As an unique insight into Elizabethan culture, it's fascinating. As an analysis of Hamlet, it's lacking. Many of his points are unsupported by textual evidence and much of his excellent historical information unconnected to the play itself. Nonetheless, I would recommend this book to anyone with a love of Shakespeare that goes beyond the word and into the period as it is a great read.

Yeah, the reviewer from Santa Monica is on the mark. Good book, plenty of interesting historical tidbits, some connections to mull over, but Greenblatt doesn't really use his historical conclusions to much purpose in his analysis of Hamlet. Some of his literary points are strained ("the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns" means Hamlet has forgotten about the ghost; when Ophelia says that Hamlet looked as though he "had been loosed out of Hell" she of course means Purgatory instead of Hell, the rabble who follow Laetres against Claudius represent Protestants attacking the Catholic Church, etc.) but a couple are interesting, such as the play's disconnect between body and spirit mapped onto Elizabethan views of the Eucharist. But there are a good 150 pages (more than half the book) before we enter this dicey realm. Chapters 1-3 get five stars, and chapters 4-5 get three point five.

This is an excellent book--excellent scholarship. I highly recommend it to anyone generally interested in medieval and Elizabethan accounts on purgatory, or to those who have an interest in Shakepeare studies. Even for those who don't, this is an excellent book, and my interest in it grew with every turn of the page. It is rich and well-written.

Chapter Two: "Imagining Purgatory" discusses various philosophical and medieval connections (via manuscripts) to Shakespeare's texts (also see the classic, "The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy"). Chapter Three: "The Flights of Memory" (oddly enough, also see Derrida's The Gift of Death/U Chicago Press, Staten's Eros in Mourning, Derrida's The Work of Mourning, and E. Scarry's Body in Pain) is highly interesting material on the poetics of pain and suffering. Chapter Five: "Remember Me" is brilliant (also see Derrida/Levinas on the 'adieu' issue--U of Chicago and Stanford UP titles).

Also see: Fish, How Milton Works (Harvard UP); Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton UP); Staten, Eros in Mourning (Johns Hopkins). I also recommend Robert Bell's dissertation on the harrowing of hell (English/U of Maryland/CSULB Emeritus).

Cymbeline was a British king in Roman times ( Augustus Caesar's time).
Devices used in the Play:
1) a woman plays a man/ boy role ( several of his plays : As You Like it,
Twelfth Night))
2) a deception by a villain to lie the virtue of a Lady ( Much Ado about
Nothing)
3) Princes kidnapped and brought up as common men ( I don't know if he
uses this in other plays)
4) poison that causes a coma ( Romeo and Juliet)
5) a Prince who is a vile fool ( used in his historical plays)
6) a Queen who is a plotter and evil ( Macbeth)
7) a Prince who kills another Prince and it redeemed by his hidden
identity
8) a Prince sentenced to hang by mistake
9) a King who condemns his daughter wrongly ( King Lear)
One wonders how much of this is historical fact and how much pure fiction.
With all this scheming in the plot , it should be a very successful
play.
It is a total flop!
What it comes out is seeming unreal and contrived.
You get that happy ending feel that is so much in his comedies
but it has a very false feeling to it.
That's probably why Cymbeline isn't performed much.
If he hadn't gone for all these at once it might have worked, but the
result is that you see the playwright as ....
If anyone wants to take the air out of a Shakespeare pedant,
this is the play to do it with! He makes Shaw and Eugene O'neil l
look good. He even make Rogers and Hammerstein and Gilbert and
Sullivan look better, ha, ha...
This play is not Shakespeare's finest hour!

"Cymbeline" is my favourite Shakespeare play. It's also probably his loopiest. It has three plots, managing to drag in a banishment, a murder, a wicked queen, a moment of almost sheer pornography, a full-on battle between the Romans and the British, a spunky heroine, her jealous but not-really-all-that-bad husband, some fantastic poetry and Jupiter himself descending out of heaven on an eagle to tell the husband to pull his finger out and get looking for his wife. Finally, just when your head is spinning with all the cross-purposes and dangling resolutions, Shakespeare pulls it all together with shameless neatness and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for the wicked queen, and her son, who had his head cut off in Act 4.

