This winter break I went on a Shakespeare buying spree, and this book is one of the fine gems I found. A large, but fascinating book, this work of great scholarship and excitement takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of Shakespeare, even into rather obscure corners of his works (Trollius and Cressida, Timon of Athens). This book is a must read for any would be deep thinker about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare as Political Thinker is a must for everyone interested in the political thought of William Shakespeare. This reprint will finally allow new comers to become familair with a commonsensical approach to Shakespeare's plays. The introductory chapter by John Alvis is worth the price. Perhaps the best Shakespearean critic alive, Alvis has an uncanny ability to show Shakespeare's moral seriousness without making the bard an unquestioning adherent to any political school or theological creed. Many of the essays that follow are also well done: Jaffa's chapter on Shakespeare's entire corpus, Laurence Berns' meditation on Lear etc.

The second printing of Shakespeare as Political Thinker gives hope to those interested in relearning ancient wisdom and pays tribute to its inspiration, Shakespeare's Politics (Allan Bloom).

I love this book, it's so adorable and beautiful, Susan Herbert is a great artist, I admire her a lot. You see wonderful pictures of cats playing roles of some of Shakespeare plays. It's a great book for kids and also for adult too.:) If you love cats your going to love this book.

This is the most adorable book I have ever seen! The pictures of the cats in the different Shakespearean plays are so well drawn and the colors are wonderful. I use this book when teaching students about Shakespeare because it seems to help when they can see verses in pictures and the fact that it is cats playing the parts makes it even more enjoyable!

Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: A User-Friendly Introduction by Shakespeare enthusiast and expert Henry I. Christ is a solid guide for introducing non-specialist general readers to the wondrous complexity, subtlety, and majesty of Shakespeare's great tragedies and comedies. Excerpts from the plays are analyzed for literary device usage, plot, and character, and numerous summaries are provided for readers who had only a dim idea of what the actors were saying when they saw the play performed. A "must-read" for the novice, Shakespeare For The Modern Reader is a superbly written and presented guide to the basics for anyone researching or attending Shakespeare's plays, or just reading them for personal pleasure.

A lifetime of love and learning has been packed into Henry I. Christ's latest book, SHAKESPEARE FOR THE MODERN READER.
The author's broad knowledge and lively enthusiasm for Shakespeare's life, the theater of his time, and his plays and poems is downright contagious. Reading the brief but comprehensive discussions of all the plays and poems made me hustle back to my own copy of The Complete Works to reread Shakespeare with countless new insights and deeper appreciation for his genius. The book also sent me running to the videotape section of my local library and to video-rental stores to see and hear the plays so lucidly discussed in this user-friendly book.

Christ draws numerous parallels between the theater and actors in Shakespeare's time and those in our modern theater, movies, and TV. In this way, he brings his subject vividly alive for modern readers in terms they can easily and enjoyably follow. I highly recommend SHAKESPEARE FOR THE MODERN READER as a treasure chest in the library of any lover of great literature.

Modern well-annotated editions of Shakespeare (like those in the New Cambridge, Oxford, or Arden series) often explain bawdy usages in Shakespeare which today's reader cannot - yet should - understand. Even so, this area is still often comparatively weak in current commentaries, and this classic provides a great deal of help to the reader who wishes to know more. For a reader who does not use annotated editions at all, the glossary is yet more useful, though such a reader will often not even begin to think about instances of bawdy which would have been readily apparent and intelligible to an Elizabethan. Much does not get explained in Partridge: in that case a curious reader will often find the relevant exposition in Gordon Williams's *A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature*. However, as that is an expensive and difficult-to-use book, many readers would still serve themselves well by buying Partridge's guide. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

"Shakespeare's Bawdy" is a classic of its kind. What else would you expect from Partridge? This wee paperback is indispensible, and has yet to be bettered. Think you know all of Shakespeare's puns? Think again!

