Alas, Poor Yorick is a darkly funny first-person account of the life of the most famous fool in all literature, one we have known as but a skull in the hands of a brooding Hamlet. From that familiar graveyard setting, the novel’s Yorick speaks to us, angry that Hamlet had forgotten him all this time, hurt that Hamlet never wondered what had become of his witty boyhood companion. Yorick’s clever, compassionate tale tells us of his cruel childhood and father-inflicted deformity, of his passionate love for an Elsinore servant, Philia, of his training and trickery in order to become royal jester. Most of all, of why he ultimately swears revenge on Hamlet’s father, the humorless and self-righteous king of Denmark, and how he schemes to destroy him. The court, in fact, receives three sets of visitors -- King Lear and his Fool, Othello and Iago, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth -- each inspiring Yorick to a different mode of vengeance against the Danish king, each with its own tragic-comic results. Alas, Poor Yorick is a bold, bawdy twist on the Bard, a poetic tale of infinite jest and human frailty for all who love Hamlet in particular and Shakespeare in general.

This book is historical adventure fiction with dramatic interest--it's the "backstory" to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" -- set in Elsinor Castle two decades before the events of the play, and featuring the political affairs and romantic entanglements that will lead inexorably to the events of the Tragedy of the Prince Hamlet.It has treason, murder, illicit love affairs, humor, pathos, and five jesters. And a sense of grim foreboding that mirrors the Bard's own, as one by one, jesters die in mysterious ways.We think it will be extremely popular with the middle-school to college age groups; with all Shakespeare fans; with fans of mysteries, adventure, and historical fiction; and with Yarbro's large loyal following. The author's university degree is in Theater, and her love for the field comes through clearly.

Full of fresh speeches from Shakespeare's plays. Ideal for actors of all ages and experience.

In The Stage Life of Props, Andrew Sofer aims to restore to certain props the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that these props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater. Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice. While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a sweeping history of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form. Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College. He was previously a stage director.

365 Devotions pairing Scripture from the King James Bible and lines from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Includes little known history, curiosities, and facts about words introduced or used in new ways by Shakespeare.