Understanding Shakespeare,Volume1: Macbeth/Othello/Hamlet

　　Preface

　　The Understanding Shakespeare Lecture Series is primarily intended for undergraduate college students whose native language is not English. For many years i have been teaching a year-long survey of Shakespeare to university juniors and seniors in Taiwan. Although I have found that most of my students are able to understand my lectures, they are not able to take down adequate or sufficient notes at the pace in which I lecture. One option I have is to cover each play at a much slower speed. However, then the course would move at an excruciatingly slow level, and I would barely get through two or three plays in a semester. Since I want to cover a larger number and variety of plays, I have developed this Series as an alternative. These books essentially are, then, my lectures in essay from. Rather than just providing bare outlines of my lecture notes, these books attempt to provide a full explanation of all of the points that I cover-or attempt to cover-in my lectures. Thus, my students will be able to go back and read at their leisure anything they missed or did not fully understand.

　　Here in Taiwan I have found three weeks to be a suitable length to cover a tragedy and two weeks to cover a comedy. And, so, in the 18-week semesters that are the norm here, I cover five tragedies during the fall semester and seven comedies during the spring semester. In this time frame, I can explain fairly thoroughly the essential aspects of plot, character, and theme as well as a few of the critical issues of each play. Covering more plays would be too hurried, and covering fewer plays would not allow the students to get a strong overview of Shakespeare's work.

　　The books in this series correspond exactly to my lectures. The material on each tragedy is divided into three chapters to correspond to the three weeks of lectures:
　　Chapter 1: Lecture on Background and Act I
　　Chapter 2: Lecture on Acts II and III
　　Chapter 3: Lecture on Acts IV, V and Key Issues

　　Hamlet is and exception to this procedure. Because of its greater complexity, I have devoted four chapters to it.
This series may also prove useful to students who are native speakers of English. Many survey courses on Shakespeare in the United States and other locations may cover plays at the rate of one a week. Although this pace provides broader overall coverage of Shakespeare's work, such a pace could leave some students a little puzzled or confused about some aspects of the play. Thus, the books in this series would serve as an appropriate resource to fill in some of the gaps that may occur.

　　The key word in the title of this series is understanding. The purpose of this series is to provide as thorough an understanding of each Shakespeare play as possible so that students will have the basic groundwork(1) to appreciate the greatness of Shakespeare's plays, (2) to read and understand additional plays on their own, and (3) to pursue Shakespeare critical studies if such is their desire.

作者簡介

　　Robert Albano is an Associate Professor of English Literature at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan.