CNN - Review: 'Shakespeare for Dummies'

(CNN) -- Shakespeare has an image problem. Generations of students have been force-fed his works. The plays lie limply on the printed page, encrusted in the dust of an ancient time and encrypted in the jargon of an ancient language. Shakespeare can seem incomprehensible, and therefore irrelevant.

The real problem, argue John Doyle and Ray Lischner, is that Shakespeare didn't write literature. He wrote popular entertainment. He intended his words to be spoken aloud from a stage, not read silently from a page. Their book "Shakespeare for Dummies" repeatedly urges the reader to give voice to the lines of iambic pentameter in order to gain a true appreciation of them.

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'Shakespeare for Dummies'?

Doyle and Lischner have a lot of experience with Shakespeare in his natural habitat. Doyle is a classically trained stage director and Lischner has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare plays. They understand the vitality of Shakespeare's words in a practical, rather than academic, sense. In their hands, the Bard comes alive.

"Shakespeare for Dummies" follows the format of the other books in the "Dummies" series (covering everything from Windows 98 to gardening). It's a reference book that can be used to look up information about something specific. It's also entertaining enough to be read straight through.

The book treats Shakespeare and his works with irreverent respect. The tone is set in the first section, a biography of the playwright. "We know almost nothing of William's childhood," Doyle and Lischner write, "but we do know that in November 1582, William married Anne Hathaway -- who was eight years his senior -- and they baptized their first child, Susanna, on May 26, 1583. You do the math."

Each section of the book offers new ways to understand the plays. There are discussions of Elizabethan current events, contexts for the "history" plays, and descriptions of performances at the original Globe Theatre. There's even a section on Shakespearean language. At last, someone has taken the trouble to explain the difference between "thee" and "ye". ("Ye is plural, or a synonym for you�thou appears only as a subject [of a sentence]. Use thee in the object of a sentence.")

The plays are divided into the three traditional categories -- comedies, histories and tragedies. The authors helpfully explain that the comedies aren't necessarily funny (although humor suffuses all the plays). The label "comedy" simply means that in the end, the hero isn't dead. But he probably does get married. They also explain why "King John" is considered a "history," but "Julius Caesar" is not.

There are brief summaries of all the Shakespeare plays. These would be particularly helpful to a student or teacher, but anyone can appreciate them. They are remarkably unstuffy.

"Romeo Montague loves Juliet Capulet, and Juliet loves Romeo. Neither is a free agent; the two cannot change teams without the owners' consent. You know that won't happen. In the modern era, their respective lawyers would meet to iron things out, but this is a Shakespearean tragedy. They only way to resolve this problem is through bloodshed and mayhem."

The authors have also devised "scorecards" for keeping track of the action within each play. These may prove useful as study guides, but the casual reader can easily skip over them.

The book concludes with a section on Shakespeare's "other" poetry, that not contained within the plays, and a section on where to see the plays performed. They list prominent Shakespeare festivals in the United States, as well as films and videos of the plays.

"Shakespeare for Dummies" is true to the intent of the Bard. While it is packed with information, it is, above all, entertaining.

L.D. Meagher is a senior writer at CNN Headline News. He has worked in broadcasting for 30 years.

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