Product Description

The Globe Theatre is delighted to announce a new season of Mr. William Shakespeare's plays! Prithee take your place once more for a performance of seven of the Bard's finest tales. See As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III, Twelfth Night, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing – each brilliantly presented in dramatic comic-strip form, including Mr Shakespeare's own dialogue and the riotous remarks of the audience. Bravo!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82061 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 40 pages

About the Author
Marcia Williams is a successful author/llustrator and, with her distinctive cartoon-strip style, has now illustrated and retold many literary classics for children, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (9781406311372), Greek Myths (9781406303476) and Oliver Twist and Other Great Dickens Stories (9781406305630). Her latest books are Archie's War (9781406304275), a child's diary of the First World War and My Secret War Diary by Flossie Albright (9781406309409), a Second World War journal. Marcia lives in Barnes, London.

Customer Reviews

Another seven Shakespeare plays from Marcia Williams
“Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare” by Marcia Williams is her 2000 follow up to her 1998 volume, “Tales from Shakespeare.” Both books look at seven plays by the bard. The first volume did “Hamlet,” “MacBeth,” “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo & Juliet,” “The Winter’s Tale,” “Julius Caesar,” and “The Tempest.” This book covers “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It,” “Richard III,” “Antony & Cleopatra,” “Twelfth Night,” “King Lear,” and “The Merchant of Venice.”

The conceit of these volumes is that Shakespeare’s plays are being performed at the Globe, a circular wooden theater on the banks of the Thames River in England. Theatergoers would pay penny and stand in the open courtyard around the stage and watch the play. Such people were known as the groundlings and they got rather rowdy, actually throwing things at the actors. If you paid another penny you could sit in one of the roofed galleries, protected from both the elements and the groundlings.

Williams presents each play in dramatic comic strip form providing three parts to each performance. First, there are the words that Shakespeare actually wrote being spoken by the characters. Second, the plot of the play is told underneath the pictures. Third, around the stand the spectators watch and other a wide variety of comments. Keep your eyes out for Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, the Master of Revels, and a guy who only likes the gloomy pages.

Both of these volumes provide a spirited presentation of these Shakespeare plays, giving young readers not only a sense of the story but the way they were originally performed. Of course, the fun comments strike the mark better on the comedies than the dramas (the latter tend to be colored more gloomily), but there is no mistaking the enthusiasm Williams brings to the presentation of these plays. This is an excellent way of introducing young students to Shakespeare’s works and hopefully it will whet their appetite for reading more detailed juvenile versions and eventually the original plays themselves.

Bravo
As usual Marcia Williams has taken Shakespeare and turned it into child friendly format. I was a little disappointed that the web page didn't tell me which plays were in this version, so therefore I haven't been able to use it as I wanted Romeo and Juliet - which is not in this book.

Imagination runs riot
The format of this is a little different from most of of Marcia Wiliams' treatment of famous tales. Though done with all the author's accustomed energy and verve, the usual format of narrative strip cartoons supplemented by the characters' speech bubbles has a third dimension provided by comments from the "audience" at the Globe Theatre, London.

This keeps the young reader on his/her toes and provides a super intro to Shakespeare. The illustrations are interesting in that the author has chosen a distinctive colour palette for each play - thus As You Like It is done predominantly in oranges and blues, Antony and Cleo in orange and turquoise, Twelfth Night in pink, green and plum, The Merchant of Venice in cherry and grey etc.

No child could fail to be stimulated by these tales, and could not want to pursue them at at deeper level when older.