Shakespeare on Toast

Writer & blogger Libby Walkup on my Bath Lit Fest talk:

Ben toured us around the globe drawing pictures with his arms, his gaze and imagination. He invited two volunteers to read a scene from Macbeth. With minor instruction and an explanation of how Will’s iambic pentameter worked and its intended use, the random selection from the audience had a successful mini acting lesson, and we heard it first, Ben Crystal is opening a production company.

Click here to read the article in full…

I gave my talk at the Bath Literature Festival yesterday to a terrific crowd of over 200 people. EssentialWriter.com‘s Judy Darley has posted a write-up…

Ben opened the presentation with a reading that began in the stilted voice of an eleven-year-old, before exploding into a passion and fervour than made some audience members choke on their complimentary glass of Highland Park malt whisky.

Click here for the piece in full…

Toast and I featured in Katy Guest’s The Week in Books in yesterday’s Independent:

Crystal tries his damnedest as an actor, scholar and Shakespeare’s biggest fan to demystify the Bard for doubting 21st-century theatre-phobics.

Click here for the article in full…

Toast was recently chosen as Pick of the Week and reviewed by Bruce Elder in the Sydney Morning Herald:

If you have read Shakespeare or seen a Shakespearean play and you have not been swept off your feet by the sheer power and beauty of the drama and the language, then you, too, should read this book…

This is a remarkable primer for anyone who wants to understand the true genius of the greatest writer the world has known.

Click here to read the review in full…

I have been given back my book. My father has given up his new-found acting career. All is once more right with the world of Toast.

www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/31/steven-poole-shakespeare-ben-crystal

Toast is reviewed in today’s The Guardian:

Crystal, who is also an actor, paints in a lot of useful context about Elizabethan playhouses, explains very well the business of textual comparison… and conducts an excellent technical discussion of metre, which culminates in a genuinely thrilling dramatic exegesis of an extract from Macbeth… There are gems of close reading and theatrically focused attention throughout.

However, the authorship of this Shakespearian Toolbox has been ascribed to my father, the linguist, David Crystal.

He was thrilled to discover the audition offers flooding in for him this morning, while I look forward to Routledge publishing my autobiography this May.

For the review in full, click here

A recent review, from The Shakespeare Bookshop in Stratford-upon-Avon:

In Shakespeare on Toast he trades reference for irreverence with a much more personal book, aimed at encouraging both students who are new to Shakespeare and older Bardophobes haunted by the unpalatable version of Shakespeare they were served up at school…

In a recent radio interview, Crystal was introduced as ‘the Jamie Oliver of Shakespeare’. The comparison goes beyond the culinary metaphor of the title in conveying something of Crystal’s missionary zeal, his boundless enthusiasm for his subject, and a colloquial style – cheeky and
unpretentious – that speaks directly to the young generation… Crystal manages to be populist, without dumbing down…

Indeed, for Crystal, the book is absolutely about not dumbing down, its aim rather to wean readers off the white bread sterility of ‘Shakespeare Made Easy’ for the real thing, Shakespeare wholemeal.

I’ll be speaking at The Shakespeare Bookshop in Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of their lunchtime literary event series, on April 8th 2009. See here for more…

The Good Book Guide recently reviewed Toast as an ideal stocking filler:

As the book’s inviting title suggests, this is a succulent slice of the Bard, demystifying Shakespeare for those who consider him inaccessible, archaic or plain boring.

Crystal wears his erudition lightly, his vibrant, witty style enormously enjoyable as he presents a wonderfully jaunty and informative ride through Shakespeare.

Head to Buy Toast! to get your copy…

Last weekend’s Independent on Sunday chose Toast as one of their Christmas Stocking Fillers, going as far as to say:

Ben Crystal, a professional actor, wrote the zippy, anecdotal Shakespeare on Toast (Icon £11.99) to give the reader “the ability to go to any Shakespeare play and feel comfortable reading or watching it”.

He’s succeeded. It’s humourous, unpretentious and fascinating.

Translation guru Peter Newmark recently wrote in the journal The Linguist:

Ben Crystal… has written a fascinating and wide-reaching book on the subject of Shakespeare’s universality