About the Book:

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is perhaps the most famous as well as strangest and most inventive poet and dramatist of all time. Although dead for hundreds of years, he is everywhere — in books and movies, in love and war, in the public world of politics and the intimacies of everyday speech. What makes his writings so persistently powerful and fascinating? The most effective way of exploring this question is to focus on what (as far as we are able to determine) he actually wrote.

In How to Read Shakespeare author and scholar Nicholas Royle conveys the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's work through a series of unusually close readings. His primary concern is with letting the reader experience — anew or for the first time — the extraordinary pleasure and stimulation of reading Shakespeare. There are extracts from some of Shakespeare's most popular plays, including The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

What people say:

"If there is today a Prospero who can conjure up the three ageless magics of Shakespeare – the magic of his words as 'meddling lumps', the omnipotence of his magical thinking, his magic desire to invent a totally new use of language – it is the marvellous Nicholas Royle." — Helene Cixous

About the Author:

Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex and an editor of the Oxford Literary Review. He is the author of numerous essays, reviews, and books, including How to Read Shakespeare; has participated in many interviews, radio talks, and published discussions; has published a number of short fictions; and has delivered many invited lectures.