The History Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare

December 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-Students will find these compact titles visually pleasing. Supplemented with a basic introduction and a summative conclusion, each book provides easy access for those researching the Bard and his work. The summaries are concise yet complete, and they are accompanied by high-quality engravings and photographs-generally in color-of places, people, and mostly contemporary productions, relevant to either Shakespeare himself or to the plays under discussion. The prose, particularly in History, is both fluid and clear, giving just enough detail to elucidate the many complexities of the playwright's tales. The text is embellished with green-colored inserts that expound on historical sources and figures, stylistic devices (such as "cross-dressing" and the "bed trick"), characters, and Elizabethan actors, pertinent to either Shakespeare's oeuvre or to specific plays, thus enhancing the books' reference potential. Each volume includes additional background material, presenting topics such as "The Art of Comedy," "Shakespeare's English Contemporaries in Comedy," and "Shakespeare's Playhouse" (in Comedies), and "The Dating and Publication of Shakespeare's Plays" and "Music in Shakespeare's Plays" (in History). Although most vocabulary is explained in context, some, (e.g., "plangent," "delectation," "perfidious") are not clarified in the text or in the brief glossary, while other terms are mentioned in both. As indicated in the bibliography, there are numerous secondary sources, both older and current ones that cover the material presented here, and the titles cannot begin to compete with the depth of information found in Anne Marie Hacht's Shakespeare for Students (Gale, 2007). Nevertheless, the succinctness and quality of the written and visual information make these books good ready-reference sources for budding scholars.-Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, formerly at LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI

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