This short book sets out to shed a light on Shakespeare on 100 pages. A part of this are introductions to the comedies, the tragedies and the histories and short summaries of all of them, plus an introduction of the sonnets. I only read the introduction to the comedies and the summary of Much Ado About Nothing, but I will go back to the other texts when I continue reading Shakespeare.
The remaining fifty-one pages squeeze in a lot of content, but it's still digestible and quite easy to follow. While the first chapter deals with Shakespeare's biography and the riddles and mysteries surrounding it, the reader also learns something about the theatre of the era and what made Shakespeare's plays so popular.
The following chapters are about more specific aspects: Italy as a setting of the plays, antisemitism, and the depiction of women. The last chapter was the most interesting to me because I was able to make connections to topics I know more about: The Shakespeare mania of 19th-century Germany, the devotion of authors like Goethe and Lessing, and how Shakespeare was subsequently read and interpreted in Germany.
This book can be hardly more than an introduction, but it provides the reader with some interesting aspects and it made me want to know more and reach for more substantial and extensive volumes. ( )