I am a sophomore attending Marquette University, and for my British Literature Class, we had to write a 7-10 pg paper for our final research project on any work we covered in class.

I chose Othello. The purpose of the assignment was to pick a topic related to the work and find various interpretations that would help you prove your point. Scott does a very nice job of collecting various reputable authors in his discussions of each play. From what I could tell, he chose professors and esteemed writers for all the essays I read.

I also liked how he gave a brief synopsis of each play before the essays. He also makes sure that there are in-depth character sketches for each main character and descriptions of the main themes in the plays.

I picked up this book from our library and I enjoyed his collections on Othello. Therefore, since I believe it is a valuable resource, I have decided to purchase the book myself.

I recommend it highly as a source to any student.

Julius Caesar is probably one of the better plays written by Shakespeare. This play if full of intrigue, action, betrayal, and emotion. This play is not very long (5 acts), which makes it a quick and exciting read. The characters are built nicely, and what is nice about this version of the book, is that it is easy to read, and any words that may be unfamiliar are defined on the opposite page, making it easy to look them up, and understand Shakespeare's difficult writing style. This is definately a play worth checking out. It's a fun read, and with plenty of helpful tools built in to help along the way.

This superb play by Shakespeare somehow reminded me of Antigona, the first play which directly examined the always complex interplay and usual confrontation between political reason and moral reason. This play is an excellent account of the immediately previous and subsequent days of Julius Caesar's assasination by Brutus, his best friend, and other conspirators. Brutus is persuaded by the resentful Cassius that Caesar has betrayed Rome by abandoning the Republic and turning to Dictatorship. Brutus gets to be convinced that, in order to save the Republic, Caesar must be killed. This puts him in a great dilemma, for he loves Caesar and he's his closest friend. Here we see in an acute form the way in which political power gets in conflict with morality and feelings. Friendship, power and betrayal are the basic subjects of this excellent piece of work.

A while back, a friend of mine and I decided to pick a Shakespeare play every couple months, read it, then get together and discuss it.

It worked with pretty good results for ROMEO AND JULIET, but then we ran out of gas somewhere in the middle of our next selection, JULIUS CAESAR.

Now that I've finally finished reading the play long after our allotted "couple months," I have to say that the fault (the mutual disinterest that effectively brought our little Shakespeare club to a halt) doesn't lie in the play itself, but rather in my preconceptions of what the play was about.

I can't speak for my friend, but since I took the Cliff Notes route in high school when we were supposed to be reading about Caesar and Brutus and the rest of the treacherous Roman senate (and didn't do a very thorough job at that) I always assumed the play's action revolved around the plot to kill Caesar and culminated with his death scene. I wasn't prepared to find Caesar dead halfway through the play, with two-plus acts remaining. I think I just lost interest once Caesar blurted, "Et tu, Brute?" and slouched over lifeless on the cold marble.

But thankfully I eventually kept going, and discovered what the play is really about: the manipulation of the public that goes on after Caesar's death. The speeches in JULIUS CAESAR, given by those who would take his place, are full of the damage-control, image-making spin that happens everday on our "all news" channels. It's an interesting play, maybe not Shakespeare's best, but one that has certainly has some modern relevance and is worth examining.

Now if my friend and I can just get our club back on its feet. Maybe a comedy next time...

The book wasn't what I thought it was. I was hoping that it would concentrate more on the basic director stuff instead of so much Shockwave/Internet stuff.