The book I read was called Romeo and juliet.It was written by William Shakespear. Its a story of two yong lovers caught in the crossfire of a senseless family feud.The two families ,which is known as, the Capulets and the Montagues. They have been feuding forever. They don't even communicate. Juliet Capulet is supposed to get married soon and her father wants her to marry this one guy. She can't stand this man she is supposed to get married to. All of a sudden, she meets and falls in love with Romeo Montague. It was an outstanding book. I would highly recommend this book to people of all ages. Although, the only people who would understand this book would maybe be over the age of 12 or 14. It was written in the form of a play and the words are basically from the medievil times or earlier.

This book in its original edition was titled THE SECRET OF SHAKESPEARE. That title had problems, as the author acknowledged himself, in that it made people assume the book was about the identity of Shakespeare which it is not. This new edition has the new title - THE SACRED ART OF SHAKESPEARE - and is expanded as well. The first edition was about 140 pages and this new edition is over 200 pages, yet there are no new chapters. Lings starts out with a chapter on Shakespeare's 'Sacred Art'. He then continues with a chapter called Shakespeare's Outlook which contains much of the heart of what Lings has to say about the esoteric nature of Shakespeare's works. He then follows with surprisingly illuminating glosses on ten of the plays. It's in these short and well-written chapters that you realize you have found a very unusually enlightening and not run-of-the-mill 'Shakespeare' book. Mr. Lings' expositions of these plays does not fall into any predictable camp. In fact, what he does is really to bring the universal, underlying structure of the plays to light and on that to point the reader in the direction of where each play stands within that overall universal structure and what main characters represent in that structure as-well-as some of the dramatic points-of-interest and how they are often not seen or completely misunderstood by directors and actors, etc... This may give the impression that Mr. Lings seems to think he holds THE key to interpretation, yet what he has done is really just set the plays on their true foundations which are fundamental and universal, and from there one is able to interpret on up towards the sun if one likes... The ten plays discussed are: Henry IV, Hamlet, Othello, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. He also says much, in passing, on Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream... There then follows a chapter called Notes on Performance and Production, and he ends the book with a chapter called, in the first edition, 'The Secret', and, in this new edition, 'The Mystery of Things'. It discusses further the esoteric elements in Shakespeare's art. A final note: for those reading this who think they know of all angles of approach in Shakespeare scholarship or pseudo-scholarship and have divined that this book in question is obviously another out-of-breath revelation from the Pythagorian, Platonic, Cabalistic, Hermetic, Illuminist, Rosicrucian, Alchemical, etc., etc., etc. side of things - think what you will and just walk on by... Shakespeare doesn't need any more scholars.

Who says that sequels never live up to the original? Part 2 of this trilogy does just that! Immediately, Shakespeare grabs us with Gloucester's understandable fury at King Henry VI. This is soon followed by York's conspiracy to seize the crown himself. Later we are offered some comical touches with a false miracle. Some chilling pagan prophecies also grab our attention. Also Later, there is the hard passage where Gloucester uncovers the treason of his wife and later stands trial and is found guilty of crimes he is innocent of. Later his corpse is discovered. Shakespeare does not stop here! There is the chilling triangle between King Henry VI, Queen Margaret, and her lover Suffolk. King Henry VI is at his best in the trilogy when he banishes the vile Suffolk and faces down his queen. The scene where the delirious cardinal confesses his guilt is a scene of horror followed by Henry's touching forgiveness. The rebel Jack Cade simultaneously offers comedy and horror. His death at the hands of Iden is artfully drawn. But Shakespeare does not stop here! The War of the Roses actually starts.The demonic Richard III actually makes his first appearance in this play. The icing on the cake is yet to come. Clifford's father is killed in the war, and Young Clifford offers a sorrowful, terrifying, and yet beautiful passage on his intent for revenge!

Very Good Collection of Poetry. Shakespear has to be one of my favorite writer of all times and this book displays his Romantic side amoung other poets.

There are lots of academic studies of Shakespeare in popular culture coming out at the moment, but many are written by people who wouldn't know popular culture if it banged on their door trying to sell them cookies. The contributors to this volume are intelligent deep cultured people but listen this does not HAVE to mean you don't know how the mass market thinks, and this team does. Laurie Osborne is divine on Shakespeare in Harlequin romances and Burt is at his leg-biting best on the strange eery tameness of Taymor's *Titus* movie. This book really advances the argument about what and how Shakespeare means in America today -- buy it.

I found this book a wonderful examination of Shakespeare's treatment of love in his plays. Kirsch has an impressive reputation and is one of the top Shakespearean scholars currently writing. If you are a serious reader of Shakespeare, this book will deepend your understanding and enhance your appreciation.

"Shakespeare and Joyce" will open your eyes! Did you know that "riverrun" is the first Shakespeare reference in "Finnegans Wake"? You'll know this and hundreds of other choyce titbits after reading this excellent, fun, and well-written book on the author who most impressed Joyce (Dante was second to the Englishman).

In "Shakespeare and Macbeth," Stewart Ross takes us to London, 1605 as the Elizabethan era has come to an end and a new Scottish king sits on the throne of England. Knowing King James loved the theater and was fascinated by witchcraft, Shakespeare wrote a play to please the king. Ross tells how Shakespeare conceived and wrote "Macbeth," covering the playwright's sources (such as Holinshed's "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland") and telling about the actors who performed the play at the Globe theater, such as Richard Burbage. Ross talks specifically about how Shakespeare transformed the raw facts of history into his tragic drama, putting in things that would hopefully impress the new king from Scotland (when we see Banquo's heirs that will come to sit on the throne the last figure represented is, of course, King James himself). The artwork by Tony Karpinski and Victor Ambrus is based on careful research with regard to period clothing and the like. There is also a cut-away diagram of the Globe Theater and in the back of the book there are some excellent pencil drawings accompanying the synopsis of the actual play (I believe Karpinski did the paintings and Ambrus the drawings, but do not hold me to that conclusion). "Shakespeare and MacBeth: The Story Behind the Play," has a foreword from actor Kenneth Branagh, who praises it for conveying much of the excitement he felt when he was first introduced to "live" Shakespeare. The strength of this volume is that it does indeed give young readers an idea of how Shakespeare's plays were written and produced. True, it only scratches the surface of such things, but then the book is clearly intended as an introduction to the world of Shakespeare. As such, "Shakespeare and MacBeth" certainly succeeds in its goal, just as the Bard succeeded in having King James calling for a performance at court during the first state visit of King Christian of Denmark to England (when Ross has Shakespeare cut out a reference to a Scottish victory over the Danes during the performance you have to be impressed by his attention to to details).

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John Jones has previously written on Keats (and Embarrassment) on Wordsworth (The Egotistical Sublime) and on Dostoyevsky (Dostoyevsky). He is probably one of the two or three best critics writing in English at present. At one stage of his career he worked in naval intelligence, at another in the law: traces of both disciplines lurk in his approach. He specialises in a kind of poetic-cum-forensic close-reading of text which stays with you long after you have closed the book. All of his books fall into the category of: "If you only read one book on X, read this."

Shakespeare is big game for Jones, the biggest. Most critics give up when they get to Shakespeare. Borges famously suggested Shakespeare in some crucial sense lacked identity. "I am not what I am," as he makes Iago say. It was the Argentinian's explanation for the mystery of how one person could create so many characters. As they used to say about Clapton, Shakespeare was God.

Jones doesn't cop out so easily. He tracks Shakespeare by his spoor, so to speak. The highlight of the book is the chapter where he looks at "Hand D" - a crowd scene in the fragmentary manuscript play "The Boke of Thomas More", echoes the convincing argument that it is by Shakespeare and persuades the reader that it is in many senses deeply revelatory of who Shakespeare was, or at least, how he worked (hence the title). The passage about "watery parsnips" is a gem. It's the most useful work about Shakespeare to be published in many years.

The price is prohibitive, I know, but get your library to order it!