Really very good! The authors take a large (LARGE!) number of monologues from the entire breadth of Shakespeare's canon - around 150 - analysing them in detail for actors. Rather than just choosing the straight soliloquies like"to be or not to be", the authors also choose to create monologues from scenes in which one character speaks most of the lines, by excising others, which particularly helps add further female opportunities.

Each monologue is accompanied by 2-5 pages of analysis, of ways to perform it, tips about the play, and so on. Beyond this, an introduction explores meter in poetry and a 100 page appendix details the plots of every play - bonus addition to the library, really.

This is sometimes a very American book in the way it analyses the text, and the way it approaches older material, so it may occasionally be colloquially discombobulating to those of us from the Commonwealth. But that's a small matter. The authors are aiming the text at the reader less skilled in Elizabethan prose, be they high school, first year uni, or simply American, but it works for all. Because it makes no assumptions about the reader, we get help boxes on genealogy, elision, textual difficulties, and most any question to be answered on the Bard.

This is a big book to be savoured, for the text, for the straightforward introduction to Shakespeare's writing and performance style, and to the helpful and varied tips on each piece. Some monologues are omitted surprisingly, although with the size of the book there had to be a limit, while other inclusions are less familiar, which is lovely. All in all, a worthy enterprise that will sit nicely on my Shakespeare shelf. ( )