| Shopping cart is empty. |
Shakespeare Recommendations
October 2011
We’ve decided to have the ever popular Bard as a focus in this issue.
Shakespeare’s plays are perennially popular but from time to time there are new publications designed to engage new audiences. We will highlight for you some exciting new offerings as well as some of the editions that teachers ask for, and those that are popular classics.
There is a category on our website called "Teaching Resources : Shakespeare Resources" (also found as "Shakespeare : Teaching Shakespeare") and there are some excellent texts there.
NEW!! "Insight Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet": See Karen’s review in this newsletter.
Contents
Return to Top
No Fear Shakespeare
publishes each of Shakespeare’s plays separately, as well as a student guide
many plays available $10 to $12 depending on titles
No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of the play on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand modern translation on the right.
Each No Fear Shakespeare contains
No Fear Shakespeare - A Companion
An introduction to the life and works of William Shakespeare. With this by their side, even reluctant students will become engaged Shakespearians!
"No Fear Shakespeare: A Companion" is an introduction to the life and works of William Shakespeare, targeted toward high school students. It showcases selected passages from the "No Fear Shakespeare" translations in an engaging way, with frequent headers and sidebars that break up the page and offer multiple points of entry into the text. The contents include a brief biography of Shakespeare; a portrait of 16th century England, the Renaissance, and culture and education during Shakespeare’s time; an overview of Shakespearian-era theatre; a look at the Bard’s sources; and a discussion of whether Shakespeare is really the author of the plays attributed to him. It’s the perfect companion for students...or any reader interested in learning more about Shakespeare.
Let’s face it. Hearing people talk about Shakespeare can be pretty annoying. Particularly if you feel like you don’t understand him. When people talk about which of Shakespeare’s plays they like best, or what they thought of so-and-so’s performance, they often treat Shakespeare like membership in some exclusive club. If you don’t "get" him, if you don’t go to see his plays, you’re not truly educated or literate. You might be tempted to ask whether the millions of people who say they love Shakespeare actually know what they’re talking about, or are they just sheep?
‘No Fear Shakespeare: A Companion’ gives you the straight scoop on everything you "really" need to know about Shakespeare.
Return to Top
RSC Shakespeare
publishes each of Shakespeare’s plays separately, and in collections, as well as a teacher toolkit
individual plays are generally $19.95, depending on the titles
RSC Shakespeare - The Complete Works
paperback - $59.95
This is the first and only edition to be developed by and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the world’s leading Shakespeare theatre company. It is illustrated with photographs of performances chosen by RSC Directors. It is beautifully packaged, with clear, reader-friendly single-column page design on crisp white paper. It features outstanding on-page notes which explain words and phrases unfamiliar to a modern audience, including the slang, political references and bawdy humour often ignored or censored in competing editions. It is a definitive modern-spelling edition of Shakespeare’s text based on the 1623 First Folio.
It is suitable for undergraduates or A-level students of Literature or Drama; lecturers or teachers of Literature or Drama. It is also suitable as birthday, Christmas, wedding or graduation gifts. It is useful in Public Libraries, Academic Libraries, and School Libraries.
Developed in partnership with The Royal Shakespeare Company, this fresh new Complete Works combines the very latest scholarship with elegant writing and design. Leading the editorial team is renowned Shakespearean scholar Professor Jonathan Bate who has worked in close collaboration over many years with the artists and archivists at the RSC. His introductions and notes draw on a unique wealth of experience and resources and will help the reader to understand Shakespeare’s plays as they were originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed
RSC Shakespeare Toolkit for Teachers
paperback - $120
Developed by one of the world’s leading theatre companies, the resource offers teachers a practical drama-based approach to teaching and appreciating three of Shakespeare’s most popular plays: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This resource brings the plays alive as performance pieces with pupils undertaking drama-based explorations of the text that take them through much of the play, with teachers’ notes and accompanying photocopiable worksheets for a lesson by lesson teaching route through each of the three plays in turn.
The schemes of work offer teachers a route through each play that has been designed to be flexible and to bolt on to what they already teach. The schemes comprise a series of lessons that can either be followed in their entirety as a stand-alone scheme of work or it can be dipped into by teachers wanting to augment their existing schemes of work.
The activities are all mapped to the KS3 Framework for English and KS2 Primary Framework for Literacy objectives, and offer suggestions for homework activities as well.
Return to Top
Arden Shakespeare
publishes each of Shakespeare’s plays separately and in collections, as well as criticism and student guides
The Arden Shakespeare is the established edition of Shakespeare’s work. Justly celebrated for its authoritative scholarship and invaluable commentary, Arden guides you a richer understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s plays.Their editions of the plays provide clear and authoritative texts, detailed notes and commentary on the same pages as the text, full introductions discussing the critical and historical background to the plays and appendices presenting sources and relevant extracts.