As an open partisan of Mark Taylor's scholarhip, I was delighted to find that he has outdone himself in SHAKESPEARE'S IMITATIONS. His prose sparkles with a bravura wit truly inspired by the verbal and structural play of Shakespeare's own invention. SHAKESPEARE IMITATIONS tackles the best of the best: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, HENRY IV, PART 1, HAMLET, and THE TEMPEST. With great yet unassuming erudition and with an unflagging perceptiveness, Taylor pursues the kaleidoscopic question of Shakespeare's mirrorings of antiquity, of contemporary literature, and of his own creations. Even on the rare occasions when I find myself disagreeing with him, Taylor's arguments compel a re-thinking of these four great plays and a renewed appreciation of the infinite capacity of Shakespeare's (to say nothing of Taylor's) imagination.

Andre Gide's concept of the mise en abyme which has become a wide-ranging and controversial tool in literary understanding is deftly applied here by Mark Taylor to four of Shakespeare's most complex plays. Although the theoretical background is French and thus somewhat elliptical in expression, Taylor's prose is fresh, clear, and a pleasure to read. Difficult matter gracefully communicated.

If you love Shakespeare, buy this book--you won't be disappointed. Schoenbaum doesn't discuss the plays, but instead the man who wrote them--or, more specifically, the differing ways that his life has been interpreted. That's right, it's a biography of Shakespeare's biographers, leading us step by step through several centuries of interpreters of the Bard, and the various wacky ways they have interpreted his life. It might not sound compelling, but boy it is. The early portions of the book are good enough, but it really takes off when the author starts to discuss the "Baconian" heretics--authors who have argued that Francis Bacon (or some other aristocratic, and therefore supposedly more intelligent, fop) actually wrote the world's greatest plays. He wonderfully illustrates the bizarreness of the men and women who originated this fanciful claim, and explains how it has unfortunately caught on in the popular imagination. (One of the first "Baconians," the not-coincidentally named Delia Bacon, is a tragically grotesque character worthy of Shakespeare himself.) This is a hefty book that you won't finish in a single sitting, but I still highly recommend it.

This book is the most thorough book on the life of the Bard

Sams' argument has not been accepted by the 'academic establishment', but in my opinion the case which he makes in this book that "Edmund Ironside" is an early Shakespeare play, is very strong.

The idea that the author of the Shakespeare-folio suddenly started writing masterworks is at last proven to be nonsense. Eric Sams makes the case for Edmund Ironside being an early Shakespeare-play so masterly, that only the very stubborn (& the very stupid) can harbour any doubt after reading "Shakespeare's Lost Play". All the same, "Edmund Ironside" stinks, and should (I hope) never be performed on stage. But this monstrosity is fascinating reading-matter, written by a very young and unexperienced bard, who started, just like any other normal being, his professional career not simply by being the best, but at the bottom, by trying - and failing many times. It makes the author of Shakespeares works almost human! This book shouldn't be missed by any serious Shakespeare-student; Eric Sams shows how authorship can and should be proven - and how opponents should be silenced. That Sams apparently completed this study without the benefit of a computer opens new horizons for humanity!

This is more than a history of iambic pentameter and a brilliant analysis of its use in the hands of its greatest practitioner, it should probably also be read as the best general introduction to prosody available. Truly general introductions may touch on more forms and offer a more complete view of English poetic history, but none out there (that I've seen, at least) are as perceptive as Wright and none of them, perhaps because of their general natures, elucidate so fully the possibilities of expressive variation and mimetic form in poetry the way Wright does in such minute detail. Chapters like "Lines with extra syllables," or "Lines with omitted syllables," or "Play of phrase and line" may at first glance promise only dry reading, and it's probably hard to believe that a 300-page book on iambic pentameter could be one of the best works of literary criticism you could ever read. But this is an analysis of at least half of what poetry is all about and, more importantly, the half most rarely talked about (most college professors don't even know how to). Digest this rich and beautifully written book with a handful of Shakespeare's plays (you won't be able to stay away from them after reading it anyway) and you'll be ready to tackle and analyze most any other poet with relative confidence for yourself.