"Cymbeline" is, then, completely nuts, but it manages also to be very moving. Quentin Tarantino once described his method as "placing genre characters in real-life situations" - Shakespeare pulls off the far more rewarding trick of placing realistic characters in genre situations. Kicking off with one of the most brazen bits of expository dialogue he ever created, not even bothering to give the two lords who have to explain the back story an ounce of personality, Shakespeare quickly recovers full control and races through his long, complex and deeply implausible narrative at a headlong pace. The play is outrageously theatrical, and yet intensely observed. Imogen's reaction on reading her husband's false accusation of her infidelity is a riveting mixture of hurt and anger; she goes through as much tragedy as a Juliet, yet is less inclined to buckle and snap under the pressure. When she wakes up next to a headless body that she believes to be her husband, her aria of grief is one of the finest WS ever wrote. No less impressive is her plucky determination to get on with her life, rather than follow her hubby into the grave.

Posthumus, the hubby in question, is made of less attractive stuff, but when he comes to believe that Imogen is dead, as he ordered (this play is full of people getting things wrong and suffering for it), he rejects his earlier jealousy and starts to redeem himself a tad. There's a vicious misogyny near the heart of this play, as Shakespeare biographer Park Honan observed, kept in balance by a hatred of violence against women. The oafish prince Cloten, who lusts after Imogen, is a truly repellent piece of work, without even the intelligence of Iago or the horrified panic of Macbeth; his plan to kill Posthumus and rape Imogen before her husband's body is just about as squalid and vindictive as we expect of this louse, and when a long-lost son of the king (don't even _ask_) lops Cloten's head off, there are cheers all round.

Shakespeare sends himself up all through "Cymbeline". I wonder if the almost ludicrously informative opening exposition scene isn't a bit of a gag on his part, but when a tired and angry Posthumus breaks into rhyming couplets, then catches himself and observes "You have put me into rhyme", we know that Shakespeare is having us on a little. Likewise, the final scene, when all is resolved, goes totally over the top in its piling-on "But-what-of-such-and-such?" and "My-Lord-I-forgot-to-mention" moments.

Yet the moments of terror and pity are deep enough to make the jokiness feel truly earned. When Imogen is laid to rest and her adoptive brothers recite "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" over her body, it's as affecting as any moment in the canon. That she isn't actually dead, we don't find out until a few moments later, but it's still a great moment.

Playful, confusing, enigmatic, funny and shot through with a frightening darkness, this is another top job by the Stratford boy. Well done.

A combination of "Romeo and Juliet," "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It," and "King Lear?" Well somehow, Shakespeare made it work. Like "Romeo and Juliet" we have a protagonist (Imogen) who falls under her father's rages because she will not marry who he wants her to. Like "Much Ado About Nothing," we have a villain (Iachimo) who tries to convince a man (Posthumus) that the woman he loves is full of infidelity. Like "As You Like It," we have exiled people who praise life in the wilderness and a woman who disguises herself as a man to search for her family in the wilderness. Like "King Lear," we have a king who's rages and miscaculated judgement lead to disastorous consequences. What else is there? Only beautiful language, multiple plots, an evil queen who tries to undermind the king, an action filled war, suspense, a dream with visions of Pagan gods, and a beautiful scene of reconciliation at the end. While this is certainly one of Shakespeare's longer plays, it is well worth the time.

Dana Filmore is the first African American Secretary of State. She is smart and attractive. She is also in danger. She learns of the President's plans to do something that could affect the lives of millions of Americans. She must stop him. However, she cannot trust anyone to help her. She meets Kasi Martin, an African American District Attorney. He is smart and handsome. When they meet at a social function, they instantly like each other. Still, Dana isn't sure if she can trust him.However, Dana is forced to trust Kasi when her life is threatened. Dana and Kasi find themselves together on the run from someone who wants to kill them.This story is a noble effort. William could have written more about the actual political maneuvers and less on the character's thoughts. Although this story is fast past, it is also predictable. The murder is weak. The reader instantly knows the murderer and the victim. That could have been a mystery.Dana and Kasi are credible characters. Their intelligence saves them in many situations. They also are secure in their identity and their roles.I still recommend the book. It is an easy read.

