Shakespeare Well-Versed: A Rhyming Guide to All His Plays - Hardcover

Muirden, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802714412 ISBN 13: 9780802714411

Publisher: Walker Books, 2004

Synopsis

In Shakespeare Well-Versed James Muirden captures the essence of each of the bard's plays in quick-witted, rhyming verse. These clever synopses--with varied rhyme schemes--bring to life the high points and high jinks of all of Shakespeare's plays. Here the best-loved scenes and characters―Romeo and Juliet's impassioned balcony rendezvous, Henry V's speech before the Battle of Agincourt, Hamlet's melancholy soliloquy, the three witches meddling in Macbeth--are given fresh perspective by Muirden's charming, insightful interpretations.

Whether you are a lifelong devotee of Shakespeare or one who hasn't read his work since high school, you will be delighted by Muirden's verse and by David Eccles's wickedly clever illustrations that are featured throughout the book. Shakespeare Well-Versed is a smart and entertaining companion to Shakespeare's plays.

About this title

About the Author

James Muirden is the author of A Rhyming History of Britain. He lives in Devon, England, with his wife and two children.

Reviews

Muirden's Rhyming History of Britain [BKL S 1 03] made brushing up on all those monarchs and PMs a romp, and now he makes absorbing the corpus of England's great dramatist more pleasant than Cliffs Notes ever did. History stuck to rhymed iambic tetrameter couplets to keep things comical throughout. For Shakespeare, however, Muirden uses several metrical forms to be differently witty about plays that vary from frothy (The Comedy of Errors, recounted in, essentially, A-B-A-B-rhyming iamb-tet quatrains) to prickly (Troilus and Cressida, the astringency of which is conjured by uneven stanzas of uneven lines that rhyme only in their final couplets). The six central Wars of the Roses plays are limned in Shakespeare's usual line, iambic pentameter, with plenty of feminine endings (and rhymes), while the plays that frame them are in jolly old iamb tets (Richard II) and even jollier iambic and dactylic trimeters (Richard III). Best, verse-wise, comes last: The Winter's Tale is abstracted in limericks. More fun than seeing many a Shakespearean production, and good prep for seeing any. Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: Walker Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802714412
• ISBN 13: 9780802714411
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Eccles David
• Number of pages: 224