"The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Shakespeare is, as its title suggests, appropriate casual reading just about anywhere in the house, for it is an informative and delightful compendium to the poems and plays. The authors also offer interesting and sometimes arcane observations about Shakespeare's life, his theater, and the impact of his writing today. And at the end of their book, the authors even present an eady-to-use, Chinese-menu style chart for learning to scold like an expert at Elizabethan name-calling; one can come away from the pleasures here and flyte like a master!"
Gerald M. Pinciss, Hunter College * the Graduate Center
"With an engaging blend of homage and irreverence, this book renders accessible the Bard's entire oeuvre."
Publishers Weekly
"[A] clever and informative book .If you love Shakespeare, you'll love The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Shakespeare."
WTBF-FM, April 23, 2002
"Through careful, thoughtful, and objective illumination of the work, the man, the time period, and the people and places that inhabit the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare, as well as the world inhabited by Shakespeare himself, Riley and McAllister have compiled, perhaps, the most concise, yet all-encompassing book on the Bard to date. The greatest appeal here lies in the humorous, literate, sometimes irreverent, and always knowledgeable interpretation and synopsis of the entire dramatic canon, presented play by play .From an objective look at the authorship problem to Elizabethan holidays to a brief discourse on fools (Shakespearean and otherwise), The Bedside Companion is nothing if not thorough .Any reader will walk away from this book with an accessibility to the Bard's writings that very few works can offer .The authors have tailored a book to explicate the work and life of the greatest writer of the English language and to please two distinct audiences?the playgoer and the literary scholar?at the same time. This would seem to be a fool's venture, yet, as Shakespeare's plays have taught us, the fool is often endowed with more wisdom than the wisest of men."
Foreword Magazine
