The story:
Offers an overview of the plot, characters, key phrases, and important themes in each of Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare for Beginners provides summaries of each work, a list of key phrases and themes, brief assessments of
main ideas and important concepts in the text, excerpts of key passages, and short but insightful quotes from
some of the most influential critics.
Excerpt from book:
What do people really know about this guy?
Not much. He was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon, Engalnd. His father John was a glover who was
named to several important town posts, and may have had financial difficulties later in life. Willam wasted not time
getting started in life. At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children:
Susanna (born in 1583), and the twins Hamnet and Judith (1585). Nobody is certain exactly what Shakespeare did
between 1583 and 1592. Somewhere along the line, he became an actor and began writing plays. In 1592, a jealous
playwright named Robert Greene attacked Shakespeare in print, and made fun of the idea of an actor writing plays.
Shakespeare apparantly wasn't too impressed by Mr. greene's criticism; he continued to write and perform, and
he became an important figure in the London literary and theatrical scene. He published two narrative poems,
Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). A writer named Francis Meres took
notice of Shakespeare in 1598, listing twelve of his plays and complimenting his privately circulated poetry.
The well-connected company with which Shakespeare was associated, The Lord Chamberlain's Men, built a theater
in 1598 called the Globe; he owned an interest in the playhouse.
In 1603, when James I became King, the Lord Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men. Over the years, some
of Shakespeare' plays were published in unauthorized editions (but many of his plays were never published
during his lifetime); a collection of his sonnets appeared in 1609. After the Globe burned down
in 1613, Shakespeare seems to have stopped writing and performing. He spent the last years of his life at Startford,
in a home he'd bought in 1597 called New Place. He died in 1616 and was buried in Stratford.
Shakespeare's life was so unspectacular that some people have found it hard to believe that such an 'ordinary' man
with so little formal schooling could create the greatest body of work in the English language. ...
Buchdaten:
Shakespeare for Beginners by Brandon Toropov
Sprache: Englisch
Paperback 176 pages (February 1997)
Publisher: Writers and Readers
ISBN: 0863162282
Preis: out of print - € ???
More works from the same author:
zurück zur Übersicht
|
