Shakespeare ― From Page To Stage: An Anthology Of The Most Popular Plays and Sonnets

This collection of twelve Shakespearean plays seeks to bring Shakespeare alive through a combination of innovative approaches that treat the plays as "scripts intended for performance" rather than as dull, dry, lifeless historical documents. This is the only book on the market that combines literary and theatrical techniques in a way that engages readers’ interest and helps present the characters, situations, and language of the plays in a personal, visceral, and exciting fashion. The twelve popular and frequently performed plays included are A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Part I, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest. For anyone interested in Shakespeare and his most popular and oft-performed plays. Teachers and producers/directors of dramatic productions will especially appreciate the attention given to each script's language, imagery, cultural/historical context, and staging possibilities.

School Affiliations: The author is a Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield, where he is also Director of University Honors Programs, Head Judo and Self-Defense Instructor, and Assistant Coach of the Women's Tennis Team. For the past twenty summers, he's also been Company Dramaturg for the Tony-Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah, where he's been on the design teams for over ninety professional productions of Shakespeare's plays. Since he has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Chicago, over thirty years' experience teaching the plays in the college classroom, many publications to his credit, and twenty years' service as a dramaturg in professional theatre, he has the expertise necessary to bring these plays to life for today's generation of students.

Honors and Awards: He's won a number of teaching awards, the most prestigious of which have been Carnegie Foundation United States Professor of the Year (1995), Outstanding Professor for the twenty-campus California State University System (1993), a $20,000 CSU Wang Family Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1999), and a recent California Senate Resolution honoring him for "twenty-two years of excellence in teaching" (2004).