Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the BardShakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this. It definitely lives up to the title and shows Shakespeare in context as something to be performed and watched rather than read in a classroom.

The language is laid bare and clearly explained in a way that I found easy to absorb. I particularly like the explanation of how Shakespeare used metre to give stage directions and show emotion. It probably helps that I’ve only recently finished an undergraduate creative writing course a few months ago. So now I get poetry in a way I didn’t a year ago. That said this book explains it much better than my dry academic texts did, which is really the whole premise.

Ignore the academics, snobs and critics.
Instead listen to him, see him in person
before reading a single line of Shakespeare.

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