Playing Shakespeare is the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world’s greatest playwright. Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors–among them Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet–John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director begins by explicating Shakespeare’s verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section, Barton and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater, from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought, to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare’s most controversial creation, Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice. A practical and essential guide, Playing Shakespeare will stand for years as the authoritative favorite among actors, scholars, teachers, and students.
Shakespeare in Autumn: Select Plays and the Complete Sonnets, by William Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, is available in a fine exclusive collector’s edition featuring a laser-cut jacket on a textured book with foil stamping, making it ideal for fiction lovers and book collectors alike. Each collectible volume will be the perfect addition to any well-appointed library. The Shakespeare in Autumn Seasons Edition--Fall: Features selected works from William Shakespeare, history’s greatest and most influential writer of the English language. His poetry and plays have been recited and studied for generation upon generation and remain iconic works of literature Presents a small yet wide-reaching collection of the Bard’s finest works, including The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and the complete sonnets Is distinctively and seasonally nuanced for autumnal reading Explores such important themes as love and romance, the economic ramifications of marriage, the immutable irreversibility of fate, the destructive nature of jealousy, the power dynamics of relationships, and the absurdity of ambition Is ideal for special-edition book collectors, fans of literary fiction and classic literature, Anglophiles, and people who love all things Shakespearean and the many cinematic adaptations of the Bard’s work Whether you’re buying this as a gift or as a self-purchase, this remarkable limited edition features: Beautiful hardcover with a distinctive one-of-a-kind, high-end/high-treatment laser-cut jacket, perfect for standing out on any discerning fiction-lover’s bookshelf Trim Size: 6 x 9 Beautiful decorative interior pages featuring pull quotes distributed throughout An exquisite matching laser-cut bookmark Part of a 4-volume Fall Seasons series including Anne of Green Gables, Dracula, and Sense and Sensibility William Shakespeare has been lauded as one of history’s greatest and most influential writers of the English language. His poems and plays have been recited and studied for generations, and remain iconic works of literature. Shakespeare in Autumn includes a nuanced selection of Shakespeare’s finest works, including: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Twelfth Night As You Like It The Taming of the Shrew Romeo and Juliet The Sonnets Shakespeare in Autumn: Select Plays and the Complete Sonnets by William Shakespeare (Seasons Edition--Fall) is one of four titles available in the Fall Seasons series. The Fall collection also includes Anne of Green Gables, Dracula, and Sense and Sensibility.
This book analyzes, through easy-to-follow play synopses, the strengths and weaknesses of the female protagonists as they impact not only the plot of Shakespeare's plays but the male protagonist. Selected, condensed one-act versions of the plays are provided in order to enrich the discussion of the play, to stimulate in reading the play in its entirety, and to provide a springboard for group discussion of the play and the impact of the women. Contents: William Shakespeare: His Art, Life and Times; The Women of Shakespeare's Plays: An Overview; The Comedy of Errors; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Julius Caesar; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Macbeth; Much Ado About Nothing; Othello the Moor of Venice; The Taming of the Shrew; Antony and Cleopatra; Twelfth Night or What You Will; Romeo and Juliet; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Bibliography.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness.
An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard’s inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing—not resolving—the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith—an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer—takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.
"This book offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have altered how and what students are taught, as courses across the arts, humanities, and sciences increasingly are set aside to make room for joyless, mechanical reading and math instruction. Students have been robbed of a complete education, their imaginations stunted by this myopic focus on bare literacy and numeracy. Education is about thinking, Newstok argues, rather than the mastery of a set of rigidly defined skills, and the seemingly rigid pedagogy of the English Renaissance produced some of the most compelling and influential examples of liberated thinking. Each of the fourteen chapters explores an essential element of Shakespeare's world and work, aligns it with the ideas of other thinkers and writers in modern times, and suggests opportunities for further reading. Chapters on craft, technology, attention, freedom, and related topics combine past and present ideas about education to build a case for the value of the past, the pleasure of thinking, and the limitations of modern educational practices and prejudices"--
