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    Y is for Yorick
    Y is for Yorick
    Y is for Yorick
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Y is for Yorick

    By Jennifer Adams

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    About this ebook

    The perfect gift for Shakespeare fans, Y Is for Yorick is full of witty references to the Bard's unforgettable plots and characters. Readers will love perusing the cheeky illustrations and reading such entries as "J is for Juliet. Juliet teaches all young girls that if you truly love someone, wholly and completely, it will be the death of you."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGibbs Smith
    Release dateFeb 1, 2011
    ISBN9781423615385
    Y is for Yorick
    Author

    Jennifer Adams

    Jennifer Adams is an award winning designer, author, and TV personality. She is the founder and CEO of a multimillion-dollar international home furnishings company. Everyday, Jennifer and her team work to create high quality yet attainable products that reflect her own Southern California easy, breezy, effortless style. A graduate of Harvard Business School OPM Program for entrepreneurship, Jennifer continues to incorporate the eight practices in this book, all which have contributed to the phenomenal growth of her business, Home by Jennifer Adams®.

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    • 5/5
      Perfect for the Shakespeare lover. Quirky an spot-on.
    • 4/5
      I won this title through the FirstReads program (thank you! thank you! thank you!) and finally picked it up to peruse last night. I'm so glad I did! Jennifer Adams did a great job with it. Many of Shakespeare's better-known (and a few lesser-known, even two who she claims "no one remembers". Reading it was a hoot! I'd quote my favorite parts, but that would be giving away more than half of the book...the ABC part, at least. The last section of the book is a brief (1-2 page) synopsis of the plays mentioned, twenty, I believe in all. It's a nice refresher if you haven't read them in a while (or never did). In all, I really enjoyed this book and actually will bring it into my classroom--though it definitely will stay on the teacher's desk and I'll only read very select parts out loud (like, for example, Julius Caesar, who was "the most important leader in the history of Rome. But he was not very good at choosing friends" or Cleopatra, who "cornered the market on drama queen for all time.")

    Book preview

    Y is for Yorick - Jennifer Adams

    Y is for Yorick

    A Slightly Irreverent Shakespearean ABC Book for Grown-Ups

    Jennifer Adams

    Illustrations by Hugh D’Andrade

    Y is for Yorick

    Digital Edition v1.0

    Text © 2011 Jennifer Adams

    Illustrations © 2011 Hugh D’Andrade

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

    Gibbs Smith, Publisher

    PO Box 667

    Layton, UT 84041

    Orders: 1.800.835.4993

    www.gibbs-smith.com

    ISBN: 978-1-4236-1538-5

    For Nate, my favorite prince of Denmark

    Thanks to Lisa Anderson, my skilled and incredibly patient editor; Ron Stucki, my lovely and brilliant designer; and Hugh D’Andrade, for amazing illustrations.

    Y is for Yorick

    Table of Contents

    Why Shakespeare Still Reigns ABCs Play Summaries

    Why Shakespeare Still Reigns

    In 1592, Shakespeare was called by contemporary Robert Greene an upstart crow. Voltaire called the play Hamlet a crude and barbarous piece, which the lowest rabble in France and Italy would not stand for and the product of the imagination of a drunken savage. Yet with these notable exceptions, we are hard-pressed to find anyone who does not consider Shakespeare a genius. (Besides, keep in mind that Voltaire was French!) In fact, Shakespeare is fairly universally acknowledged as the greatest writer who ever lived. His plays have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. For more than four hundred years, the best writers and thinkers of the world tend to side with Sir Laurence Oliver, who said of Shakespeare that he is the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.

    William Shakespeare was born in 1564, lived in London and Stratford, and died at the age of fifty-two. He wrote thirty-seven plays, 164 sonnets, and several long poems. Unlike many of the greatest writers, he was successful in his own lifetime. The Bard was a working writer and actor who understood the balance between art and finance, a question artists and producers still struggle with to this day. Shakespeare’s work appealed to the masses as well as the elite: his plays were meant to be enjoyed by both prostitutes and the queen. He wrote with brilliance, depth, humor, clarity, and humanity.

    Shakespeare borrowed plots and story lines, and his work is indeed the best example of plagiarism that is so elevated by the borrower that it becomes much more celebrated and memorable than the original. Many of his story lines were taken from earlier sources. He borrowed from history and from the writing of Petrarch. King Lear is based on the story of King Leir in Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. One of Prospero’s speeches in The Tempest is taken word for word from a speech by Medea in Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses. Shakespeare’s retellings influence how we remember history as well. For example, we think of Macbeth as a murderer who was disastrous as a king, when actual history suggests Macbeth was a fair and able ruler. And history says Richard III had no physical deformities, but because of Shakespeare we remember him as a hunchback.

    The plays of Shakespeare have become ingrained in us as part of our cultural identity. Who does not think of Romeo and Juliet as the greatest tragic lovers of all time? Doesn’t think of Et tu, Brute? as the line of true betrayal? Doesn’t see Hamlet as the ultimate contemplator of our existence in his speech: "To be or not to be, that is

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