Living with Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors

by Susannah Carson, Harold Bloom (Foreword by)

Overview

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites forty actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Camille Paglia on teaching the plays to actors, F. Murray Abraham on gaining an audience's sympathy for Shylock, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare's ideas through performance, Germaine Greer on the playwright's home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, Brian Cox on social conflict in his time and ours, Jane Smiley on transposing King Lear to Iowa in A Thousand Acres, and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare's language. Together these essays provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare's works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced by creative professionals and lay enthusiasts alike.

F. Murray Abraham ● Isabel Allende ● Cicely Berry ● Eve Best ● Eleanor Brown ● Stanley Cavell ● Karin Coonrod ● Brian Cox ● Peter David ● Margaret Drabble ● Dominic Dromgoole ● David Farr ● Fiasco Theater ● Ralph Fiennes ● Angus Fletcher ● James Franco ● Alan Gordon ● Germaine Greer ● Barry John ● James Earl Jones ● Sir Ben Kingsley ● Maxine Hong Kingston ● Rory Kinnear ● J. D. McClatchy ● Conor McCreery ● Tobias Menzies ● Joyce Carol Oates ● Camille Paglia ● James Prosek ● Richard Scholar ● Sir Antony Sher ● Jane Smiley ● Matt Sturges ● Julie Taymor ● Eamonn Walker ● Dame Harriet Walter ● Bill Willingham ● Jess Winfield

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307742919
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/09/2013
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.34(w) x 7.86(h) x 1.07(d)
Lexile:	1230L (what's this?)

About the Author

Susannah Carson is an American author, editor, and academic. She received her Ph.D. from Yale, after earning graduate degrees at Paris III, La Sorbonne-Nouvelle and Lyon II, L'Université des Lumières. Her first edited volume of literary essays was A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Authors on Why We Read Jane Austen. Her work has appeared in scholarly publications, newspapers, and magazines.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpted from the Foreword
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Living with Shakespeare"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Susannah Carson.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents
 
Foreword: Who Else Is There? by Harold Bloom
Introduction: The Tygers Hart by Susannah Carson
 
Bill Willingham, A Little Monkey Business
Antony Sher, Speaking Shakespeare
Camille Paglia, Teaching Shakespeare to Actors
Ben Kingsley, The Architecture of Shakespeare’s Ideas
Cicely Berry, King Lear in Retrospect
Tobias Menzies, Method and Madness
Rory Kinnear, Character and Conundrum
Matt Sturges, I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw . . .
James Earl Jones, The Sun God
Eamonn Walker, Othello in Love
Barry John, Othello: A Play in Black and White
Jess Winfield, Re-revising Shakespeare
Brian Cox, “I Say it is the Moon”
Richard Scholar, Trial By Theatre, or, Free-Thinking in Julius Caesar
Stanley Cavell, Saying in The Merchant of Venice
F. Murray Abraham, Searching for Shylock
Fiasco Theatre Company, Boldness Be My Friend
Karin Coonrod, Killing Shakespeare and Making My Play
Dominic Dromgoole, Playing Shakespeare at the Globe
Angus Fletcher, Tolstoy and the Shakespearean Gesture
J. D. McClatchy, The Red Scarf
Germaine Greer, Spring Imagery in Warwickshire
James Prosek, What’s in a Name? Or, Unnamed in the Forest
David Farr, The Sea Change
Alan Gordon, Looking for Illyria
Eleanor Brown, Shakespeare’s Siblings
Eve Best, “A Star Danced”
Harriet Walter, Two Loves, or the Eternal Triangle
Jane Smiley, Odd Man Out
Margaret Drabble, The Living Drama
Joyce Carol Oates, The Tragedy of the Imagination in Anthony and Cleopatra
Maxine Hong Kingston, War and Love
Peter David, On the Terrible and Unexpected Fate of the Star-Crossed Lovers
Conor McCreery, Shakespeare and Four-Colour Magic
Julie Taymor, Rough Magic
James Franco, My Own Private River
Isabel Allende, Enamoured with Shakespeare
 
Index of Plays and Characters
Permission Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

In this lively volume, an esteemed (and in many instances, famous) group of actors, directors, authors, academics, and others share insights and experiences about their relationship to Shakespeare’s literary and dramatic inheritance. Editor Carson’s eclecticism aims to break down the usual disciplinary borders and reduce the intimidating distance that often yawns between Shakespeare experts and general readers. The volume succeeds at this admirably across a compelling range of biographical accounts, actor’s insights, and production notes. Minor and major contradictions across essays, rather than dismaying, tend to be thought-provoking. The essays include much justified reverence, but also some healthy questioning, as well as limited forays into cross-cultural dialogues. Contributors overwhelmingly skew to American and British practitioners, with the odd Canadian, Australian, and South African. As the editor’s stated goal includes bringing together as many perspectives as possible, the nearly complete lack of non-native English speakers (Isabelle Allende proves the sole exception) is all the more disappointing. It would have been nice, for example, to hear from famed German director Tomas Ostermeier, whose extraordinary 2008 Schaubühne production of Hamlet receives passing mention. That said, the collection is a consistently stimulating read, which goes a great way toward illuminating the degree to which we all live already—and can live even further—with Shakespeare. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"An eclectic collection of pieces from an eclectic collection of writers about reading, directing, performing and adoring the Bard of Avon.... All will find light and warmth, comfort and companionship in these glowing pages." --Kirkus Reviews

"A cornucopia of delights for lovers of the Bard." --Booklist

"Lively.... Thought-provoking.... The collection is a consistently stimulating read, which goes a great way toward illuminating the degree to which we all live already--and can live even further--with Shakespeare." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

01/01/2014
Prominent actors and authors, for example, Joyce Carol Oates, James Franco, James Earl Jones, and Ralph Fiennes, talk about the influence of Shakespeare on their lives and careers. (LJ 3/1/13)

Library Journal

An eclectic collection of pieces from an eclectic collection of writers about reading, directing, performing and adoring the Bard of Avon. The included writers agree on a few things, including the dreadful experiences they had with Shakespeare in secondary school--although Margaret Drabble felt quite the opposite; an amusing alliterative example from comic-book artist Conor McCreery: "I was taught that Shakespeare should scare the shit out of me." Another bright thread in the weave of all the essays: an enduring affection for Shakespeare. Poet J.D. McClatchy calls him "the language's premier poet." Some contributors focus on individual plays. James Earl Jones has a long piece about his journeys with Othello; F. Murray Abraham writes about the complexities of Shylock; Eve Best compares Beatrice and Benedick with tennis legends Borg and McEnroe; Jane Smiley remembers how King Lear inspired A Thousand Acres; Joyce Carol Oates waxes academic about Antony and Cleopatra; Julie Taymor explains why she decided to cast Helen Mirren as "Prospera" in her film of The Tempest. Virtually all of the writers are generous to others in the Shakespeare world, although Jess Winfield has some unhappy words for Kenneth Branagh's film of Hamlet. A couple of writers talk about the wonders of producing and performing Shakespeare at the reconstructed Globe in London, while others defend the late "problem" play Cymbeline. Maxine Hong Kingston recalls teaching Romeo and Juliet to adolescents. The least engaging essays tend to be those written by academics; the most, by those who have a passion for performance and a love of the language. Other contributors include Camille Paglia, Isabelle Allende and James Franco. Bardolaters, thespians, logophiles and followers of the muses Thalia and Melpomene--all will find light and warmth, comfort and companionship in these glowing pages.

Kirkus Reviews