How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (47 page)

Boyce, Charles.
Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More
. New York: Dell, 1990. A good nuts-and-bolts encyclopedia of all things Shakespeare. I find that I use it all the time to answer questions about dates and characters. It also contains very good scene-by-scene synopses of all the plays.

Bradley, A. C.
Oxford Lectures on Poetry
. 1909; reprinted by Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961. Bradley based his immensely intelligent and intellectual view of Shakespeare’s plays on character studies of Shakespeare’s heroes and villains. This book contains a seminal essay on the character of Falstaff.

———.
Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth
. 1904; reprinted by London: Penguin Books, 1991. Bradley was the great critic of the early twentieth century, and this is his most famous book. Justly so—it is magisterial and magnificent.

Brook, Peter.
The Empty Space
. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1968. The innovative British director discusses his theories of the theater.

Bryson, Bill.
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. This is the best short biography of Shakespeare I’ve ever read. It doesn’t analyze the plays; it’s all biography and is immensely readable.

Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal.
The Shakespeare Miscellany
. New York: Overlook Press, 2005. This book is enormously fun. It contains hundreds of short observations about everything from boy actors to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Hamlet. I love every page of it.

———.
Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion
. London:
Penguin Books, 2002. This is the best general glossary out there. If you’re stumped about a word, this is where to look.

Dobson, Michael, and Stanley Wells, eds.
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. This big, wonderful encyclopedia of Shakespeare is beautifully written and covers everything. Plot summaries, histories of the plays, biographies of actors—it’s all here, with valuable illustrations.

Frye, Northrop.
Anatomy of Criticism
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. This is the most famous book of literary criticism of the mid-twentieth century. It is not just about Shakespeare; it’s about the rhythms of literature. It’s a difficult book but indispensable to serious literary study.

———.
A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance
. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. This book’s observations about the nature of Shakespeare’s comedies and dramatic romances are so intelligent and startling that over the years it has become my favorite book about Shakespeare. I reread it all the time.

———.
Northrop Frye on Shakespeare
. Edited by Robert Sandler. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. These are Frye’s lectures on Shakespeare to his classes at the University of Toronto. They are down to earth, very accessible, and filled with fresh insights on every page. I love this book.

Garber, Marjorie.
Shakespeare After All
. New York: Pantheon, 2004. An excellent study of each of the plays, always intelligent and always thoughtful. Garber is much admired among Shakespeareans, and rightly so.

Gibson, William.
Shakespeare’s Game
. New York: Atheneum, 1978. This book is based on Gibson’s lectures to a class at Harvard, and they are centered on how Shakespeare went about structuring his plots. Gibson is the author of several plays, including
The Miracle Worker
and a play about Shakespeare growing up in Stratford. These lectures, unique and interesting on every page, are full of insights that only a playwright would have.

Goddard, Harold C.
The Meaning of Shakespeare
. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. The title of this book makes it sound elementary, but in fact it is an excellent, sophisticated two-volume analysis of all the plays by a major scholar.

Granville-Barker, Harley.
Prefaces to Shakespeare
. 4 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1946. For decades this book was considered the best handbook on the production of Shakespeare’s plays in the theater. It is filled with good, practical advice.

Greenblatt, Stephen.
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. This book is the culmination of Greenblatt’s many years as a great Shakespeare scholar at Harvard. It is an erudite and brilliant biography that draws heavily on Shakespeare’s life and times to illuminate the plays.

Hall, Peter.
Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players
. London: Oberon Books, 2003. Sir Peter Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, is one of the greatest Shakespeare directors of the past hundred years. His book on how to speak Shakespeare is brilliantly practical. No one knows this area better.

Hodges, C. Walter.
Enter the Whole Army: A Pictorial Study of Shakespearean Staging, 1576–1616
. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Hodges has drawn the greatest illustrations of Shakespeare’s theaters I have ever seen. He has studied the plays in order to solve practical staging problems, and in the drawings in this terrific and unique book, he shows you his solutions.

Johnson, Samuel.
Selections from Johnson on Shakespeare
. Ed. Bertrand H. Bronson with Jean M. O’Meara. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. The greatest literary critic of the eighteenth century, Doctor Johnson, produced his own edition of the complete works in 1765, and these are a selection of his notes on each of the plays. Quirky, riveting, and immensely intelligent.

Kott, Jan.
Shakespeare Our Contemporary
. New York: Anchor Books, 1966. This book, which was meant to shock us out of our complacency on the
subject of Shakespeare, is a reevaluation of many things we thought we knew. It turned out to be groundbreaking.

Martineau, Jane,
et al.
Shakespeare in Art
. London: Merrell, 2003. This is the best book about Shakespeare-inspired prints and paintings that I know. Based on a 2003 exhibit at Dulwich College in London, it is beautiful and profusely illustrated.

McLeish, Kenneth, and Stephen Unwin.
A Pocket Guide to Shakespeare’s Plays
. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. This short, simple book contains plots of the plays, character sketches, and mini-essays. It’s perfect for a quick overview or for taking to the theater.

