Shakespeare

March 18-24 is Shakespeare Week!  Shakespeare Week is an event celebrated in the UK aimed at giving elementary school children a positive first encounter with the bard's works.  I'm not based in the UK, but I say let's bring it international!  Here are ten nonfiction picks about Shakespeare, his works, and influences.  *most of these books are not aimed at elementary school children!

Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World's Greatest Playwright by Gerit Quealy - A captivating, beautifully illustrated, one-of-a-kind color compendium of the flowers, fruits, herbs, trees, seeds, and grasses cited in the works of the world's greatest playwright, William Shakespeare, accompanied by their companion quotes from all of his plays and poems. With a foreword by Dame Helen Mirren--the first foreword she has ever contributed. In this striking compilation, Shakespeare historian Gerit Quealy and respected Japanese artist Sumié Hasegawa combine their knowledge and skill in this first and only book that examines every plant that appears in the works of Shakespeare. Botanical Shakespeare opens with a brief look at the Bard's relationship to the plants mentioned in his works--a diversity that illuminates his knowledge of the science of botany, as well as the colloquy, revealing his unmatched skill for creating metaphorical connections and interweaving substantive philosophy. At the heart of the book are "portraits" of the over 170 flowers, fruits, grains, grasses, trees, herbs, seeds and vegetables that Shakespeare mentions in his plays and poems. Botanical Shakespeare features a gorgeous color illustration of each, giving a "face" to the name, alongside the specific text in which it appears and the character(s) who utter the lines in which it is mentioned.

How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig - In How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare,  acclaimed playwright Ken Ludwig provides the tools you need to instill an understanding, and a love, of Shakespeare's works in your children, and to have fun together along the way.
 Ken Ludwig devised his methods while teaching his own children, and his approach is friendly and easy to master. Beginning with  memorizing short specific passages from Shakespeare's plays, this method then instills children with cultural references they will utilize for years to come. Ludwig's approach includes understanding of the time period and implications of Shakespeare's diction as well as the invaluable lessons behind his words and stories.  Colorfully incorporating the history of Shakespearean theater and society, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare guides readers on an informed and adventurous journey through the world in which the Bard wrote.
 This book's simple process allows anyone to impart to children the wisdom of plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Macbeth,  and Romeo and Juliet. And there's fun to be had along the way. Shakespeare novices and experts, and readers of all ages, will each find something delightfully irresistible in How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.

The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio by Emma Smith - In late November 1623, Edward Blount finally took delivery at his bookshop at the sign of the Black Bear near St. Paul's of a book that had been long in the making. Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, appearing some seven years after their author's death in 1616. Its 950 folio pages included thirty-six plays, half of which had not previously been printed, divided under the three generic headings of the title. There was no fanfare at the book's arrival. There was nothing of the marketing overdrive that marks an important new publication in our own period: no advertising campaign, no reviews, interviews, endorsements or literary prizes, no queues in St Paul's Churchyard, no sales figures, price war, copycat publications or bestseller lists--in short, no sensation. Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural and commercial moment. This book, generously illustrated with key pages from the publication and comparative works, tells the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of the First Folio--and the birth of Shakespeare's towering reputation.

Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, But More with Love by Jillian Keenan - A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spanking.
When it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide her--until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeare's language flowing through her blood for the first time. In Sex with Shakespeare, she tells the story of how the Bard's plays helped her embrace her unusual sexual identity and find a love story of her own.
Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, Keenan's smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With fourteen of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality--from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist--like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of "privacy." The Taming of the Shrew goes inside the secret world of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, while King Lear exposes the ill-fated king as a possible sexual predator. Moving through the canon, Keenan makes it abundantly clear that literature is a conversation. In Sex with Shakespeare, words are love.
As Keenan wanders the world in search of connection, from desert dictatorships to urban islands to disputed territories, Shakespeare goes with her --and provokes complex, surprising, and wildly important conversations about sexuality, consent, and the secrets that simmer beneath our surfaces.

The Shakespeare Encyclopedia: The Complete Guide to the Man and his Works by A. D. Cousins - A beautifully illustrated reference that provides a deeper understanding of Shakespeare and his time.
Some four centuries after they were written, William Shakespeare's plays and poems still delight audiences and readers worldwide, and together form one of our cultural touchstones. The profound themes and beautiful language speak to us across time and place, and the story of how a boy from rural England became the "soul of the age" continues to intrigue.
The Shakespeare Encyclopedia is an authoritative, visually exciting, and entertaining guide to all things Shakespeare, explaining the themes, plots, and contexts of his works, their literary and cultural significance, and uncovering some of the mystery of the man himself.

