Shakespeare: The Word and the Action

By: Peter Saccio, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Peter Saccio

Shakespeare is the leading playwright - and probably the leading writer - in Western civilization. His works are one of the greatest achievements of the human mind and spirit. And yet, for far too many of us, they remain a closed book. Why?

Professor Saccio is well suited in these 16 lectures to bring you back into Shakespeare's world and tune you into what he calls "Shakespeare's wavelength." As you hear him effortlessly deliver heretofore impenetrable language with the proper meter, emphasis, intonation, and emotion, you'll experience the pleasure that comes with true mastery. Professor Saccio also prepares you to read or watch the plays by orienting you to Shakespeare's use of multiple plots, lines of action, and the sometimes outmoded forms of human behavior (such as courtship in Elizabethan England) that arise in his plays.

Shakespeare was acutely aware of the importance of history - and not just of events but of ideas. You'll see how his tragedies and histories are meditations on the changing world around him and of the eternal issues of character and human nature. You'll journey into a world where actions and ideas intersect and raise profound and unexpected questions, such as how Richard III could be both a classic villain and a Renaissance figure, and whether a man such as Coriolanus can be a hero without a cause or a country.

To read Shakespeare is to take a daunting journey into a perpetually undiscovered country that reinvents itself with every visit. But with these lectures, it will become a familiar pleasure.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1995 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1995 The Great Courses

Why You Should Hear These Lectures

“It is risky to entitle a lecture ‘Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets’. It sounds like I’m going to tell you what Shakespeare thought about love…I can’t do that. The ideas expressed on love in the sonnets are various, inconsistent, and contradictory. He is not the sort of artist who uses his art to convey ideas in that sense. That is, he’s not an artist like Milton, who would sit down and write a poem to get across his conclusions. Or a playwright like Aeschylus, who would write a whole tragic trilogy to tell you what the nature of Justice was.

Shakespeare tends to work the other way around. Instead of using art to convey ideas, he uses ideas (amongst other things) to create art. Ideas are amongst the various materials he uses to explore the human condition. He is really concerned in the sonnets with what it feels like to be in various love situations, not to draw an overarching conclusion about love. He is wholly absorbed in the immediate situation…He is a great artist at inhabiting a mind, a feeling, at a particular moment. In that sense, the variety of views of love expressed in the sonnets bears some analogy to the variety of characters he creates in the plays.”

- Lecture 4, Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

That’s a fine example of the kind of insights you’ll find here. This one explains (to me, at least) why Shakespeare is so enduring: he can’t be pigeonholed. Falstaff’s critique of military glory doesn’t mean Shakespeare was anti-war. Nor do the stirring speeches he puts in King Harry’s mouth make him an arch-imperialist. They just prove he was the master craftsman of our language.

Professor Saccio is simply superb. Like his subject, he doesn’t come to the works with any hidden agendas. He just sincerely wants us to understand Shakespeare better, and he succeeds brilliantly.

can't go wrong

I love the great courses, I own the great courses plus, but some of the earlier lectures are missing this is one of them, Peter Saccio does and amazing job. I have learned so much from this course. ALL SHAKESPEARE FANS WILL ENJOY, I promise

More drama than narrative

If like me, you listen to these things as you go to sleep, don't use this one for that. The actual acting out of emotional scenes isn't conducive to sleep. This is a enthusiastic retelling explanation of Shakespeare's genius, the professor is definitely passionate about his work. I like that he doesn't go into the authorship question and doesn't attribute what Shakespeare wrote as autobiographical. Writers are creative, and good ones write about characters that are different than them. The man was writing to audience and wanted to sell tickets and poems and like any good writer, he took himself out of the story. What I didn't like about this telling is the professor doesn't say what is history and what is created for dramas sake. Calling Cleopatra a tramp isn't really helpful in illuminating minds with truth, I'll give him murderer though..

Finest professor of Shakespeare I'm familiar with

Peter Saccio is a treasure! His analysis and explanations are both insightful and beautifully elaborated upon. I personally contacted him just to thank him for how much I enjoyed his courses.

More Please!

This is the third course I've taken on Shakespeare from The Great Courses. This one had an interesting slant and I enjoyed it very much. I wish Prof. Saccio would do another on the more obscure plays!

If you’re looking to get back into Shakespeare…

…just delightful and inspirational. Frankly I’m feeling the same joy as when I first discovered Shakespeare as a kid.

An exceptional presentation

Professor Saccio articulates Shakespeare—in voice and meaning— better than any other commentary since the Romantics. I especially appreciated his analysis of Richard III and that play's connection to the Renaissance. Quite insightful.

The doctor

I have enjoyed this course like no other,I’m Spanish but the beauty,the breath and depth of the English
Language is breathtaking.

Very good

I've listened to all of Peter Saccio's courses and they are all very good. I don't agree with every point of his analysis but that is fine -- I'd rather a professor who has something to say and can back it up (and with whom I agree much more often than not).

More Downs than Ups - Not for Beginners

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

If you are a beginner to Shakespeare I would suggest staying away from this specific course. To me it felt like this was meant for someone with extensive exposure to Shakespeare rather than one hoping to learn the basics of Shakespeare's styles. I have been studying Shakespeare's works for 20 years and have attended countless of his plays but I could only say this course was average. Here's the rundown:

Pluses:
• Descriptions of the different meters (such as iambic pentameter), forms of speech (prose and verse --- and when they are used) and the rhythms (choice of words) employed by Shakespeare in his plays and sonnets
• Insight behind the battle scenes of the Henry VI plays and their significance to the message behind the plays
• Character analysis of Richard III which includes discussion of his deformed body representing the sick state England had become during the War of the Roses, what made him stand out from other Shakespeare’s villains that made him his first great villain, and how (by thinking outside of standard Medieval beliefs) he perfectly embodied a villain for the Renaissance
• Fate and free will and its relationship to history explored in Henry IV Part 2
• The different types of action in Hamlet and analysis of his “To be or not to be” speech
• Description of the Romance genre and the human desire to preserve beauty and excellence in The Winter’s Tale

Minuses:
• I was hoping for more of an analysis on the action of a play’s plot beginning to end; Instead the professor would instead seem to…
o ….focus on uninteresting topics/aspects of a play or
o ….delve into advanced discussions that made it difficult to follow or
o ….have a hard time making his main points in many of the lectures; While some of the theories and assertions were interesting, the examples he gave did not seem to be relevant to his main points or he did not explain them enough to bring the points together
• It felt like more time should have been spent on explaining why Shakespeare chose certain words at a specific time or the definition of the common phrases/words that appear foreign to modern audiences
• The professor seemed to have an assumption that the listener has a prior understanding of non-Shakespeare topics from classic mythology to Greek philosophy to ancient world views to other literary works; Often in the lectures he goes off comparing or contrasting Shakespeare concepts to this other material

Overall I would say there are more downs than ups but perhaps it is just the professor's style not being on a wavelength I can understand. Others may find him very engaging. There are certainly some good lectures (outlined above).