Mowat, Barbara.
The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976. Mowat was head of research for many years at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and no one knows more about this subject. This is a wonderful book by one of our greatest Shakespeareans.

———. “The Founders and the Bard.”
Yale Review
97, no. 4 (October 2009): 1–18. This riveting essay is one of my favorite short pieces on Shakespeare: It addresses what the Founding Fathers knew about Shakespeare and discusses Shakespeare’s influence on Jefferson and Adams in particular.

———. “ ‘What’s in a Name?’ Tragicomedy, Romance, or Late Comedy.” In Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard, eds.,
A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works
, vol. 4:
The Poems, Problem Comedies, and Late Plays
. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. This essay contains Mowat’s enlightening views on the “dramatic romances.”

Paster, Gail Kern.
Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Paster was the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and this scholarly, fascinating book is about sixteenth-century concepts of the body represented by the four humors.

Priestley, J. B.
The Art of the Dramatist and Other Writings on Theatre
. London: Oberon Books, 2005. Priestley wrote one of my favorite novels of all time (
The Good Companions
) as well as several memorable plays (including
An Inspector Calls
and
When We Are Married
). He was one of those companionable literary figures who knew something about everything, and his essays on the theater are enjoyable and full of insights.

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur.
Shakespeare’s Workmanship
, 2nd ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1937. Like Gibson’s book, this one offers a practical viewpoint on how Shakespeare worked. Quiller-Couch, with his intelligence and wit, influenced a whole generation.

Reade, Simon.
Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing Playwright
. London: Oberon Books, 2009. This hilarious and terrific book is a series of letters from theaters to Shakespeare as though he were living today and offering up his plays for performance. It’s full of insights on all the plays. Reade was literary manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company and knows his Shakespeare backward and forward.

Schoenbaum, Samuel.
Shakespeare’s Lives
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A classic book on Shakespeare’s legacy and influence on subsequent generations.

———.
William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. This is the definitive documentary biography of Shakespeare, a big book with all the evidence.

Shakespeare, William.
The New Folger Library Shakespeare
. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992 to present. This is the edition I refer to in this book. It’s always reliable, smart, scholarly, and easy to use.

———.
The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare
. Prepared by Charlton Hinman, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. This is a facsimile not only of the First Folio but of the perfect First Folio, using pages from different versions around the world. It’s thrilling to hold and turn the pages of the miracle that Heminges and Condell wrought.

Shapiro, James.
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. Another Shapiro classic, it discusses the history of
the authorship question. However you feel about the issue, it’s fascinating reading and beautifully conceived and written.

———.
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. This hugely popular book looks at Shakespeare from the viewpoint of a single year, 1599, when he wrote
Henry V, Julius Caesar
, and
As You Like It
and started
Hamlet
. It is consistently brilliant and wonderful to read.

Shaw, George Bernard.
Shaw on Shakespeare
. Edited by Edwin Wilson. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1961. This book is a selection of reviews and other commentaries on Shakespeare written by the second greatest playwright in the English language. As you can imagine, it’s always interesting.

Sher, Antony.
Year of the King: An Actor’s Diary and Sketchbook
. New York: Limelight, 1987. A memoir of Sher’s year tackling the role of Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company. One of the best theatrical memoirs ever written and full of insights about Shakespeare.

Spurgeon, Caroline.
Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us
, 5th ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1966. This is the classic work about Shakespeare’s use of imagery. Spurgeon’s knowledge of the plays is comprehensive, and the book is tremendously interesting.

Traversi, D. A.
An Approach to Shakespeare
. 2 vols. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. This two-volume set contains an essay on each of the plays and gives a solid overview of the basics.

Trewin, J. C.
The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays
. Revised by Stanley Wells. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2006. This compact companion is designed to fit in a pocket or purse, to be taken to the theater for easy reference. It’s filled with interesting facts about each play.

Van Doren, Mark.
Shakespeare
. 1939; reprinted by New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2005. Van Doren was intensely intelligent and totally original in his thinking. A true intellectual, he brought new insights to every one of the plays. This book, like those of Northrop Frye, is indispensable, and I have drawn on it heavily throughout my career.

Vaughan, Virginia Mason, and Alden T. Vaughan, eds.
Shakespeare in American Life
. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2007. This catalog from an exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2007 is filled with exciting stories and illustrations about Shakespeare’s afterlife in America.

Wells, Stanley. “Shakespeare and Revision.” Hilda Hulme Memorial Lecture, University of London, December 3, 1987. Stanley Wells has been perhaps the most influential Shakespearean commentator of the past fifty years yet wears his mantle lightly. In this little-known but terrific lecture, he demonstrates his love of Shakespeare with fresh insight after insight.

———.
Shakespeare: A Life in Drama
. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. This book is accessible and easy to read, yet deeply informed and extremely thoughtful. This may well be the best single source for an intelligent overview of Shakespeare’s life and work. Don’t miss it.