Shakespeare in America: An Anthology From the Revolution to Now edited by James Shapiro - 'The History of Shakespeare in America,' writes James Shapiro in his introduction to this groundbreaking anthology. 'is also the history of America itself.' From our beginnings as a nation, Shakespeare has been a central, inescapable part of our literary heritage, a figure so widely revered that, as Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, there was 'hardly a pioneer's hut' without a volume or tow. Shakespeare in America reveals how, for over two centuries, the plays have been a prism through which crucial American issues - revolution, slavery, war, social justice - were refracted, debated, and understood. Shapiro traces the rich and surprising story of how Americans made Shakespeare their own through a wide range of genres - poetry, fiction, essays, plays, memoirs, songs, speeches, letters, movie reviews, and comedy routines - and a remarkable roster of American writers- from Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, and Henry James to James Agee, John Berryman, Pauline Kael, Isaac Asimov, Adrienne Rich, and Jane Smiley. American statesmen and presidents from John Adams to Bill Clinton (in a foreword written for this volume) offer their own testimonies to Shakespeare's profound and enduring influence. The anthology also tracks the multitude of ways in which American theater and film have been indelibly marked by Shakespeare- actors from Charlotte Cushman and Edwin Booth to John Barrymore, Paul Robeson, and Marlon Brando reinterpret Shakespeare for each new era; the legendary productions of New York's Yiddish theater are evoked in Cynthia Ozick's story 'Actors'; in the Depression years, Orson Welles revolutionizes Shakespearean performance with is landmark productions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar; the creators of Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story write Shakespeare into the history of the classic American musical theater; and Joseph Papp, renewing a once-flourishing popular taste for the plays, establishes a New York tradition with Shakespeare in the Park. Internationally acclaimed Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro introduces each piece with a lively and informative headnote to guide the reader through the fascinating record of our 250-year-long engagement with Shakespeare and his works - from the perennial interest in the birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon to the uniquely American obsession with the question of who really wrote the plays - and supplements the texts with a sixteen-page illustration insert.

Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal - Who's afraid of William Shakespeare? Just about everyone. He wrote too much and what he did write is inaccessible and elitist. Right? Wrong. Shakespeare on Toast knocks the stuffing from the staid old myth of Shakespeare, revealing the man and his plays for what they really are: modern, thrilling and uplifting drama. Actor and author Ben Crystal brings the bright words and colourful characters of the world's greatest hack writer brilliantly to life, handing over the key to Shakespeare's plays, unlocking the so called difficult bits and, astonishingly, finding Shakespeare's own voice amid the poetry. Told in five fascinating Acts, Shakespeare on Toast sweeps the cobwebs from the Bard - from his language, his life, his time - revealing both the man and his work to be relevant, accessible and full of beans.

Shakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects by Neil MacGregor - We feel we know Shakespeare’s characters. Think of Hamlet, trapped in indecision, or Macbeth’s merciless and ultimately self-destructive ambition, or the Machiavellian rise and short reign of Richard III. They are so vital, so alive and real that we can see aspects of ourselves in them. But their world was at once familiar and nothing like our own.
In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare’s universe. A perfect complement to A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor’s landmark New York Times bestseller, Shakespeare’s Restless World highlights a turning point in human history.
This magnificent book, illustrated throughout with more than one hundred vibrant color photographs, invites you to travel back in history and to touch, smell, and feel what life was like at that pivotal moment, when humankind leaped into the modern age. This was an exhilarating time when discoveries in science and technology altered the parameters of the known world. Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation map allows us to imagine the age of exploration from the point of view of one of its most ambitious navigators. A bishop’s cup captures the most sacred and divisive act in Christendom.

Thinking Shakespeare: A Working Guide for Actors, Directors, Students...and Anyone Else Interested in the Bard by Barry Edelstein - Thinking Shakespeare gives theater artists practical advice about how to make Shakespeare's words feel spontaneous, passionate, and real. Based on Barry Edelstein's thirty-year career directing Shakespeare's plays, this book provides the tools that artists need to fully understand and express the power of Shakespeare's language.

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt - As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution.

Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules--these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues--and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them--and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare's work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.