A Short Guide to Shakespeare.

by Sylvan Barnet

A discussion of Shakespeare's life, language, and literary style prefaces a study of the comedies, histories, tragedies, and nondramatic poems and the staging techniques, and cinematic portrayals of Shakespearean works

Genres: Plays

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Sylvan Barnet is an American literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. He is a Fletcher Professor of English Emeritus at Tufts University.

Barnet is the author of numerous books and articles on Shakespeare. He is the general editor of the Signet Classics Shakespeare,[1] the author of A Short Guide to Shakespeare,[2] and has written many textbooks. He is the co-author with William Burto of occasional essays on aspects of Japanese art.[3] He has also written books about the art of writing.

Reviews

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought a lot of this seemed familiar but then again I have been reading lots of books about Shakespeare. Then found out when I read the preface, after finishing the book, that the author wrote the long introduction to the Signet complete works of Shakespeare, which I had skimmed through, and that this book is basically the same as that intro.

Plus, this "old" paperback with no illustrations, isn't nearly as appealing as some of the more recent visually pleasing books about Shakespeare, such as, Shakespeare: A Crash Course (Crash Course (Watson-Guptill)) (Crash Course. Though the information on Shakespeare and the plays is authoritative, not recommended unless it's the only book about Shakespeare available.