Excalibur's Defeat is a great book. The time and research you put into this book shows. I really enjoyed your ability to allow the readers to access the mindset of your characters. Power, politics, looks; murder etc. is a perfect fit in this book. With any of these subjects you could have written separate books but your talent allowed us to have all of this in one book. It's fast pace and the characters are well developed. You definitely have what it takes to make it. Keep up the good work.

Good mystery. Face pace. Quick read. Mr. Wright "ain't" playing around. Most of the characters are pretty well fleshed out. Never thought I enjoyed political thrillers too much; but, I must confess I enjoyed this one immensely. I guess what enhanced it even more was the African American "flava" that was flowing throughout the book. Ms. Filmore is an Intelligent sista. Definitely, held my interest. Maybe only compliant was that it was too short. I wanted to learn more about certain characters. Overall, definitely, it should be on a summer reading list. Not too heavy; but, not too light, either. Just right.... Hey I'm so proud to see fellow brotha's and sista's doing their thing with writing. Much continued success in your future endeavors and I can't wait until the next one....

Like Williams' Theodosian work, this book is an easy read that more or less sums up what previous scholarship without new analysis. It's a good introduction to the period but not on par with biographies of other emperors such as Constantine and Julian.

This is a well-written, fact-filled book that should be considered a must-read to any serious student of the Late Roman Empire. Diocletian has been given scant attention by Classical scholars but his stabilization of the Empire was vital for two reasons: it preserved the entire Empire for nearly 170 years after his retirement and laid the foundations for the Eastern Empire that survived until 1453 c.e.

There is also great attention given to Diocletian's separation of himself as Emperor from the Roman Army and Roman politicians. Williams lucidly points out this is the beginning of Western Civilization's "Divine Right of Kings," and the foundation of Medieval kingship. Diocletian established this separation order to secure his personal safety.

Diocletian's retirement is also given considerable attention. His retirement palace at Split is discussed in some detail. Also, the attempt of Galerius and Maximian to drag him back into politics, which he completely refused. Finally, the rather sad depiction of him as a marginalized relic who had to ask old army friends for favors in order to help secure temporary safety for his family (who were eventually murdered).

This is a great book but its great detail may overwhelm the arm-chair historian. Williams deserves many cudos for his work in bringing about the first English biography of Diocletian in some time.

As Williams recalls, the Third Century was almost an utter debacle for Rome. The frontiers disintegrated, the coinage collapsed and the political system imploded. Diocletian's reign (284-310) mitigated the disaster. His reforms completely saved the East, and gave the West another good 100 years. He broke the cycle of assassination-civil war-assassination that had marred the principate; he created a "Tetrachy" of four mutually dependent co-emperors and he refashioned the imperial defense structure. Borders were restored, and although his attempts at price control failed, his economic reforms were broadly successful. He is widely thought to have had the luckiest death of any Roman Emperor, dying in retirement at his cabbage farm. If you want to know about Diocletian, his life and times, you need go no further than William's masterful account.

This is a great book. It provides a excellent foundation for learning the basics of: WSH, vbscript, jscript and provides useful real-world examples for scripting: IIS, MS Office, ADO, ADSI, etc. The author even devotes a chapter on how to deploy scripting solutions.

After you finish reading this book get the MS help files on: WSH, vbscript, jscript, ADO, ADSI, other COM, and MS OLE/COM viewer and you'll be ready for scripting in the real world.

I am really new to WSH but this book made it really easy for me to grasp the concepts. It strarts from the basics and moves to harder material. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn not just WSH but VBscript and jscript.

For a programmer who has used VB, Java, or any ASP, this book will boost your skills incredibly with a minimal learning curve. It shows the basics of the WSH objects and an overview of VBScript and JScript within the first few chapters- it is worth buying the book just for those chapters alone.

If you are not familiar yet with the concepts of OOP and looking at object models, you might need a primer found in another book before looking into WSH. It is built purely on objects that your code will refence and it can be a bear to take on unprepared.

