Customer Reviews

Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture

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Anyone interested in Shakespeare and Orson Welles will want to buy this extremely useful and unusually thoughtful book. It is quite compact and offers chapters on all of the Shakespeare films Welles made. Anderegg argues tht Welles sought to democratize Shakespeare through the use of mass media such as records, radio, and film. there's a wonderful opening chapter about an I Love Lucy episode with Welles and a stunning conclusion about Welles as a star author (Anderegg contrast him with Bertolt Brecht). The book is very well-written and very accesible. Ideal for classroom use.

This was a wonderful book. It examined Welles' career not in light of Citizen Kane but through his Shakespeare projects. This cast Welles in a very different light for me.

Welles tried to make Shakespeare accessible. To him, Shakespeare should not be something in a glass case at a museum. Thus he kept shaking up the Shakespeare plays he adapted. And critics hated him for it. His film of "Macbeth" in particular got raked over the coals.

The book shows how Shakespeare was regarded in American culture in the 20th Century and how Welles tried to shape that attitude. It is a slim book, but it gives the reader very much to think about in an accessible, jargon-free way.