Customer Reviews

The Reduced Shakespeare Co. presentsThe Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having nothing to read one night, I went down the hall to see if I could borrow a book from my friend Lindsay. She asked me if I liked Shakespeare. I replied that I did. She asked my if I liked Monty Python. Again, I replied in the affirmative. She pulled this book-The RSC's Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged)-off her shelf and handed it to me. Approximately one minute later, I was doubling over in paroxysms of laughter. This is a fantastic book full of vomit, bad Scottish accents, and insightful footnotes. I highly recommend it!

I have seen the Reduced Shakespeare Company perform this play and these guys are absolutely hysterical! This book provides a side splitting look at Shakespeare in all his glory and wretched excess.

Despise reading Shakespeare? Not to worry, as the RSC introduce you to Shakespeare in a variety of hilarious ways - via a cooking show, a football game, even a rap song! Indifferent to Shakespeare? Well, don't you worry either. The RSC cover the Bard's plays and sonnets in ways you'd never imagine, prior knowledge of the plot becomes unnecessary. Love reading Shakespeare? Then you'll still enjoy this book!

Plus, there are brilliantly clever footnotes (I've always hated them before, but I loved these!), funny forewords and humorous pictures. This book is brilliant and funny and worth every penny!! Buy it!

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is so funny!!! I would especially recomend this to highschoolers who find normal Shakespeare dry and boring. (that would be me) But my parents which are in their 40s also enjoyed this so its great for everyone. It makes shakespeare so much more interesting. They find very creative ways to retell Shakspeare's classic tales that are so funny and comical. I actually prefer the cd to the book though 'cause that is what they originally wrote the script for. THEY ARE HILARIOUS!!!

Comedy routine or inspired lunacy--whatever it is, this is the complete script of it, including the shortest "Hamlet" ever performed (and then done backwards for an encore), and "Titus Andronicus" as a cooking show. There's lots of fun between these covers for both the bardolator and the bard-hater, including a strange collection of annotations by a not-quite-so learned professor. Although some bits don't play as well on the page, it's not that long and at least you don't have to suffer through some inane laugh track.

If I were asked the funniest play that read I would answer "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)." Now I can answer the same if I were asked the funniest book I have ever read. All hail to Jess Winfield, Daniel Singer, and Adam Long! The gang has sucessfully written a very intricate and accurate book of William Shakespeare and his complete works. Wait -- they have distorted and sucessfully gutted some of the most perfect pieces of literature ever written and it is absolutely perfect. While reading the book make sure to take the time to read ALL the footnotes. You will really appreciate the tactful placement of every irreverent word and insite into the life and works of William Shakespeare that Jess, Adam, Jess, Daniel, and Jess have. Definately a must read and certianly a must see.

For anyone seeking complete exposure to the works of Shakespeare, there can be only one source of material, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company is not that source. For anyone seeking to laugh until it hurts, the Reduced Shakespeare Company is _precisely_ the ticket. Condensing all of Shakespeare (including the sonnets) to about 150 pages may seem an impossible task, but the authors succeed admirably, though one might question some of the scholarship along the way. Still, dispensing of "King Lear" in only a few lines during the course of a football game is a daunting task, and picking fault with the authors for failing to mention that he had three daughters seems to be nit-picking. And it's not as if the authors fail to dispell some of the myths that have permeated Shakespearean scholarship. As they aptly demonstrate, Othello was not "a place where you tie up boats."

The book is really a script for the RSC show, and while the show loses some of its hilarity in the book, the latter compensates by including all sorts of wonderfully funny footnotes. If you can't get out to see the "Compleat Works" live, do the next best thing and buy the book. Where else will you have the opportunity to read "Othello" as a rap song?

Absitively poselutely hilarious. To read or not to read. That is the question. The answer? To read! Although a few parts are just stupid, the rest of the book is funny. There are hilarious footnotes to the text and such funny content as: "The Othello Rap", "The Love Boat Goes to Verona", and "The Titus Andronicus Cooking Show" among others. I give you one word: Read!

A marvelous, idiotic work of sophomoric (or possibly even freshmanic) genius. A combination of an inside-and-out understanding of every nuance of Shakespeare that would abash a Yale professor, with the anarchic sensibility of all the best moments of "Duck Soup". If you ever get the chance to see them perform this, see it at any cost; otherwise, buy the book and treasure it. If you buy it and read it and it seems hopelessly dumb, get together with some friends and read it aloud and watch how it springs to savage gleeful life.

Five stars for the book itself, which is a hilarious sendup of Shakespeare. There is a relatively minor but annoying problem with the Kindle edition, though.

The book has lots of footnotes (funny ones, written in a mock-erudite, pseudo-scholarly style). For some reason, though, about 1/8 of the footnotes have a problem of some sort. Sometimes the text points to the wrong footnote and/or the "right" one is apparently omitted altogether. Some of the footnotes are multi-paragraph. The Kindle, for some reason, puts these on multiple pages. Which is OK, but sometimes the additional paragraphs are missing. For example, Footnote 68 purports to reveal new scholarship on the "Et tu, Brute" line: "Jess' research... indicated that the full dialogue between Caesar and Brutus went something like this:"

But that's the entirety of the Kindle footnote - no dialogue appears on that page, and Next Page goes to Footnote 69.

I own a copy of the book and the video, and I can't get enough of
either. The only thing funnier than seeing it performed is reading the script, and the only thing funnier than reading the script is reading the footnotes*. Bard buffs, read this and have a good laugh.

*See footnotes on the phrase "But love . . . "