reading this book, which merits this work a 4 on the Bardmeter scale.

A Shakespearean Actor Prepares

Review: Thinking Shakespeare

Filed under Books, Resources on December 21 | Comments welcome!

by Barry Edelstein

I picked up this book one day at a bookstore while browsing the Shakespeare section, like I do, and took a quick look inside. Knowing nothing about it, I saw that it was over 400 pages long, cost only about $8 and was written by a man who had been directing Shakespeare for over 20 years in some fairly well known places. “The guy must know something!” thought I. A few minutes later I was walking out the door with my new book and receipt in hand.

Let me tell you… this guy knows more than just something. Barry Edelstein takes you on an easy-to-read journey though Shakespeare’s text, illustrating in detail how to make sense of the language and how to speak, use, play, act, and love it. This is a fairly complete guide, and there so much that it has to offer. This is a book I’ll be reading and referencing often.

It might not be the best Acting Shakespeare book ever written (though it is high on my list of good ones), but it’s the best value I’ve found which is why I will give it a 5 out of 5 rating. So much information, GOOD information at that, and you don’t have to pay the $20+ that is common of this type of book - which is ever so important to the average student. It’s not available through Amazon, but the link is there anyway. I’m sure you’ll be able to find it in a bookstore near you. Happy reading!

Thinking Shakespeare: A How-to Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable With the Bard

Review: All The Words on Stage

Filed under Books, Resources on December 19 | Comments welcome!

by Louis Scheeder and Shane Ann Younts

How many times have you been reading one of Shakespeare’s plays and stumbled across a word and wondered, “How the fardel do I say that!?” You can look up a definition without too much difficulty in a dictionary or some other books. But none of the published Shakespeare dictionaries offer pronunciations of the words in them. That’s where this book comes to the rescue!

All the Words on Stage offers a good solution for this. The book lists a few thousand words and names and how to sound like you know what you’re talking about. The book lists American English pronunciation in both the author’s phonetic spelling and in the International Phonetic Alphabet (yay!) The usual pronunciation is listed, along with an alternate if it is pronounced differently to fit into the iambic pentameter.

Also included are sections on scansion of the verse, pronouncing foreign accents and languages written in the text, and more language notes on this and that. This dictionary is missing a few words here and there - one can hardly expect perfection - but a related word is usually there whose pronunciation can help.

If there were only two books that I could take into a rehearsal for a Shakespeare play, this book would be one of them. The other would be Shakespeare’s Words. A good combination so that I know what the words mean and how to say them. A very good place to start when speaking text. For being so useful, I give this book 4.5 Bards. You need it. Get it!
All the Words on Stage: A Complete Pronunciation Dictionary for the Plays of William Shakespeare

Review: Shakespeare’s Words

Filed under Books, Resources on December 18 | Comments welcome!

by David Crystal & Ben Crystal

This is a book that I almost can’t live without. It is essentially a dictionary of most of the words that Shakespeare uses in his plays. But I’d be selling it short if I said it was just that. The majority of the book is the dictionary. The editing is very clear and concise, it’s always the first place I look when I come across a word that I don’t know

Aside from just being a dictionary, every so often there are encyclopedic entries about various things; ie: counting numbers, insults/curses/swears, differentiating certain words, terms on a certain subject (mythology, ships, etc).

After all that, you get a couple pages devoted to each show which includes a sypnosis, a list of characters, and venn diagram-esque circles that visually show how all the characters are connected! It’s wonderful for some of the more complex plots where it helps to see how everyone is related. Especially the Hisories.

I’d be lying if I told you that I summarized everything in this book. You’ll just have to by it to see it yourself! This book is a must-have for all Shakespeare enthusiasts and theatre practicioners. Hence the 5 out of 5 rating. Go out and get it! Or else….

Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion