Shakespeare In Hollywood 1929-1956 is an informative historical study of five major productions and several offshoots of Shakespeare's plays by the Hollywood film studio system. The thesis is that studios like MGM and Warner Bros. make Shakespeare-based films in order to enhance their images as creators of artistic (as opposed to populist) entertainments. The films during this time span also reflect such Hollywood phenomena as contract players, overproduction, adaptations based on popular genres, that came to characterize Hollywood as an industry. Robert Wilson, professor of English at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, writes with an impressive blend of insight, scholarship, and skill to fully engage the attention of the reader. Shakespeare In Hollywood 1929-1956 is highly recommended reading for students of Hollywood film making history, Shakespearean studies, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in how the greatest literary writer in the history of the English language fared at the hands of Hollywood movie moguls during the "Golden Age" of film and the studio system.

This is a marvelous speciman. Mr. Monsell, the author is to be commended for doing such an outstanding job in editing and putting this well-informed book together. A must for any Hamlet fan

Although this is a reprint of his 1990 volume originally titled "No More Heroes," O'Toole's introduction to Shakespeare and his great tragedies is yet one of the most helpful retakes on why we need to return to the original plots (in both senses) of the author. O'Toole arms teachers, individual readers, and potential directors with insights that will restore excitement to the experience of Shakespeare.

O'Toole is obviously as enthusiastic about his subject as Harold Bloom is, but his writing is careful, witty, and well thought out, with specific examples to back up his "radical" guide. Even the beginning Shakespearean will easily follow O'Toole's important placement of The Plays within their Elizabethan context: a turbulent time of social upheaval and personal insecurity (easy to appreciate early in this 21st Century). More experienced readers and teachers will (hopefully) enjoy being challenged to expand the narrow boxes in which recent generations have attempted to capture Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Lear. The "tragic hero" and his "tragic flaw" (for example) are seen to be unnecessary distortions imposed by Victorian lenses. "See farther" - as Shakespeare might say.

You may want to quibble with some of the author's interpretations, but you'll come away respecting O'Toole's honesty and clarity, and will no doubt savor new insights into many details of the play (it was not just for show that toads, nails, and witches are included in the dramas). Both little details and long-disected classic overarching issues (e.g., "Why did Hamlet delay?") come into brighter light.

Warning to teachers: O'Toole will incite your students to think outside the boxes that have usually facilitated pat answers to essay asignments.

Eminently readable and engaging.

This book was great! The way the poems were put together was marvolous!! I would recommend this book to all ages!

If you are a lover of the various shakespeare film adaptations then you will certainly love this book. Mr. Rosenthal describes numerous films some direct adaptions and some which are just plan fun (Joe Macbeth for instance ). The bard should not be taken so seriously that fun cannot included in his study. This book explores the good and not so good. A great reference source.

Dude, I just didn't know sheakspeare was that cool. Wow, hes my favorite playwright.

As an academic, I could resent the sometimes acerbic references to academics in John Southworth's Shakespeare the Player, but as an academic I learned more from this non-academic book than I have learned from many academic books on Shakeespeare. The book is written by aprofessional theater person, an actor/director, who has a thorough knowledge of Shakespeare's plays and of the interactions among casts and playwrights and stages and plays and performances. From this background, he proposes and credibly supports four lines of argument: a) that there cannot be any lost years in Shakespeare's biography: to do what he did, Shakespeare had to have had an extensive apprenticeship in the theater, and Southworth adds evidence in support of the theory that this was Leceister's company; b) that there is no credible evidence that Shakespeare ever retired from the theater, and much circumstantial evidence from theater lives to suggest that he did no such thing; c) that Shakespeare was primarily an actor/director in his own plays, and not primarily a playwright, in his own eyes and the eyes of his colleagues; and d) that the roles he chose for himself, roles like Iago in "Othello," were characterized by being somewhat detached from the action, frequency of appearance on stage even when not speaking, and often a kind of controlling relationship with the other characters. The style is clear, unpretentions and very readable, the presentation direct, knowledgeable and carefully argued with detailed and credible evidence. I found the book to be the most helpful single book in illuminating Shakespeare and his plays that I've read in the last ten years.

accomplished contribution, adding new insights to the well worked field, at times relentlessly funny, ...idiosyncratic, and deeply felt. an absolute must-read!

Not only a creative idea, but one that combines natures ultimate creativity, with the creativity of a literary Master. Fascinating, well written book, full of photographs and sketches.

This book is an excellent, and largely unbiased, discussion of CALIBAN (the character from Shakespeare's The Tempest) and traces the evolution of his perception as reflected in literary criticism, culture/politics, theatrical performance (stage and film), poetry, and visual art. An actor myself, when doing research on Shakespeare roles, the most efficient technique I've found is investigation of stage history. Most of the relevant literary criticism has at one time or another been reflected in stage history. Also, stage history is something I find more easily applicable to performance than literary criticism--for obvious reasons. In light of this bias, the only disappointment I had in the book is that I would have liked a longer chapter on stage history. Nonetheless, as the book surveys CALIBAN's history from so many perspectives, one comes away with a strong appreciation of the wide range of exploration available in playing CALIBAN. The numerous black & white figures are an added plus. Finally, any actor playing CALIBAN and hard-pressed to find research time would do well to at least read the chapter on scriptural analysis relevant to CALIBAN and the final chapter, which summarizes the entire book. Directors and designers would benefit from perusal of this text; however, the book does stick fairly close to its subject of CALIBAN, specifically, rather than The Tempest, in general. To close, Shakespearean actors would certainly benefit from more character-specific surveys like this book.