Download Julius Caesar Folger Shakespeare Library William Shakespeare Dr Barbara A Mowat Paul Werstine PhD Books

Product details Series Folger Shakespeare Library Mass Market Paperback 288 pages Publisher Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition (January 1, 2004) Language English ISBN-10 9780743482745 ISBN-13 978-0743482745 ASIN 0743482743

Julius Caesar Folger Shakespeare Library William Shakespeare Dr Barbara A Mowat Paul Werstine PhD Books Reviews

• I purchased these to augment our classroom copies of Julius Caesar for my struggling, ESL, and disinterested readers. It has made a difference in their level of understanding and they are anxious to participate in class read-aloud now that they "get it."
• There are no spaces in the text, and the modern English is not in a column next to the old English. The printed version has the modern English on the page next to the old English. I don't see anyplace where I can "return" the e-book.
• The paper edition doesn't have any spaces between the speakers, so it is difficult to read, even if it were written in a language one could easily understand. There are absolutely NO NOTES for that define and explain some of the more obscure vocabulary and written expressions. It is not helpful at all for a new reader of Shakespeare or a reader who only read it in high school unwillingly. Of course that might be the reason it sells for the price it does!
• If you are just starting to read Shakespeare on your own, and want a good starting point, look no further than this Folger Library treatment of his great political drama.
  
  It was the Folger edition of "Julius Caesar" that grabbed me back in the ninth grade, when I was failing all my classes and hardly hitting my assigned reading. This has it all Indelible characters, hard-hitting action scenes, tricky "what-would-you-do" moments, and text that you can grasp readily thanks to the Folger practice of laying out the tricky parts on the opposite page. Guess what There aren't so many "tricky parts" in "Julius Caesar" as you might expect from reading "Hamlet" or even "Midsummer Night's Dream."
  
  There are many, many great lines, some quite famous and instantly recognizable to anyone with a bit of cultural awareness. "Beware the ides of March!' "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves..." "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look." "...it was Greek to me." "Cowards die many times before their deaths;/The valiant never taste of death but once..." And that's just in the first two acts.
  
  The great speech everyone remembers, the one which begins "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," is especially powerful when read in context. It is delivered by the play's most fascinating character, Mark Antony. At this point in the play, the title character is [Big Spoiler Coming] terminally indisposed, and most of the people who have been doing the talking are fine with this. Then Mark Antony comes on stage, and with that line, and the next several that follow, he effects a tremendous turnabout in the storyline, among the most memorable ever devised. It's a riveting, passionate, and snarkishly satirical scene, as the cynical-yet-somehow-admirable Mark Antony winds up a crowd of passive Romans into complete bloodlust.
  
  The scenes are sharp like that throughout, something that can't always be said of Shakespeare. He's often ambiguous, but seldom as effectively as here. The dilemma of Brutus, who sees a man whose power is going to his head, is one we can relate to, as we see that side of Caesar, too, but is the prescribed cure better than the sickness, or is Brutus just the wrong physician? We get one unalloyed villain in Cassius, whose very name is snakelike and who seems to operate on Brutus like a proto-Iago, but different readers will come away with different perspectives on his plotting.
  
  Probably written in 1599, just as Shakespeare was entering his decade of greatest accomplishment, "Julius Caesar" may be with "Romeo & Juliet" and "MacBeth" the safest bet for a high-school or junior-high-school English teacher. I can't think of an easier play of Shakespeare's to read, or maybe even enjoy. Add to that the levels of deception, subtle characterization, and satirical realpolitik to be discovered, and you have a play that satisfies as much as it draws you in.
• How can one describe Shakespeare's plays? They're fabulous and for that reason I purchased this book for my sophomores who struggle with the wording. This will be a big help as they read the play. I had to laugh. Shakespeare has never written a "Predictable" play. Yes, there are omens that foreshadow what is to come but the reader never knows how or when it will happen. This is a very helpful book that transcribes Shakespeare's play in modern language.
• I have a pretty typical son except that he is homeschooled. Sourcebooks' Macbeth left my son with a deep understanding of Shakespeare and his style of writing; so much so that he asked for another for Christmas - and yes - now he is enjoying "Julius Ceasar" for his own sake! If you or your child has to read a Shakespeare book for whatever reason, make sure you either use or have for reference the Sourcebooks version - they explain words and phrases in terms of their meaning at the time - sentence by sentence. The CD-Rom, which comes with it, allows you to hear sections you may be struggling with as they were performed in famous Shakespeare productions. Also, just FYI, out of several Macbeth movies, we very much liked the BBC version extremely well performed, with beautiful Scottish settings and realistic costumes (we rented through Netflix).
• I absolutely love the recording! It matches perfectly the text I use in my classroom and adds so much to instruction! The students enjoy the natural sounding voices because they don't sound as if they are JUST reading. I highly recommend this product.
• I purchased this with the other titles ("Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Romeo & Juliet" to help my remedial English students (which included a bunch of ESLL students) to understand Shakespeare. I liked that the actual text was included with the manga style; however, some scenes are not included, and a cast of characters would've been nice to have, especially for students who are unfamiliar with the play in the first place. Overall, I'm satisfied with my purchase. Oh, and my students all left remedial English with a clear understanding of Shakespeare's tragedies. )