The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Shakespeare (Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companions)

The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Shakespeare (Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companions)

by Dick Riley (Author), Dick Riley (Author)

Synopsis

This volume takes readers into the wonderful world of the Bard. For scholars, theatre lovers, students - everyone - this book wraps nearly 400 years of Bardology into a concise package. The authors examine the whole dramatic canon, play by play, including works of questionable authorship. The long poems and sonnets are also covered. The book includes inside stories on theatre and film productions, alternate interpretations of the plays, Shakespeare's status around the world, the clubs and societies, the mysterious life, even the question that has plagued critics for 100 years: whether Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 314
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 01 Jun 2001

ISBN 10: 0826412505
ISBN 13: 9780826412508

Media Reviews
The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Shakespeare is, as its title suggests, appropriate casual reading just about anywhere in the house, for it is an informative and delightful compendium to the poems and plays. The authors also offer interesting and sometimes arcane observations about Shakespeare's life, his theater, and the impact of his writing today. And at the end of their book, the authors even present an eady-to-use, Chinese-menu style chart for learning to scold like an expert at Elizabethan name-calling; one can come away from the pleasures here and flyte like a master!
Gerald M. Pinciss, Hunter College * the Graduate Center
With an engaging blend of homage and irreverence, this book renders accessible the Bard's entire oeuvre.
Publishers Weekly
[A] clever and informative book .If you love Shakespeare, you'll love The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Shakespeare.
WTBF-FM, April 23, 2002
Through careful, thoughtful, and objective illumination of the work, the man, the time period, and the people and places that inhabit the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare, as well as the world inhabited by Shakespeare himself, Riley and McAllister have compiled, perhaps, the most concise, yet all-encompassing book on the Bard to date. The greatest appeal here lies in the humorous, literate, sometimes irreverent, and always knowledgeable interpretation and synopsis of the entire dramatic canon, presented play by play .From an objective look at the authorship problem to Elizabethan holidays to a brief discourse on fools (Shakespearean and otherwise), The Bedside Companion is nothing if not thorough .Any reader will walk away from this book with an accessibility to the Bard's writings that very few works can offer .The authors have tailored a book to explicate the work and life of the greatest writer of the English language and to please two distinct audiences?the playgoer and the literary scholar?at the same time. This would seem to be a fool's venture, yet, as Shakespeare's plays have taught us, the fool is often endowed with more wisdom than the wisest of men.
Foreword Magazine
Author Bio
Dick Riley's novels and plays include collaboration on the best-selling Black Sunday (with Thomas Harris), Rite of Expiation, and the drama Middleman Out. He lives in White Plains, New York. Pam McAllister is the author of ten books, including three others in Continuum's Bedside, Bathtub &Armchair Companion series which she co-authored with Dick Riley, on Shakespeare (2001), Sherlock Holmes (1999), and Agatha Christie (1979). Her other books include Death Defying: Dismantling the Execution Machinery in 21st Century U.S.A. (Continuum, 2003) about ending capital punishment and two books about women's use of nonviolent action for social justice. In 1982, she edited the groundbreaking anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence (New Society Publishers), which the Village Voice called one of the most important books you'll ever read. She currently writes a column for The Progressive Christian magazine.