Check It Out:

Are you stumped by Shakespeare? If you need help getting a fresh perspective on one of William Shakespeare’s many plays or sonnets, the Newport Beach Public Library is here to help.

From the texts of Shakespeare’s work, to criticism, to biographies, to audio and video, the library has a great many resources for students and admirers to explore.

Let’s face it — Shakespeare was meant to be heard. Why not check out one of more than 50 audio books that the library carries? You will find not only his most beloved plays such as “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet,” or “Twelfth Night,” but also his more obscure plays such as “Cymbeline,” “Timons and Athens,” or “Coiolanus.”

The library also carries audio lectures on Shakespeare if you are looking to learn more about a particular play, a genre of his work, or even the man himself. Check out “William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies” by The Great Courses for a wonderful overview of his work. “Shakespeare, the Word and the Action” also by The Great Courses explores a number of plays such as a “Midsummer Night’s Dream” “Love’s Labor Lost,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” and several others — including his sonnets. If you are looking for more biographical information about Shakespeare, try Peter Ackroyd’s “Shakespeare: The Biography.”

If you can’t make it to the library and are looking for a performance, try the library’s two downloadable services: Overdrive and MyILibrary. Both services are available from the library website: www.newportbeachlibrary.org. Click on Downloadable Books and choose which service to try. Overdrive has access to 13 different titles including popular titles such as “Macbeth,” “Julius Caesar,” and “The Tempest.” MyILibrary has access to only six titles, but has such standards as “Hamlet,” read by John Gielgud and “King Lear,” read by Kenneth Branagh.

If you are looking for a fresh perspective on Shakespeare or are looking for citable resources for a big paper you’re working on, try browsing the Shakespeare area of the library under 822.33, There, you will find different titles that will help you get a fresh start, such as “The Upstart Crow” by Gareth Evans. This is a condensed volume of a five-part series. Evans briefly touches upon many plays, exploring themes, characters, and documents his points with quotations directly from the texts of the plays themselves.

For a different take on explaining Shakespeare’s work, try A.D. Nuttall’s ”Shakespeare the Thinker” or Norman Holland’s “Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare.” Nuttall’s book explores character motives, cause, themes of personal identity, ethics, and the elusively of language itself. Holland’s book provides an in-depth analysis of characters’ very persona by interpreting a text using the works of such noted authors as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, among others.

Another excellent resource that can be used electronically from home is the Literature Resource Center, accessible from the Articles and Databases page of the library website. This database houses hundreds of articles from literary criticism, to biographies, to multimedia files, and many other learning aides. Articles retrieved from this database contain source citation and are very useful additions to research papers!

CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public Library. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by accessing the catalog at www.newportbeachlibrary.org. For more information on the Central Library or any of the branches, please contact the Newport Beach Public Library at (949) 717-3800, option 2.