Shakespeare's Restless World by Neil MacGregor

$30.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: near fine

From Neil MacGregor, the acclaimed creator of "A History of the World in 100 Objects" and the Director of the British Museum, comes a unique, enthralling exploration of the age of William Shakespeare to accompany a new BBC Radio 4 series. Shakespeare lived through a pivotal period in human history. With the discovery of the New World, the horizons of Old Europe were expanding dramatically - and long-cherished certainties were crumbling. Life was exhilaratingly uncertain. What were Londoners thinking when they went to see Shakespeare's plays? What was it like living in their world? Here Neil MacGregor looks at twenty objects from Shakespeare's life and times, and uncovers the fascinating stories behind them. The objects themselves range from the grand (such as the hoard of gold coins that make up the Salcombe treasure) to the very humble, like the battered trunk and worn garments of an unknown pedlar. But in each case, they allow MacGregor to explore issues as diverse as piracy and Islam, Catholicism and disguise. MacGregor weaves the histories of objects into the words of Shakespeare's plays themselves to suggest to us where his ideas about religion, national identity, the history of England and the world, human nature itself, may have come from. The result is a fresh and thrilling evocation of Shakespeare's world. ...Show more

Who's Who in Shakespeare by Peter Quennell & Hamish Johnson

$25.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

From Antonio to Yorrick, Macbeth to Mercutio, this book presents a handy A-Z guide to the men and women who throng Shakespeare's plays. It includes quotations from famous critics. It provides detailed biographical information on each leading figure; analyses the role and significance of each minor figur e; and, offers useful information. ...Show more

Shakespeare on Love by Helen Exley

$8.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: near fine

Containing many paintings, and a collection of his words on love, this title is aimed at lovers of Shakespeare and to also people in love.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

$7.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: Macmillan Collector's Library | Reading Level: near fine

Gorgeous, strange and magical, A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best loved of Shakespeare's plays. A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites soo n take an interest in human affairs, dispensing love potions and casting mischievous spells. In this dazzling comedy, confusion ends in harmony, as love is transformed, misplaced, and - ultimately - restored. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition is illustrated throughout by renowned artist Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897), and includes an introduction by author Ned Halley. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. ...Show more

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

$10.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's--the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time. ...Show more

Contested Will - Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James S. Shapiro

$12.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

For two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays. Since then dozens of rival candidates - including The Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe - have been proposed as their true author. Contested Will unravels th e mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi) Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro's fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what's really contested: are the plays and poems of Shakespeare autobiographical, and if so, do they hold the key to the question of who wrote them? '[Shapiro] writes erudite, undumbed-down history that . . . reads as fluidly as a good novel.' David Mitchell, the Guardian. ...Show more

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

$8.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: Oxford World's Classics Ser. | Reading Level: good

Because Orsino is hopelessly in love with the aloof Countess Olivia, he doesn't notice Viola, who, disguised as a boy, is in love with him. This comedy's plot bristles with intrigues galore, but all finally ends happily as lovers are paired. Books in this new, illustrated series present complete texts o f Shakespeare's plays. However, the lines are set up so students can see the bard's original poetic phrases printed side-by-side and line-by-line with a modern "translation" on the facing page. Starting in the late 1580s and for several decades that followed, Shakespeare's plays were popular entertainment for London's theatergoers. His Globe Theatre was the equivalent of a Broadway theater in today's New York. The plays have endured, but over the course of 400+ years, the English language has changed in many ways--which is why today's students often find Shakespeare's idiom difficult to comprehend. Simply Shakespeare offers an excellent solution to their problem. Introducing each play is a general essay covering Shakespeare's life and times. At the beginning of each of the five acts in every play, a two-page spread describes what is about to take place. The story's background is explained, followed by brief descriptions of key people who will appear in the act, details students should watch for as the story unfolds, discussion of the play's historical context, how the play was staged in Shakespeare's day, and explanation of puns and plays on words that occur in characters' dialogues. Identifying icons preceding each of these study points are printed in a second color, then are located again as cross-references in the play's original text. For instance, where words spoken by a person in the play offer insights into his or another character's personality, the "Characters" icon will appear as a cross-reference in both the introductory spread and the play proper. Following each act, a closing spread presents questions and discussion points for use as teachers' aids. Guided by the inspiring format of this fine new series, both teachers and students will come to understand and appreciate the genius of Shakespeare as never before. ...Show more

Who Wrote Shakespeare? by John Michell

$15.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

Was the famous poet and writer really a fraud and plagarist? Was his name really a pseudonym for a well-known contemporary figure?

Henry VIII: The Life of Henry the Eighth (The Pelican Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare; Jonathan Crewe (ed.)

$10.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: The\Pelican Shakespeare Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Shakespeare's history of King Henry VIII. Republished by Cavalier Classics.

Filthy Shakespeare by Pauline Kiernan

$12.00 NZD

Category: Humour | Reading Level: very good

Despite the richness of Shakespeare's sexual language (his work includes no fewer than 150 puns for female genitals, and 180 for male genitalia), scant attention has been paid to it till now. "Filthy Shakespeare" offers 100 examples of the Bard at his bawdiest, arranged under 25 sexual categories from c uckold to cunnilingus and from scrotum to semen. Each filthy passage is 'translated' into modern English and the hidden sexual meanings of the words explained in a glossary. In a lively and rumbustious Introduction, author Pauline Kiernan shows how Shakespeare's predilection for rude punning had its roots in the social and political reality of Elizabethan England, where the brutal facts of life were often described by figures of speech to distance or disguise them, and where the network of government spies meant that covert communication was, for some, a matter of life and death. "Filthy Shakespeare" is not just the quirkiest, dirtiest and funniest gift book of the year, it also offers fascinating and surprising insights into the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's world and Shakespeare's language. ...Show more

The Poems - Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece, the Phoenix and the Turtle, the Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare; John Roe (Editor); A. R. Braunmuller (Contribution by); Brian Gibbons (Contribution by)

$16.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: The\New Cambridge Shakespeare Ser. | Reading Level: very good

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems that can now confidently be assigned to Shakespeare, excluding the Sonnets. It contains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. John Roe's introduction to each poem examines the classical and Renaissance traditions behind the poetry and the conditions under which the poems were produced. The commentary demonstrates how in his management of formal rhetoric Shakespeare fashions a living language out of handbook oratory. ...Show more

Coleridge on Shakespeare. The Text of the Lectures of 1811-1812 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

$12.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: good