SuitabookMichael Rosen’s Pocket Shakespeare: A Beginner’s Guide to the Best Bits of the Bard
Michael Rosen
- Reading
- Try dipping into one theme or speech at a time rather than treating the book as a continuous story. Read the selected words aloud, check the accompanying explanation, and compare your response with the illustration.
- Themes
- Shakespearean language and interpretation: Selected quotations and speeches are accompanied by Rosen’s commentary, introductions and interpretations of Shakespearean vocabulary, with illustrations by Chris Riddell. The presentation treats the passages as material to explore and understand, rather than assuming readers already know the plays.
- Strong emotions and human behaviour: The themed selection includes love and heartbreak alongside jealousy, anger, greed, mourning and sadness. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Magic, superstition and war: The book groups selected Shakespearean material around magic and superstition, and a reader account also identifies war among its themes. The subjects are introduced for exploration, but there is insufficient detail to determine whether supernatural ideas or wartime actions are endorsed, challenged or simply represented.
- Worth knowing
- Some themes may invite discussion beyond wordplay, including heartbreak, mourning, jealousy, anger, greed, war, ageing, magic and superstition. The book also includes Shakespearean insults, so tone and meaning may be worth unpacking together.