Julius Caesar (Sourcebooks Shakespeare; Book & CD) [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author), Dominique Raccah (Editor), Marie Macaisa (Editor), Robert Ormsby (text editor) (Editor), David Bevington (Contributor), Peter Holland (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2006

Experience the Ides of March like never before through our edition of Julius Caesar, with more than 60 minutes of audio on the CD including key scenes and excerpts from great performances past and present.

IN THE BOOK:
Photographs from notable productions including:
-the 1953 movie by Joseph L. Mankiewicz starring Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, James Mason as Brutus and John Gielgud as Cassius
-contemporary American productions with Morgan Freeman as Casca, Al Pacino as Mark Antony and Martin Sheen as Brutus

HEAR 30 GREAT SCENES ON AUDIO CD
-Herbert Beerbohm Tree from 1906
-the landmark Mercury Theatre production from 1938 starring Orson Welles
-modern scenes starring Richard Dreyfuss, Stacey Keach and Adrian Lester

NARRATED BY SIR DEREK JACOBI

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame. One of the central figures in performance-oriented Shakespeare criticism, he has also edited many Shakespeare plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Oxford Shakespeare series.

David Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. A renowned text scholar, he has edited several Shakespeare editions including the Bantam Shakespeare in individual paperback volumes, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, (Longman, 2003), and Troilus and Cressida (Arden, 1998). He teaches courses in Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, and Medieval Drama.

Dominique Raccah is founder, president, and publisher of Sourcebooks, a leading independent publisher outside of Chicago. Today Sourcebooks publishes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She is the series editor of Poetry Speaks and the Sourcebooks Shakespeare.

Marie Macaisa is a student and long-time fan of Shakespeare's works, leaving her previous career in high-tech to become the series editor of the Sourcebooks Shakespeare. She contributes the Cast Speaks essays for all volumes, writes the script and produces the accompanying audio, and is at work the upcoming titles in the series.

Robert Ormsby received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2005. Besides essays on Canadian performances of classical drama (Toronto Slavic Quarterly, May, 2003; Shakespeare Bulletin, Summer 2004), his publications include Descriptive Entries of Folger Library collection prompt-books for Coriolanus productions by John Philip Kemble, Samuel Phelps and Henry Irving (The Shakespeare Collection) and a review of Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance by W.B. Worthen. (Renaissance Quarterly, Summer 2004).

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks MediaFusion (April 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402206879
• ISBN-13: 978-1402206870
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #763,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Because of Sourcebooks my 15 yo son asked for more Shakespeare for Christmas!, January 3, 2008

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M. Duff - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Julius Caesar (Sourcebooks Shakespeare; Book & CD) (Paperback)

I have a pretty typical son except that he is homeschooled. Sourcebooks' Macbeth left my son with a deep understanding of Shakespeare and his style of writing; so much so that he asked for another for Christmas - and yes - now he is enjoying "Julius Ceasar" for his own sake! If you or your child has to read a Shakespeare book for whatever reason, make sure you either use or have for reference the Sourcebooks version - they explain words and phrases in terms of their meaning at the time - sentence by sentence. The CD-Rom, which comes with it, allows you to hear sections you may be struggling with as they were performed in famous Shakespeare productions. Also, just FYI, out of several Macbeth movies, we very much liked the BBC version: extremely well performed, with beautiful Scottish settings and realistic costumes (we rented through Netflix).