Tales from Shakespeare: Seven Plays

Rating:
Summary: Marcia Williams presents seven more Shakespeare plays
Review: "Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare" by Marcia Williams is her 2000 follow up to her 1998 volume, "Tales from Shakespeare." Both books look at seven plays by the bard. The first volume did "Hamlet," "MacBeth," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Romeo & Juliet," "The Winter's Tale," "Julius Caesar," and "The Tempest." This book covers "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It," "Richard III," "Antony & Cleopatra," "Twelfth Night," "King Lear," and "The Merchant of Venice."

The conceit of these volumes is that Shakespeare's plays are being performed at the Globe, a circular wooden theater on the banks of the Thames River in England. Theatergoers would pay penny and stand in the open courtyard around the stage and watch the play. Such people were known as the groundlings and they got rather rowdy, actually throwing things at the actors. If you paid another penny you could sit in one of the roofed galleries, protected from both the elements and the groundlings.

Williams presents each play in dramatic comic strip form providing three parts to each performance. First, there are the words that Shakespeare actually wrote being spoken by the characters. Second, the plot of the play is told underneath the pictures. Third, around the stand the spectators watch and other a wide variety of comments. Keep your eyes out for Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, the Master of Revels, and a guy who only likes the gloomy pages.

Both of these volumes provide a spirited presentation of these Shakespeare plays, giving young readers not only a sense of the story but the way they were originally performed. Of course, the fun comments strike the mark better on the comedies than the dramas (the latter tend to be colored more gloomily), but there is no mistaking the enthusiasm Williams brings to the presentation of these plays. This is an excellent way of introducing young students to Shakespeare's works and hopefully it will whet their appetite for reading more detailed juvenile versions and eventually the original plays themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Marcia Williams presents seven more Shakespeare plays
Review: "Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare" by Marcia Williams is her 2000 follow up to her 1998 volume, "Tales from Shakespeare." Both books look at seven plays by the bard. The first volume did "Hamlet," "MacBeth," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Romeo & Juliet," "The Winter's Tale," "Julius Caesar," and "The Tempest." This book covers "Much Ado About Nothing," "As You Like It," "Richard III," "Antony & Cleopatra," "Twelfth Night," "King Lear," and "The Merchant of Venice."

The conceit of these volumes is that Shakespeare's plays are being performed at the Globe, a circular wooden theater on the banks of the Thames River in England. Theatergoers would pay penny and stand in the open courtyard around the stage and watch the play. Such people were known as the groundlings and they got rather rowdy, actually throwing things at the actors. If you paid another penny you could sit in one of the roofed galleries, protected from both the elements and the groundlings.

Williams presents each play in dramatic comic strip form providing three parts to each performance. First, there are the words that Shakespeare actually wrote being spoken by the characters. Second, the plot of the play is told underneath the pictures. Third, around the stand the spectators watch and other a wide variety of comments. Keep your eyes out for Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, the Master of Revels, and a guy who only likes the gloomy pages.

Both of these volumes provide a spirited presentation of these Shakespeare plays, giving young readers not only a sense of the story but the way they were originally performed. Of course, the fun comments strike the mark better on the comedies than the dramas (the latter tend to be colored more gloomily), but there is no mistaking the enthusiasm Williams brings to the presentation of these plays. This is an excellent way of introducing young students to Shakespeare's works and hopefully it will whet their appetite for reading more detailed juvenile versions and eventually the original plays themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I thought this was a great book. I love anything by Marcia Williams. The illustrations are great and there are hillarious comments from the audience throughout the book. This is a great book for kids to enjoy and they also get the basic story line of seven of Shakespeare's most poupular plays. But most of all this book is just fun.

Rating:
Summary: Introduce your child to Shakespeare!
Review: My eight-year old daughter and I delighted in reading these seven plays together! Marcia Williams has created a colorful, imaginative, fun way to present these wonderful plays so that the young reader gains an appreciation for Shakespeare's works and an insight into the historical period in which he presented them on stage. Each page contains whimsical illustrations, in strip style, wherein the characters speak lines from the plays, as well as a clearly written storyline. My daughter expecially chuckled over the humorous but often droll comments of scampering Globe audience memberas, framing the text of every page. You'll find Will himself is there, too! The events of the plays are not suger coated, though, so the tragedies do rack up a body count and the reader encounters the famous scenes of poisonings and revenge sought by the sword.