Well-known scenes from "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius Caesar," and 15 other popular plays. Summaries, selections from the appropriate text, and captions accompany the illustrations. 30 black-and-white illustrations.

I have personally compiled and edited this collection of 33 Shakespearean scenes specifically for aspiring female actors to study as well as enjoy. The scenes within this book are most suited to older, teenage actors, who have already begun to acquire some of the technical skills necessary to perform Shakespeare's wonderfully drawn, young adult female characters. These scenes are suitable for a range of acting exams and awards as well as for auditions and festivals. I have tried and tested these scenes with numerous students over the years with great success and more importantly, they have thoroughly enjoyed working on them. I have not provided guidelines as to how to perform these scenes. This is something for the individual performer to explore and what is what will make your performance individual. However, I do strongly believe, it is crucial to play characters within ones' playing range. As a developing actor, in your late teens and beyond, now is the time to tackle the more demanding female characters which Shakespeare has so brilliantly created. Continue to build your vocal skills and acting technique systematically. In this way your performances will have the necessary depth and will be exciting to watch. Learn to discover your character's subtext and objectives. This will enable your characters to spring to life and hence, help your audience believe in you. Methodical preparation will pay dividends when exploring these fascinating characters. I hope you enjoy working on them.

Some day it’s going to happen: You’re going to find yourself on stage, wearing tights, and saying things in iambic pentameter. Face it, you’re in a Shakespeare play, and that means it’s a pretty good bet you’re going to DIE. The Bard is out for blood, but this play is here to stop him! How could Romeo and Juliet survive? Julius Caesar? A nameless soldier in Henry the Fifth? What if King Lear had an emotional support llama and didn’t need to make terrible mistakes? Join us in discovering how a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays could’ve turned out differently! If only they listened… (If you loved 10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, read this guide immediately.) New VIRTUAL VERSION of the play now available. Comedy One-act. 30-60 minutes (Length of the play: This show is approximately one hour long. To cut it into a shorter one-act, simply remove one or more of the sections.) 10-50+ actors, gender flexible

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink