Shakespeare Findings from Borders

Last night when I was feeling pessimistic, the opposite of the area of focus for this blog discussing Shakespeare, I drove to Borders. There is something about the convention and novelty of bookstores associated with childhood that I find comforting. Upon arriving and not knowing what I wanted to look at I decided to just walk around the whole store and look for something that caught my attention. You see where this is going? Well due to the fact that Shakespeare is playing such a large role in my life this semester his name sticks out to me. Right after the literature section I hit the jackpot! So these are my finding from Borders, there are only a few and I am not sure if you will find them helpful but I can see them being helpful so here they are!

                                                   1.) Contested Will By: James Shapiro

    Initially I thought that this book was supporting the idea that William Shakespeare did not write the works of William Shakespeare but on further investigation I discovered the opposite. I am not sure who was curious about this but it could be a good source if you have not already discovered it.  It was written by man who was a Shakespeare professor at either Harvard or Yale for something like thirty-five years. So he does acknowledge that he might be biased but I for one like this case of it.

                                   2.) The Arden Dictionary of Shakespeare Quotations

     This was just fun. It was like a dictionary of all words Shakespeare. This could be good for those of you interested in Shakespeare's words. It was really fun to look through and I bet that  there is a copy of it or something like it on campus! 

                             3.) Shakespeare: The Invention of The Human, By: Harold Bloom

     This is a book that Professor Burton recommended to me and I did not have to much time to explore it before the store closed but my bit of advice here has to do with purchasing. In store this is a twenty-two dollar book, on Amazon I found it for less than three. The moral of the store? Use your head, you are in college and while your brain power is expanding your wallets are deflating. 

4.) I did not write this title down because I was indignant but it had something to do with Anne Hathaway Shakespeare's Wife and the negative aspects of her life with him. The first one I saw for example had to do with her sitting at home while he disappeared for years. I have a few thoughts on this. One she was twenty-six when they married and I have heard it said that for William she seemed like a safe woman to fool around with because of her age, she was supposedly dried up, an old maid, not a viable choice for reproduction. In other words at least she had someone to wait for. The previous comment has to do with the Renaissance time and should not be applied to our time. And two, who is to say that he did not come home and visit? It has not been proven that he didn't there was just no public record of him between those dates. I make reference as to how I might use this source in my previous post but that does not mean that I own the rights for the purpose of this class. Jump on it if you think it will help you! 

This experience worthwhile and informative for me and I am now more inclined to go to the library even though the volume of books there is somewhat intimidating.