Studying Shakespeare: A Guide to the Plays - Paperback

by Laurie Maguire (Author)

This engaging book draws on all of Shakespeare's plays to show they can still be used as a guide to life.

• Introduces beginning students and general readers to Shakespeare's plays by highlighting the connections between the issues addressed by the plays and those of our own time.


• Focuses on the characters, situations and stories in Shakespeare which are still familiar today.


• Shows how Shakespeare's plays illustrate some of life's most familiar stories - love and obsession, parents and children, sex and politics, suffering and revenge


• Makes Shakespeare's plays accessible to the widest possible audience.

Back Jacket

This beginner's guide to Shakespeare reminds us that the main reason people still watch and read Shakespeare's plays is because they identify with the characters and situations depicted in them.

Drawing on all of Shakespeare's plays, Laurie Maguire shows how they illustrate some of life's most familiar stories - love and obsession, parents and children, sex and politics, suffering and revenge.

The book groups the stories into five broad categories, moving from those concerned with personal identity to those dealing with romance and marriage, family life, politics, and public life. This thematic arrangement makes the plays accessible to the widest possible audience, and helps readers grasp the connection between the issues addressed by the plays and those of our own time.

Author Biography

Laurie Maguire is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and a Lecturer in English at Oxford University. She is the author of Shakespearean Suspect Texts (1996) and co-editor of Textual Formations and Reformations (1998), among other publications.