Shakespeare

Young adults are the primary audience for this amiable introduction to the Bard, in which a high school teacher and his student travel back to the year 1609, where they visit the Mermaid Tavern and ply the playwright with questions about his craft. Like why does he use all those dang metaphors and similes? The urbane and nonplussed Shakespeare holds forth on this and a host of other issues, including the dicey business of mixing comedy and tragedy (today, commonly found in any action film), the ethics of changing historical fact to suit dramatic purpose (most recently argued about over Robert Redford's Quiz Show), and the lack of control that authors had over pirated printed versions of their own works (an issue coming to the fore on the electronic frontier). The more that things change, the more they stay the same, eh? As an interview (with costumes and food), there's not a tremendous amount of visual interest here, and the subjects discussed are hardly exhaustive (even for an introduction); still, newcomers to the plays might feel a little less distanced after watching this. Recommended for larger literature collections. (R. Pitman)