George T. Wright's "Shakespeare's Metrical Art" is an introduction not only to the art of Iambic Pentameter as Shakespeare practiced it but also a starting point to an understanding the art of Iambic Pentameter itself. Mr. Wright argues that in Shakespeare the Iambic Pentameter meter found its greatest and most flexible practitioner. In appreciating the beauty of Shakespeare's artistry we also come to appreciate the intrinsic artistry and beaty of the meter. Mr. Wright's journey begins with Chaucer and Wyatt, the former being the earliest practitioner of the Iambic Pentameter line and also the greatest until Shakespeare. His reading of Chaucer's lines, as most often Iambic Pentameter, sometimes runs counter to accepted wisdom, yet, as with his conception of the meter itself, his argument is well-reasoned and convincing. More contraversial is his treatment of Wyatt's often inconsistent use of meter. Yet, here again, Wright offers the reader a plausible framework into which Wyatt's poetry becomes another expression of the meter's vitality and flexibility. From the further disintegration of the meter after Wyatt, Wright begins his treatment of Shakespeare's metrical art. Every facet of Shakespeare's flexible and imaginative use of the meter (his diversions from its strict course) is methodically examined and considered for its possible influence upon the meaning of the text. These diversions include Shakespeare's use of long and short lines, syllabic ambiguity, lines with extra syllables, lines with omitted syllables, trochees, false trochees and other such variations as are possible within the iambic pentameter meter. Wright rounds off the book with an all too short consideratiom of the meters use after Shakespeare -- including the writers Donne, Milton, and in passing twentieth writers Frost, Stevens, and Eliot. With Mr. Wright's contention that the Iambic Pentameter meter reached its zenith at Shakespeare's hands, his argument comes to the inevitable conclusion that Shakespeare's skill is one which later generations may echo, rarely equal, but never exceed. This is a book both for the lover of Shakespeare and the reader of poetry who wishes to better understand the art of one of the english language's greatest trimphs.

Sohmer, has written a truely great book here. He goes in deapth, using primary sources to explain the social climate during the opening of the Globe Theatre. Using these items Sohmer illuminates hidden themes in Shakespeare's work. He adds yet another wonderful dimension to the Bard.

Sohmer does an excellent job in this book detailing his idea of which play opened the Globe Theatre. Agree with him or not, this book is a wonderful exploration to the inner workings of Shakespeare's time and his plays. Sohmer goes into detail of the Elizabethian mind and how it relates to Shakespeare's work.

It is very easy, and very pleasant, to write in praise of this book, for it is hard to envisage that the task accomplished by Gurr - an absolute expert in the area under discussion - could have been carried out yet better. For several years now, this guide has very justifiably been accepted as the best of its kind, and it is an essential possession for all of us who want, within one handy volume, a comprehensive account of what the theatres of Shakespeare's time were like, and what is likely to have happened within them. The author's detailed, well-informed and specific work is based not only on his own formidable research into the matters at issue, but also on close acquaintance with what others have done. Everything is presented with impeccable, sensible and perceptive judgement. The book can certainly be read through with benefit and enjoyment, but repays frequent visiting whenever one wants to consult a particular chapter or to find out more about a specific issue or fact (there is a very good index to help one in this). All in all, therefore, this book is not only very informative to read, but surpasses a great many books on Shakespeare and his time by being also an excellent reference tool for frequent use. Unhesitatingly recommended. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

This book gives an engaging breakdown of how Shakespearean plays were performed in early modern London. Gurr gives an idea of the range of players' companies, playhouses, and different playing practices, as well as a sense of how the companies and their plays changed throughout the period. I refer to this book all the time and plan to order it for my students to read as a companion to Shakespeare's plays.