A Practical Guide to Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare After All
I've had a copy of Garber's reference work on my shelf for years. It came to me after a colleague mentioned it during a graduate seminar where we were supposed to be discussing performance history but somehow ended up talking about character motivation in Measure for Measure. The book turned out to be useful. Not groundbreaking, exactly, but reliably useful when you need quick access to play summaries and character lists without flipping through multiple editions. Marjorie Garber Shakespeare After All is organized alphabetically by play. Each entry contains a brief overview, cast list, synopsis broken into acts, and thematic notes. Garber was a literary critic before she became a full-time academic, and that shows in the prose. It reads like something you'd encounter in a journal article rather than a textbook. The entries run roughly two to three pages each for the major plays, shorter for the late romances and histories. The character lists are where I find myself returning most often. They're organized by appearance order within each play rather than by importance or alphabetical arrangement. That choice means you can look up which scene a minor character first appears in, which matters more than you'd expect when you're teaching or writing about staging choices.
How to Use It Without Getting Lost
The book covers all thirty-seven plays attributed to Shakespeare in standard canon. Some entries are longer than others. Henry V gets more space than The Two Noble Kinsmen, and that makes sense given the source material and critical attention. But even the thinner entries contain useful plot beats that might otherwise require pulling up a full text or summary online. I used this reference while preparing materials for a course on Shakespeare in performance. A student asked me about the role of Fortune in Titus Andronicus, and instead of spending twenty minutes flipping through Act 5 to find relevant passages, I looked it up in the thematic notes. Garber mentions Fortune once or twice in the entry, not extensively, but enough to point the discussion in the right direction. Then I went back to the play for the actual quotes.
Where It Falls Short
The book doesn't include stage directions in its synopses. If you're looking for specific blocking information or production notes, you'll need another source. Garber wrote this as a literary reference, not a performance guide. There are occasional references to notable productions, but nothing systematic. The indexing is limited. You can search by character name within each play, but cross-referencing a character across multiple plays requires either memorizing which plays they appear in or checking the index at the back. The index exists but isn't as thorough as I'd like. I've missed entries when looking for specific minor characters because the spelling varies between editions. Some scholars have noted that Garber's approach privileges the text over performance. That's not necessarily a flaw, but it's worth knowing if you're researching how a particular play functions on stage. The character motivations she describes are literary motivations, not directorial ones.
Get the Full Details
Who Should Read This
If you're a student or teacher looking for a single-volume reference, this works. It's not the cheapest option available, and it's not the most comprehensive. But it's readable without being dumbed down. The prose doesn't assume prior expertise but also doesn't explain things you already know. For casual readers, the play-by-play format makes it easy to jump between entries without reading cover to cover. I've used it that way when preparing lecture notes, opening to whichever play I needed and skimming the synopsis before diving deeper into the actual text.
Where to Find It
The book is published by Anchor Books, an imprint of Random House. It's available through major retailers, academic, and secondhand markets. A used copy in decent condition runs anywhere from fifteen to forty dollars depending on the edition and market. New copies are typically around twenty-five dollars. Some universities include it in their Shakespeare resource collections. If you're affiliated with an institution, check the reference section before buying your own copy. The ISBN for the Anchor edition is 9780385496193. I've recommended this book to colleagues who asked about a single-volume Shakespeare reference. It does what it promises. It doesn't do everything. That's honest enough.
