Deciphering Shakespeare's Plays: A Practical Guide to the Twenty Best-Known and Enduring Works brings William Shakespeare's 400-year-old dramas alive in a new introduction for students, playgoers, and general readers. This guide doesn't just dissect great soliloquies on the page. It illuminates the essence and experience of the Shakespearean spoken word.
Deciphering Shakespeare's Plays brings you closer to the heady, behind the scenes world of freelance playwriting, and the London theatre scene of the 1590s. It lends insight into decisions that theatre people make while acting and staging The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and many other revered works by the world's greatest playwright.
Deciphering Shakespeare's Plays is an invaluable reference tool for high school and university students, drama students, professional and amateur actors, teachers, playgoers, drama critics, and casual readers, or anyone who wants to discover, brush up on, or reacquaint themselves with Shakespeare's plays.
Using this guide, you are free to reimagine Shakespeare as a highly talented entrepreneur and an artist who wrote works that were intended to entertain audiences on the stage.
Inside you'll find:
• Cultural and historical contexts for 20 major plays, with refreshing perspectives from directors and actors, allowing you to go behind the curtain...
• Introductory chapters exploring why Shakespeare was at the forefront of Western show business.
• In-depth explorations of each major play, explaining Shakespearean terms.
• Close attention to Elizabethan language and verse.
• Appendices that include lesser-known plays, information about Shakespeare's collaborations with other playwrights, a glossary, and suggested further reading.
