Shakespeare in the Theatre

"Shakespeare in the Theatre" by William Poel is a study of Shakespeare's plays, connecting them to the stages and performance styles of Elizabethan England. The book looks at how the theaters of Shakespeare's time, with their own sets of rules and customs, shaped his writing. It argues that to truly get Shakespeare, we need to understand how plays were put on back then. The author starts by pointing out that many people today don't realize how well Shakespeare's plays fit the theaters they were written for. He talks about how basic the stage designs were and how Shakespeare's choices as a writer were tied to what the theaters could do, suggesting a fresh way to understand and perform Shakespeare's plays by considering their original setting.