| Macbeth (Sourcebooks Shakespeare): Shakespeare in Performance (Sourcebooks Shakespeare) | 
 enlarge | Author: William Shakespeare
Creators: William Proctor Williams, Barbara Gaines, David Bevington, Peter Holland
Publisher: Methuen Drama
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy New: £2.11
You Save: £10.88 (84%)
New (26) Used (5) from £2.11
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 458581
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0713683597
EAN: 9780713683592
ASIN: 0713683597
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
The Best User-Friendly Edition of Shakespeare's Plays March 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a student, teacher and lover of English, I have several editions of Shakespeare's plays: Arden, Oxford, Penguin and some more obscure ones. I have settled on this edition as my preferred one. The Arden and Oxford editions may be more scholarly, but none beats the sourcebook Shakespeares for information, variety and sheer readability.
So what makes this edition so special?
First and foremost the text is spaciously laid out. That may not sound like a big deal, but just look at the way Shakespeare is usually set out - lines close together, almost crammed onto a page. Here, the text is given room to breathe. This makes appreciating (and annotating) it much easier. Psychologically, you don't have the feeling of stepping into an impenetrable forest of words, but into a comfortable text.
The text is only on one side (the right), the left being reserved for notes, which are sufficient to understand the text. The left side also contains photos from past productions as well as some interesting notes on how some scenes have been interpreted. Text variants are not generally noted, but that's a domain reserved for the more scholarly editions, which this is not primarily. Links to the Audio-CD are also marked clearly.
Which brings me to the next point: the Audio CD. Why has no-one thought of this before? The CD contains key scenes and speeches, often from different productions so that you can compare them. A great resource and tool to explore intonation and emphasis and what different actors make of a character.
The text of the play is preceded by short essays on
- the play in production through the years,
- one performance, with an explanation what made that performance so special (this can also be a film)
- how the play has fared in popular culture (film adaptations and the like)
After the text of the play there's a little gem called `The cast speaks'. This is a set of interviews with the cast of a recent production in which each actor explains her or his approach to the character and how they see that character as a person, how they acted her or him. Excellent stuff, that.
The book is rounded off by a voice coach's perspective on speaking Shakespeare (also very interesting) and a short historical note on the age of Shakespeare.
There's also a link to online resources.
Wow! What else could you ask for - and for that price!?!
The whole book is geared towards making Shakespeare's play come to life, both visually (through the production photos) and aurally (through the Audio CD) and as such is a great tool if you're thinking of producing your own Shakespeare play. But even if not, this edition has so much life in it that you'll fall in love with Shakespeare all over again.
This is a definite must have - even if you already have another edition of Shakespeare.
|
|
|
