The Bottom Line: Rarely can one find a work of reference that's not only comprehensive and illuminating but entertaining as well. Belongs on the shelves of all students and fans of the Bard.
jc_hall's Full Review: Dick Riley and Pam McAllister - The Bedside, Batht...
Billed as ‘A Unique Guide To The World’s Most Famous Author’, this light-hearted volume is certainly that and more. Its tone is chatty, almost frivolous, yet the amount of information conveyed is astonishing. This is not a book to be read in one sitting, or even three or four. It’s more a work of reference, but one that is so entertaining that the reader is caught off-guard by its comprehensive and erudite nature.
Each Shakespearean play has a chapter dedicated to it, with a hilarious tabloid headline-like subtitle followed by a capsule summary of the plot. For instance, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is subtitled ‘Three Couples To Wed At Palace After Night Of Strange Happenings In The Woods’. The Taming of the Shrew is subtitled ‘Swaggering Suitor Found For Kate The Curst, Younger Sister Free To Wed’. Romeo and Juliet is subtitled ‘Teen Lovers Dead In Apparent Double Suicide: Feuding Families Unite In Mourning’. You get the picture.
The period and setting for each play are noted and the likely source of the plot is discussed. Many of the historical plays of the English Kings were based on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, and it is interesting to note that, pre copyright and the concept of plagiarism, Shakespeare’s sources included 16th century or earlier English, Italian and French plays, ballads, novels and poems.
Notable features of each play, e.g. a highly-charged scene, a well-known line, or a particularly popular character, are remarked upon, as are notable productions and performances, from the earliest recorded performances to the latest Hollywood productions. Needless to say, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton get a mention here, as do the superstitions associated with the ‘Scottish Play’.
There’s a page on The Ten Best Movies Ever Made of Shakespeare’s Plays. Included are, to my delight, four of Kenneth Branagh’s productions (Othello, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V) as well as Laurence Olivier’s Othello and Richard III.
The page on The Ten Best Movies Inspired By Shakespeare include Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (the re-telling of King Lear) and Throne of Blood (Macbeth), as well as West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet) and the more recent and light-hearted Shakespeare in Love.
Interspersed between the chapters on the plays are chapters dealing with the background against which the plays were written/set. The form and origin of the Elizabethan theatre is set out in detail, with its groundlings (standing-room only audience who paid a penny each) and male actors playing all the female parts.
The authorship debate is tackled in one well-argued chapter, with the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, posited as a much more likely candidate for Shakespeare than Will Shakspur (sic) of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Major issues such as the politics (foreign quarrels as well as domestic turmoil) and religious factions of the time, the role of women in Elizabethan society, and Shakespeare’s language, are discussed in separate chapters. The music of the period, the role of astrology, Elizabethan costume, even Elizabethan holidays (such as Twelfth Night and Midsummer Eve) are also dealt with in some detail.
The Bard’s long narrative poems--Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece rate only a very short chapter, while the background to his sonnets (largely considered to be autobiographical) is discussed in more detail. Real-life candidates for the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady (to whom the sonnets are dedicated) and the Rival Poet are put forward under the section titled Who Are These People?
In his plays, Shakespeare coined many words, many of which are now common and widely-used. At the end of the book are a couple of pages listing his insults and famous phrases, some of which may increase your vocabulary in a colourful manner.
While younger people getting to know the Bard at school would find this an excellent and entertaining reference, Shakespeare aficionados may still find something of interest. While the plot summaries are necessarily blunt, some of the subtitles are hilarious, and the likely source of each play could prove an eye-opener to many.
For instance, who knew that Romeo and Juliet’s primary source was a poem entitled The Tragical Historye of Romeus and Juliet (written in 1562 by Arthur Brooke) which itself was a free translation of a French poem by Pierre Boaistuau who, in turn, had taken the idea from a 1554 story by Italian writer Mateo Bandello who…wait for this…took it from Luigi Da Porto’s version, published in 1530?
Nothing original under the sun? You betcha. But let’s not forget that it’s Shakespeare’s version that has endured and withstood the test of time. Four hundred years after they were written, his plays are still being performed and are still much beloved. No matter who he really was, his work speaks for itself, and it is much more than the plots of his plays that we admire.
It is his sense of drama, his true-to-life characters, his facility with both the comic and the tragic, and perhaps most of all, his masterly use of language that makes his speeches ring in our ears and his verses sing in our souls with their lyrical, otherworldly, beauty long after we have left the theatre, that make him, in Ben Jonson’s words, ‘not of an age, but for all time’.
Dick Riley and Pam McAllister have compiled an informative, enlightening and wonderfully engaging Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Shakespeare. Highly recommended, both to newcomers to the Bard and to die-hard fans.
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