It will be interesting to see how the .Net framework will integrate the objects in WSH- there is a significant chance that little in this book will be completely valid after Windows XP and Visual Studio .Net have become standard. Nevertheless, this book is an invaluable tool to the Windows programmer who wants to simplify life by automating as many tasks as possible.

This book has very good practice tests for the science sections (although there are a few errors here and there. If you know your stuff, you'll be able to pick them out and they won't phase you. For example, in two places they ask you to name an organic compound, and don't name it correctly in any of the choices!!!) Despite these tiny errors, the practice tests are very good and very helpful....EXCEPT THE VERBAL SECTIONS!!! SKIP THE VERBAL SECTIONS - there are MANY questions which have more than one correct answer in the choices, some questions which have no correct answers and the occasional question which asks for your opinion!!!! you'd never see any question without ONE correct answer on the MCAT and these verbal sections will drive you nuts! I'd still get the book and substitute a different verbal for the ones here.

Like others, I found the verbal sections to be near-useless. However, the science sections more than make up for that shortcoming. They're great practice; just a touch harder than the actual sections on the test in my experience. The book isn't perfect, but it's a good buy and worth using.

Excellent book, the three tests were very much like the real MCAT, although some questions are a little off-the-wall overall, the book is excellent, definitely worth getting.

A MUST HAVE book

I just reread it in a collection of Nobel Prize winning authors--their acceptance speeches etc., and this story and "As I Lay Dying" were chosen as examples of his work. This story!!! It's such a mundane little macabre "gotcha" story, over-anthologized for high school students (along with other tired stories like "The Most Dangerous Game"). Faulkner is such an incredible writer--I'm reading Fury in the Dust right now, and his sentences--the Nobel Prize committee described them as being "as powerful as Atlantic rollers". What was he thinking when he wrote "A Rose for Emily"? Obviously not much. Read anything else by him, you'll have a better time.

This is one of those books that are force on you at school. The basic story is of a Southern belle driven mad by isolation and her ties to the past. If this is your first reading of something representative of Faulkner this is the best example, as it is short and the story is intriguing. You can enjoy reading it for what it is and not have to analyze the thing to death. Even if you do not particularly cotton to Faulkner's style or subject matter, this book will transcend both. In 1982 they made this story into a movie with John Houseman and Anjelica Huston.

this book is about a very good short story on the changes of the south during a very representative period!

The book gives a concise description of places to eat in any size city in the USA. Does not give a lot of detail but can be useful if your not always interested in five star restaurants.

This book makes cross country back road traveling even more fun. Sure there are a few problems, but most fair-sized towns have entires, and many small towns do. We have had wonderful fun and some interesting, to say the least, meals because of it. Well worth its price.

We've used this book four times, and have been pleasantly surprised each time (Carson City NV, Winnemucca NV, someplace or other in UT, and San Francisco).

Theodosius the Great was called upon to serve the Empire shortly after the catastrophic Battle of Adrianople, when Emperor Valens (along with a Roman army) was killed by an army of Visigoths. Williams and Friel strategically place the Battle of Valens at the beginning of this narrative, and skilfully proceed to show that, from the outset, the reign of Theodosius was overshadowed by that disaster. His decision to allow barbarian settlement within the Empire's frontiers, for instance, was taken from a position of military weakness and uncertainty. Theodosius is also known as the emperor who, acting under the influence of Saint Ambrose, transformed from the state religion to the universal religion, thus wholly reversing the religious policy of Diocletian. This is a concise and free-flowing biography which also, as something of a coda, has a terrific chapter on the doings of the military leader Stilicho, who (while not being Emperor himself) was able to paper over the cracks left by Theodosius's choices of weak successors.

Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell's work on the emperor Theodosius is not essentially a biography, but rather a survey of the empire from the crushing defeat at Adrianople in AD 378 up to the Vandal's occupation of North Africa in AD 430. Just how Theodosius reacted to these conditions and the subsequent affect they later had on the empire is the basis of this work. His diplomatic feats and failures, his military maneuvers and achievements, and his religious swing from tolerance to universal bigotry are fully covered here with clarity and unified scholarly ingenuity. A very clear account of the complex web of power between the East and the West, the emperors and their ministers, during the reigns of the indolent and feeble emperors Honorius and Arcadius, will be found here as well. To find a more substantial and lucid account elsewhere of the principle policies during Theodosius' reign, of the German migrations and relations with Rome, the ambitions and downfall of Stilicho, and the final disintegration of the Western empire, will be a difficult task to say the least. Detailed illustrations and maps add all the more luster to this well-referenced work, which will be rewarding to scholars and relieving to busy students alike.

Theodosius was the last man to rule over the entire Roman Empire. He was appointed by Gratian, the young Emperor in the West, to rule the eastern half of the empire after the death of Valens at the battle of Adrianople. He became sole ruler the whole Empire after he defeated and executed Maximus, who had deposed and executed Gratian. As the last man to rule the full Empire, an understanding of Theodosius and his reign is crucial in understanding how and why the western Empire collapsed while the eastern Empire was able to survive.

As an undergraduate, I read numerous books and articles, each with their own unique view of why the western Empire failed. Gibbon largely blamed the the advent of Christianity for weakening Rome. Others have blamed everything from depopulation resulting from epidemics of the plague to gradual weakening of the Roman aristocracy due to poisoning from their leaden water pipes. Another theory credits the battle of Adrianople with weakening the Roman military and leading to over-dependence on unreliable Gothic tribesmen to fill the ranks.

Williams and Friell analyse events and the historical evidence, concluding that the military situation after Adrianople was retrievable and that Theodosius and Gratian were able to rebuild the eastern field army and re-establish stability by supporting each other in key situations. After Gratian's death, however, co-operation and mutual support between east and west became increasingly problematical. Theodosius began to pursue policies that weakened the Empire. He prompted internal dis-unity, especially in the west, by abandoning the long-standing policy of toleration towards pagans. Even more damaging, he followed a disastrous dynastic policy, promoting his two inept and untrained sons as his heirs and squandering limited military resources fighting fellow Romans while hordes of barbarians were massing just outside the borders. Further, he allowed unscrupulous ministers in his two capitals to promote the interests of one capital at the expense of the other. Thus, Alaric, instead of being controlled, was repeatedly foisted off on one part of the Empire by the other, causing enormous damage.

The authors make a clear and compelling argument that Theodosius, despite being an able ruler, lacked vision. As his reign wore on, he incresingly put his personal religious concerns and his dynastic interests ahead of the welfare of the Empire as a whole. This was particularly disastrous in the west, where money and manpower were more scarce. After his death, the Empire was left depleted and dis-united, its ablest leaders lacking the power and authority necessary to keep barbarian invaders at bay while his heirs dithered. This is a fascinating and well-reasoned account of the period from 378 to about 430. If you have an interest in the history of the late Roman Empire, or if you're just curious, this short and readable book is well worth the effort.

The book does not cover very good examples on each topic specially on Datatypes. Also it is not exclusive on detailing schemas. The kind of material/information provided by this book can be read from any core xml book. XML Bible describes the Schemas very well in one chapter.

At first glance this book impressed me by its sheer volume and the fact that there seemed to be some interesting topics discussed that went beyond the schema spec itself. However, as I looked at it more closely, I have two big problems with it:

1. There _are_ a lot of errors, and they're not just harmless typos. I found numerous examples that are incorrect, and not just because they are missing a quote or something. It makes me wonder if anyone bothered to validated the examples with a parser.

2. It was very obvious that the book was written by multiple authors, with little coordination between them. There is a lot of overlapping and even contradictory information in the book, which is frustrating. It is also not organized well - I had a hard time finding the simplest of concepts - for example, what attributes are allowed on the "element" element if it is a ref vs. a name, whether it's global vs. local, etc.

Overall, I was not impressed.

I had to create an XML schema out of an XML file that was already existing (I am sure that rarely happens:-)) and I could get the job done by reading half of this book. Would be a five star if not for the typos.

This is a much better way of learning to write XML schemas compared to formal language at the XML schema specification site.