
How to Read and Understand Shakespeare
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Narrated by:
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Marc C. Conner
About this listen
Shakespeare's works are among the greatest of humanity's cultural expressions and, as such, demand to be experienced and understood.
But, simply put, Shakespeare is difficult. His language and culture - those of Elizabethan England - are greatly different from our own, and his poetry, thick with metaphorical imagery and double meanings, can be hard to penetrate.
Yet the keys to understanding Shakespeare are written into the plays themselves. If you can learn to recognize the playwright's own clues, you'll become able to engage meaningfully with his language, to follow the plot structures and themes that drive his plays, and to track the development of his characters.
Over the course of 24 lectures, this innovative and penetrating exploration of Shakespeare's plays reveals how to enter Shakespeare's dramatic world, how to grasp what's happening in any of his plays, and how to enjoy them fully both on the page and the stage.
Under Professor Conner's expert guidance, shaped by decades of studying and performing Shakespeare, you learn more than 40 interpretive tools, drawn from the texts themselves, that give you direct insight into the plays. These guiding principles allow you to follow the narratives of the plays as they unfold, with a clear understanding of how the plays function and fit together.
The professor also reveals fascinating details of Shakespeare's era, which shed further light on the plays and the way his contemporary audiences perceived them.
This course builds the skills that allow you to reach your own understanding of the plays - to deeply comprehend Shakespeare's transcendent poetic language, the spellbinding world of his great characters and stories, and his revelatory reflections on human experience.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©2013 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2013 The Great CoursesFeatured Article: All the World's a Stage—The Best Shakespeare Plays in Audio
If there’s one writer whose work translates spectacularly to audio format, it’s the Bard. Hearing Shakespeare’s dialog masterfully performed by professionals with the correct emphasis and tone can make all the difference in catching every clever joke and innuendo, picking up on subtle foreshadowing, and sometimes even understanding the plot itself. Here are our choices for the best Shakespeare audiobooks to add to your library today.
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No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.
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Same Material Different Title
- By rkeinc on 09-21-14
By: Steven Novella, and others
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The Italians before Italy: Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean
- By: Kenneth R. Bartlett, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Kenneth R. Bartlett
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Original Recording
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Take a riveting tour of the Italian peninsula, from the glittering canals of Venice to the lavish papal apartments and ancient ruins of Rome. In these 24 lectures, Professor Bartlett traces the development of the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, showing how the modern nation of Italy was forged out of the rivalries, allegiances, and traditions of a vibrant and diverse people.
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A useful survey, just what I wanted
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-07-16
By: Kenneth R. Bartlett, and others
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Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature
- By: Pamela Bedore, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Pamela Bedore
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
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Can literature change our real world society? At its foundation, utopian and dystopian fiction asks a few seemingly simple questions aimed at doing just that. Who are we as a society? Who do we want to be? Who are we afraid we might become? When these questions are framed in the speculative versions of Heaven and Hell on earth, you won't find easy answers, but you will find tremendously insightful and often entertaining perspectives.
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A very enjoyable and educational audiobook
- By NH on 04-06-17
By: Pamela Bedore, and others
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Shakespeare: The Tragedies
- Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Ian McKellen, Diana Rigg, Prunella Scales, and others
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Power, excess and betrayal are played out in these tragedies that continue to hold modern resonance. Performed by an incredible array of the 20th century’s greatest actors, Marlowe alumni including Ian McKellen, Diana Rigg, Derek Jacobi and Prunella Scales can be heard in these recordings.
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This isn’t the creator’s fault but if you have a hearing loss you probably won’t be able to enjoy this collection
- By AmericanDreamer on 12-04-20
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The Ethics of Aristotle
- By: The Great Courses, Father Joseph Koterski S.J.
- Narrated by: Father Joseph Koterski S.J.
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
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In this 12-lecture meditation on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, you'll uncover the clarity and ethical wisdom of one of humanity's greatest minds. Father Koterski shows how and why this great philosopher can help you deepen and improve your own thinking on questions of morality and leading the best life. The aim of these lectures is to provide you with a clear and thoughtful introduction to Aristotle as a moral philosopher.
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Father Joseph is awesome!
