Henry Vee

So I stopped at the BYU bookstore on my way home from class Friday hoping to check out what titles they had about Shakespeare. I only had a minute to spare, but I thought I could at least browse. Unfortunately, when I asked at the info desk if they had books about The Bard, not simply books by him, the guy behind the counter looked at me like I was Caliban. So I had him point me in the direction of the books by Shakespeare anyways.

Earlier in the week, I should add that I was looking for Shakespeare apps for my iphone and stumbled upon one called No Fear Shakespeare, created by SparkNotes (which is now crashing every time I try to open it. Of course it would when I'm trying to tell you all about it - sigh). Anyhow, to my understanding, it presents Shakespeare texts side-by-side with their vernacular translation. It has a few acts of a few works available for perusal and the rest, ya gotta pay for. It looks pretty neat.

No Fear Shakespeare example of side-by-side translations

Now back to the bookstore-that-lacks-works-about-Shakespeare-and-only-has-works-by-him. I was looking at different editions of the texts and one of the sections caught my eye... No Fear Shakespeare! Totally cool! So I grabbed a copy of a play that my family is going to go see this summer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, As You Like It.



I also perused the other editions of Henry V available. I picked out a physical-copy of Henry V done by the Folger Shakespeare library because it contains a ton of background information about the play at the beginning that I want to peruse. Here's the titles of the extra information:

• Editor's Preface
• Shakespeare's Henry V
• Reading Shakespeare's Language (with particular application to Henry V)
• Shakespeare's Life
• Shakespeare's Theater
• The Publication of Shakespeare's Plays
• An Introduction to This Text
• Textual Notes
• Henry V: A modern Perspective by Michael Neill
• Further Reading (a bibliography of critical articles about the play)
• Key to Famous Lines and Phrases

What a plethora of useful information! I'll let you know if I learn anything of particular note or interest.