Arden Shakespeare Complete Works: Student Edition
The Complete Arden Shakespeare, published for the first time in hardback in 1998 available for $55.45, is now available in an updated paperback edition. The Complete Arden Shakespeare contains the texts of all Shakespeare’s plays, edited by leading Shakespeare scholars for the renowned Arden Shakespeare series. The paperback edition includes eight newly revised playtexts as published in the Arden Third Series since 1998. A general introduction by the three General Editors of the ongoing Arden Shakespeare series gives the reader an overall view of how and why Shakespeare has become such an influential cultural icon, and how perceptions of his work have changed in the intervening four centuries. The introduction summarises the known facts about the dramatist’s life, his reading and use of sources, and the nature of theatrical performance during his lifetime.Brief introductions to each play, written specially for this volume by the Arden General Editors, discuss the date and contemporary context of the play, its position within Shakespeare’s oeuvre, and its subsequent performance history. An extensive glossary explains vocabulary which may be unfamiliar to modern readers. Includes The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Poems, and the Sonnets Brief contextual introductions to each play Glossary with about 400 entries.
Doing Shakespeare (Arden Student Guides)
Doing Shakespeare offers a fresh insight into the difficulties and excesses of Shakespeare’s drama and language. Written primarily for students making the transition from school to university, it aims both to demystify and illuminate the study of Shakespeare, tackling many of the challenges students face as they move towards a more complex critical engagement with Shakespeare’s work.
Return to Top
Riverside Shakespeare (2nd edition)
Hardcover - $169.95
The Second Edition of this complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays and poems features two essays on recent criticism and productions, fully updated textual notes, a photographic insert of recent productions, and two works recently attributed to Shakespeare. The authors of the essays on recent criticism and productions are Heather DuBrow, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and William Liston, Ball State University, respectively.
After more than a generation and despite its many imitators, The Riverside Shakespeare remains the Shakespeare of choice for scholars and general readers alike. Recently revised to reflect the last quarter century of literary scholarship, it retains all the features that made the first edition so popular - the invaluable notes, the wide-ranging introduction, and the brilliant critical prefaces to the individual works. Additions include the history play Edward III and the poem "A Funeral Elegy," both recently claimed for Shakespeare by computer-aided textual analysis. The original appendices have been updated and expanded and are joined by two new essays, "Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Criticism" and "Shakespeare’s Plays in Performance: From 1970", the latter accompanied by eight pages of full-colour photographs.
Return to Top
Insight Shakespeare Series
See Karen’s review and a preview of "Insight Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet" in this newsletter.
Even the most resolutely disengaged students can finally ‘discover’ and thrill to the rhythms and passions of Shakespeare’s plays! Award-winning teachers and Shakespearean scholars have extensively trialled their approach to teaching Shakespeare’s plays in the classroom, and this new series is the result!
Insight Shakespeare plays already published: Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear (October 2011) and Julius Caesar (October 2011) , and coming in 2012 are The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet.
Return to Top
Shakespeare Glossary
by TC Onions. An excellent resource.
This thorough (1996) revision takes account of the considerable advances in Shakespeare scholarship since the last edition of this famous glossary was published in 1919.
Return to Top
Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary
Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary - vol 1
Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary - vol 2
volumes 1 &2 available in Hardcover for $107.75 and paperback for $36.95 (prices are for each of the 2 volumes)
Still often used today, German schoolmaster and philologist ALEXANDER SCHMIDT’s (1816-1887) Shakespeare Lexicon is the source for elucidating the sometimes cryptic language of Shakespeare and tracking down quotations. Volume 1 covers A through L, from "a: the first letter of the alphabet" to "Lysimachus", a proper name. Every word from every play and poem is catalogued, referenced, and defined in this exhaustive two-volume work, the result of arduous research and stalwart dedication. Serious scholars and zealous fans will find the Lexicon the ultimate guide to reading and decoding the Bard.
Return to Top
Shakespeare’s Language - 150 photocopiable worksheets
This versatile and comprehensive collection of 150 photocopiable worksheets will enable teachers to construct a course in Shakespeare’s language suited to the needs of all students. They demonstrate how the analysis of language can be undertaken in enjoyable and motivating ways which reveal, through close attention to detail, how Shakespeare’s dramatic language expresses the conflicts at the heart of all drama. Students will be able to adapt the knowledge and skills they acquire to develop their understanding and appreciation of any of Shakespeare’s plays.
Return to Top
Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice
Taking many of the techniques explored in her international bestseller "Freeing the Natural Voice", in this companion volume Kristin Linklater shows how to apply them to the speaking of Shakespeare’s language. Beginning with exercises designed to break long-held habits and allow an emotional rather than intellectual relationship to Elizabethan language, she analyses Shakespeare’s strategies for creating character, story and meaning through figures of speech, iambic pentameter, rhyme and the alternation of verse and prose. Using copious examples from the plays, Linklater offers her readers the tools to increase understanding and make Shakespeare’s words their own. First published in the US in 1992, this is the first UK edition of this invaluable guide to speaking Shakespeare.