Appreciating Shakespeare

Appreciating Shakespeare makes easily available the essential tools for understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's plays and poems, which means experiencing the deep and thrilling meanings of his works.

Part 1 offers the background knowledge--about Shakespeare's life, language, poetic and dramatic techniques, theatrical context, and historical and cultural background--that help you to appreciate Shakespeare's works. Part 2 offers short essays on twenty-two plays, pointing readers to the universally meaningful heart of each and illuminating themes often hidden or misrepresented in many stage and screen productions and critical writings. There is also a chapter dedicated to analysis of a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Gideon Rappaport, retired teacher and active dramaturge, has taught Shakespeare for forty-five years in high school, college, graduate school, and adult education courses and served as dramaturge on many professional productions of Shakespeare's plays and for "Complete Works" on Hulu, in which he had his film debut. He graduated from Cowell college, UC Santa Cruz, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Brandeis University. He edited "Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson" and co-authored "Introduction to the Fundamental Liberal Arts: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric." He lives in San Diego, California.