Reduced Shakespeare The complete reader's guide for the attention-impaired (abridged)

Martin and Tichenor (not to be confused with Martin and Lewis) are managing partners of and performers in the Reduced Shakespeare Company, the group that brought us The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged], a comedy show whose popularity spread like a computer virus in an office full of forwarders. This is a darned funny book, with all of the scholarly apparatus one has come to expect from works twice as serious and half as interesting (note the bibliography entry for Marlo Thomas's Free To Be You and William Shakespeare). In 12 pieces, Martin and Tichenor explode a few myths, summarize the Bard's plays and some of his more notable sonnets with considerable verve, and generally take on the Shakespeare industry, which, they write, "consists of people simply guessing about who Shakespeare was and what he wrote." This is the book for people to whom Shakespeare might sound vaguely familiar. Peppered with lists, definitions, and quizzes, it's not an essential purchase for academic libraries, but it is an essential purchase for academics and people who know them. Public libraries should also get a copy.-Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.