mikerickson reviewed No Fear Shakespeare
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3 stars
Shakespeare has long been a cultural blindspot of mine, and I also don't tend to consume plays or dramas in published book form, so this was a novel reading experience for me. Luckily this version had the original text on the left page and a colloquial "modern" "translation" on the right, which ended up being more helpful than I should probably admit. There were multiple times I thought I got the gist of the original lines, only to realize I'd missed a negation somewhere and the passage in question actually meant the exact opposite.
As for the story itself, it read like low-stakes shenanigans and hijinks and misunderstandings with plenty of twists and turns. What got me though was how well the underlying humor has held up so many centuries later. There aren't really fourth wall breaks as we understand them, but there are characters putting on a play (within …
Shakespeare has long been a cultural blindspot of mine, and I also don't tend to consume plays or dramas in published book form, so this was a novel reading experience for me. Luckily this version had the original text on the left page and a colloquial "modern" "translation" on the right, which ended up being more helpful than I should probably admit. There were multiple times I thought I got the gist of the original lines, only to realize I'd missed a negation somewhere and the passage in question actually meant the exact opposite.
As for the story itself, it read like low-stakes shenanigans and hijinks and misunderstandings with plenty of twists and turns. What got me though was how well the underlying humor has held up so many centuries later. There aren't really fourth wall breaks as we understand them, but there are characters putting on a play (within this play) that do so in specific moments to the in-fiction audience in genuinely funny and (intentionally) stupid ways.
I'll likely give The Bard another go around in the future, but I definitely appreciated having these bumper lanes set up for me; I don't know that I would've enjoyed it as much without footnotes or additional context.
