Great Shakespeare Actors: From Burbage to Branagh

The play(s) may be the thing, but without centuries of actors interpreting the work of Shakespeare for new generations of theater- and filmgoers, the plays might have died along with the Bard himself. Wells (Shakespeare for All Time; Looking for Sex in Shakespeare) examines the artists he believes to be the greatest actors to perform Shakespeare. Here he presents a collection of incisive short essays, beginning with one on Shakespeare, which explores the special gifts that made each performer legendary. Especially illuminating are the pieces on actors that the author himself saw on the stage, and the anecdotes that explore the lives of many of the actors. Starting in the Shakespearean age through the modern era, including those who may be obscure to the modern reader (Alexander Cooke and Tommaso Salvini) as well as those who are world famous (Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh), Wells opens the theater door to the larger-than-life personalities who inhabited it then and now.