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

The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio by Andrea Mays

$10.00 NZD

Category: Books About Books | Reading Level: very good

Today it is the most valuable book in the world. Recently one sold for over five million dollars. It is the book that rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his plays from oblivion. The Millionaire and the Bardtells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession. When Shakespeare died in 1616 half of his plays died with him. No one-not even their author-believed that his writings would last, that he was a genius, or that future generations would celebrate him as the greatest author in the history of the English language. By the time of his death his plays were rarely performed, eighteen of them had never been published, and the rest existed only in bastardized forms that did not stay true to his original language. Seven years later, in 1623, Shakespeare's business partners, companions, and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered copies of the plays and manuscripts, edited and published thirty-six of them. This massive book, the First Folio, was intended as a memorial to their deceased friend. They could not have known that it would become one of the most important books ever published in the English language, nor that it would become a fetish object for collectors. A a literary detective story, the tale of two mysterious men-a brilliant author and his obsessive collector-separated by space and time. It is a tale of two cities-Elizabethan and Jacobean London and Gilded Age New York. It is a chronicle of two worlds-of art and commerce-that unfolded an ocean and three centuries apart. And it is the thrilling tale of the luminous book that saved the name of William Shakespeare "to the last syllable of recorded 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

The Tempest by William Shakespeare; Anne Righter (Editor); Northrop Frye (Editor); T. J. B. Spencer (Editor)

$6.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: Shakespeare, Penguin Ser. | Reading Level: very good

The Tempest is a comedy written by William Shakespeare. It is generally dated to 1610-11 and accepted as the last play written solely by him, although some scholars have argued for an earlier dating. While listed as a comedy in its initial publication in the First Folio of 1623, many modern editors have relabelled the play a romance. William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 - died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. Source: Wikipedia ...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 Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare

$14.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

This is the first fully annotated, critical edition of King Lear to appear for forty years. It includes a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's sources and the literary, political, and folkloric influences at work in the play, a detailed reading of the action, and a substantial stage history of major p roductions. Jay Halio is concerned to clarify, for those approaching the play for the first time, the vexed question of its textual history. Unlike previous editions, his does not present a conflation of the Quarto and the Folio. Accepting that we have two versions of equal authority, the one derived from Shakespeare's rough drafts, the other from a manuscript used in the playhouses during the seventeenth century, Professor Halio chooses the Folio as the text for this edition. He explains the differences between the two versions and alerts the reader to the rival claims of the Quarto by means of a sampling of parallel passages in the introduction and by an appendix which contains annotated passages unique to the Quarto. ...Show more

Antony and Cleopatra by Michael (EDT) William; Neill Shakespeare

$10.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Series: The Oxford Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

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