Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More

Rating:
Summary: Life Savor!!
Review: I'm just a student in high school, and not long ago was recieved the part as Lady Macbeth for our school play Macbeth. My drama teacher recommended this book to me to get an in depth analysis of my character and the rest of the play. I bought the book and I was totally blown away. The information packed in here is tremendous. In this book is everything you'll ever need to know about each play and every character, even if they don't have a speaking part. This book has also helped me with the other Shakespeare plays I read during school for Literature. It's a great study and reference. It's helped me understand so much about the characters and the play, I recommend this to anyone who reads Shakespeare for school or anything, this tells you things even your teacher wouldn't know. It's been truly a life savor, to me and the rest of my cast who couldn't understand what was going on or what their character was about.

Rating:
Summary: Good, But too Modern.
Review: On one hand this book is a valuable tool. It offers summaries of the plays, historical production dates, close looks at different characters, and interesting comments. On the other hand, it is too modern. Too many of the Boyce's opinions judge Shakespeare's writing by modern standards. Many English Majors (myself included), abhor Marxist beliefs. The reason is that literature reflects a SPECIFIC TIME, PLACE, AND ERA. It is NOT RIGHT to condemn an author because his work does not fall into the contemporary political slots (whatever they might be at the moment). I suggest this book for the plot synopsis sections. (They are very helpful.) But I would not judge the plays by the Marxist theories presented.

Rating:
Summary: a portable Shakespeare encyclopedia
Review: That's why I bought it: I wanted one resource where I could just flip through and look up whatever leaped out at me from Shakespeare's plays and poems. If that's what you're looking for, here it is. Packed with info.

Rating:
Summary: a portable Shakespeare encyclopedia
Review: That's why I bought it: I wanted one resource where I could just flip through and look up whatever leaped out at me from Shakespeare's plays and poems. If that's what you're looking for, here it is. Packed with info.

Rating:
Summary: Synopses, commentary and history of his plays
Review: This is a fantastic guide to Shakespeares plays. We have particularly used the synopses, usually 2-3 pages, as a prep for ourselves and our children before enjoying a performance. We have also enjoyed the interpretive commentary both before and after the performance and find ourselves browsing the character and location references, sources Shakespeare used and history of performance. Just a great book to have about.