Reviews for Thinking Shakespeare: A How-To Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable with the Bard (SparkNotes Edition)

The average rating for Thinking Shakespeare: A How-To Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable with the Bard (SparkNotes Edition) based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-10-25 00:00:00 Terry Anschultz For anyone who wants to have a more clear understanding of Shakespeare, but especially for actors, Barry Edelstein's "Thinking Shakespeare" is the greatest resource I've found. If you're an actor, you've probably received that folio packet which I think is public domain. It's full of all kinds of folio rules about iambic pentameter, punctuation, spelling and more. However, at around 15 pages, it's crude to say the least. I received this from directors or teachers at least three times in my struggles to understand the meaning and the application of Shakespeare, and it just didn't help...at all. I've been studying Shakespeare with a couple of amazing teachers who use this very book as their core curriculum, and my relationship with Shakespeare has completely transformed. I love it now. I can't get enough. I used to think it was boring and felt so scared whenever I had to do a monologue because I just didn't know what I was doing. I felt stupid. No more, sweet Hamlet. No more. Edelstein fills what is essentially a text book with humor, extensive and relatable examples of all those tricky folio rules from Shakespeare's most well known plays and exercises that, with time and dedication, teach the actor literally how to think his/her way through the daunting text. Shakespeare is difficult because it's brilliant. An actor must be brilliant to tell the story. With this book as a tool, an actor has a fighting chance. My suggestion is read this book at a comfortable pace and follow through on every single one of Edelstein's exercises. It may take a long time, but it will be so worth it.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-20 00:00:00 Miguel Guerrero The other night, I was helping my son to memorize the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy. The process was intense, because in order to speak Hamlet's words, my son had to think Hamlet's thoughts, and those are dark thoughts indeed. It was eerie to consider that these words, penned by one man hundreds of years ago, have been repeated somewhere on this planet perhaps every day since. Powerful stuff. Like a virus. After witnessing this one manifestation of this one soliloquy, I was drawn to read, Thinking Shakespeare. Having read Thinking Shakespeare, well, I'm just eager to read more Shakespeare, and witness more manifestations of his work on the stage.