This is not your typical academic examination of the plays.  Here, you won't find any discussion of obscure historical documents or writers. Nor will you confront complex literary theory or anything else that would distract from an understanding of Shakespeare's plays and the man who wrote them. Written in clear, unobtrusive language, this book will give you a better understanding of each play, what it contributes to Shakespeare's evolving vision of love and desire, why those concerns motivated his creative endeavors, and what kind of person devoted his life to these stories.  Rather than an attempt to impress the reader with my knowledge, the goal is always to bring these plays and their author into clear focus.


The chapters scrupulously avoid speculative, personal opinion.  While each one references relevant scholarship that provides historical context and literary background, the author strives to be reassuringly knowledgeable without being intimidating.  Since no assumption is made about the reader's familiarity with the plays, each chapter incorporates a brief summary of the main characters and the plot to provide context for the discussion that follows.   Infrequent but useful reference is made to other authorities to elaborate or support an important idea, but those are never allowed to distract from the goal of explaining the text of a play or the book's developing viewpoint.

Shakespeare's major plays, the book argues, were forged on the anvil of desire.  The scene on the front cover where the fairy queen Titania passionately woos the rustic, Bottom, now bearing a head magically transformed into an ass’s, says much about Shakespeare’s view of love and desire.  A parody of Ovid’s fables about gods imposing their carnal passions on hapless mortals, it dramatizes desire’s power to transform deformity into irresistible beauty.  Like Ovid, however, Shakespeare also recognized desire’s other manifestation in the selfish brutality that ignored the helplessness of others.  Out of this duality came troubling questions about desire, love, and the human intersection with the divine. Though the Elizabethans admired antiquity, England’s Christian culture struggled to accommodate pagan acceptance of the erotic.  Shakespeare was no exception.  Though early works imitate Ovid, his view of love becomes surprisingly rich and complex as he confronts the moral dynamics of desire.  Because of this clash of cultural values, he carefully delineates the nature of good and evil, demonstrating why the same passions that can degrade can also enrich.  A close reading of the major plays becomes a journey into the heart of desire that will challenge contemporary media’s often simplistic and decidedly secular conception of love.  Once you witness these dramas of love and desire, you begin to appreciate why his work continues to intrigue and delight his many devoted followers.

This title comes in hardbound, paperback, and ebook formats.