- By DeeDeen on 04-08-17
By: The Great Courses, and others
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Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
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Great analysis
- By So far so good no issues yet. Seeing how they work with my golf simulator on 02-05-25
By: Harold Bloom
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Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science
- By: Robert Sapolsky, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: The Great Courses
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
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Understanding our humanity - the essence of who we are - is one of the deepest mysteries and biggest challenges in modern science. Why do we have bad moods? Why are we capable of having such strange dreams? How can metaphors in our language hold such sway on our actions? As we learn more about the mechanisms of human behavior through evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and other related fields, we're discovering just how intriguing the human species is.
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Somewhat Interesting but not Quite as Advertised
- By Adam J Duhame on 10-05-13
By: Robert Sapolsky, and others
What listeners say about How to Read and Understand Shakespeare
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- Daniel Joshua Rubin
- 04-14-16
Exceptional Introduction to the Bard
If you could sum up How to Read and Understand Shakespeare in three words, what would they be?
Intelligent, understated, authentic
Any additional comments?
What makes this lecture exceptional is the tone Conner strikes. He's a nice guy, with deep-seated passion, talking to reasonable, intelligent people about how to better understand Shakespeare. Shakespearean professors/lecturers often descend into the most noxious, self-involved, pretentious blather. This course helps one better appreciate just how funny, thoughtful, intelligent, emotionally complex, moving and relevant these works were and remain to this day.
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- Quintessential
- 01-26-21
Reawakens the Brilliance of Shakespeare
Not having read Shakespeare since high school, I have found the time to return to great literature in my retirement. This series of lectures has elegantly introduced me to the tools that the professor brings to the understanding of Shakespeare's plays. I will now eagerly delve into stage performances and the written page of The Bard.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-10-21
Finally
Shakespeare has always confused me to the point where I have abandoned several attempts to see what everyone is talking about. This series has taught me so much about the life, time, history, and meanings behind these plays and this prolific author. I can't wait to dive back in and use what I leaned in this course to understand these plays more deeply!
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- Alexander
- 06-30-21
A great course for anyone interested in Shakespeare
Fantastic course. Prof. Conner breaks it down in a way that anyone can understand it. I couldn’t imagine having to wait an entire semester to get though this. I binged it in the course of a few days.
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- Doc S. Hodges
- 05-11-21
So much interesting information!
I'm a long time lover of all things Bard. Still, every chapter added perspective and corrected long held errors and assumptions. From historical context to different ways to see old topics this title delivers. I've had this title for years and listened to it several times now.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-18-23
Handy tools to analyze Shakespeare in Works
This is a definitely a fantastic introductory course to understand Shakespeare. Thanks for making the works less daunting with handy tools to analyze them.
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- Chris
- 06-09-16
Shakespeare Unveiled...
I have been a fan of the Bard since I was eleven. I have read all of his works and took this course to see if there was anything newly theorized that I might learn. I chuckled when the author told of forty tools that could be applied to probe for deeper understanding, so I was NOT prepared to learn so much and be entertained so fully. This course takes so little time, but if you MUST read a Shakespearian for some course requirement at any level, you MUST listen to this course first!
You will find the value and pleasure that you otherwise would have missed, and that would be tragic. I only wish this course had been available some sixty years ago. I am now embarking on revisiting all of the plays in the chronological order in which they were written. It's going to be a pleasure trip on which I invite you to join.
- Chris McGrath, author of Remote Control
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- Lee Wenzel
- 06-30-18
very enlightening
Got even more interesting the farther I went. Very well conceived. Should be a prequisite to attend a Shakespeare play.
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- Michael
- 09-12-18
A couldn’t-be-bettered course.
I wish I had had this text when I was a student. Light-bulbs go on right and left, the tools for understanding are practical and efficacious, and layer upon layer of unending riches is deftly peeled back.
I have got more out of this course than from a lifetime’s dilettante engagement with Shakespeare.
This will be my go-to recommendation from here on in.
Bravo, Prof. Conner!
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- juleptrader
- 02-27-23
One of the better Great Courses
A really wide ranging and captivating tour through Shakespeare’s plays. Hard to find fault as a general survey.
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