The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Shakespeare

by Dick Riley, Pam McAllister

In the same winning formula as The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie (more than 300,000 copies sold) and The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes (1999), this all-new companion to Shakespeare will present The Bard in a new and exciting way in a new century. For students, scholars, theater lovers, and scholars - nearly everyone! - this book wraps some 400 years of Bardology into a lively and often unexpected package.In their witty and inimitable way, Dick Riley and Pam McAllister examine the whole dramatic canon, play by play, including dramas of disputed authorship. (The long poems and sonnets are also covered.) Included are inside stories on theater and film productions, "alternate" interpretations of the plays, Shakespeare's status around the world, the clubs and societies, the mysterious life - and even the question that has plagued critics almost from the day he put down his whether Shakespeare even wrote the works attributed to him.

Genres: Nonfiction, Shakespeare

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2001

Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, but . . . is this book what, at first blush, it appears to be?

Or not to be.

What it appears to be is a book that might better be named The Bathroom Companion to Shakespeare, and all that implies.

Honestly however I found this book to be more amusing and informative than I'd expected. True enough, the play summaries are kept brief as the volume requires. I also found some laxity and inconsistency when it came to certain passages about notable productions and performances: after a while the authors appeared to lose interest and the sentences grew as ungrammatical as lists of ingredients on cereal boxes. The plays are listed in the order they appeared in The First Folio, although I'd have preferred an effort to align them more in the order in which they were probably written, but that's a quibble.

And yet. And yet.

A great deal of interesting information has been amassed in this small book, and every reader is likely to learn some bard lore previously unknown. It's written in a light and easy style that is most user-friendly. The write-ups about the plays are interspersed with sidebar chapters about biographical and related matters and such as the authorship question, the apocrypha, women in Elizabethan England, the music in Shakespeare and so on. I confess the section about the authorship question caused me for the first time to seriously consider the matter . . . then I got over it. Insoluble conspiracy theories lead to madness.

[Michael Wylde · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best condensed guide to Shakespeare that I've read.
Each work is explained by plot with historical background, notable features and productions, and contextual information, along with short articles on characters and history of the period.
Great reference for newbies or for old hands as a quick refresher.
Excellent!

[Jack Pyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a really humorous and very contemporary approach to Shakespeare. Brilliant for my kids who are getting ready to study what can be a very testing author.