The second installment in resident Shakespeare expert Bill Lloyd's guest appearance in the Buyer's Corner.

The beginning of the 21st century looks fair to becoming the New Age of Shakespearian Biography. The last few years have seen major biographies of Shakespeare from, among others, the English man of letters Peter Ackroyd (Shakespeare: The Biography) and the American literary critic Stephen Greenblatt (Will in the World). Both of these have been criticized in some quarters for being too speculative, but at the same time both are “good reads” and full of useful information. Two other good Shakespearian portraits are James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, and Stanley Wells’s Shakespeare and Co (the latter described in last weeks Shakes-blog). The former concentrates on a key year in Shakespeare’s life, 1599, which saw the building of the Globe Theatre and the completion or beginning of four great plays: Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It, and (Shapiro argues) Hamlet. My personal choice as a biography would have to be Park Honan’s Shakespeare: A Life, which for the most part eschews excessive speculation, though it perhaps lends a bit too much credence to the “Lancastrian thesis” in which, during the so-called Lost Years, the young Shakespeare (aka Shakeshaft) was a tutor in a Northern Catholic household. But then Ackroyd and Greenblatt are also sympathetic to this thesis. All of these Shakespeare biographies are 15% during our Shakespeare in Washington Sale April 23-May 24.

Shakespeare in Washington! As most of you know the first six months of 2007 have seen a riot (orgy? overplus? plethora?) of Shakespearean performances of all kinds—theatrical, musical, poetical, visual, visual-musical, theatrical-visual-poetical (Yikes! I’m channeling Polonius!) in venues all over Washington. Right now the Royal Shakespeare Company is staging Shakespeare’s last tragedy, Coriolanus, at Kennedy Center (Oxford edition 15% off at Olsson’s) while our neighbors at the Shakespeare Theatre at the Lansburgh are putting on his first tragedy, Titus Andronicus (Folger edition 15% off at Olsson’s). Speaking of the Folger editions of Shakespeare plays, these reader-friendly, pocket-size codices, expertly edited by the folks at Washington’s own Folger Shakespeare Library are regularly stocked at all the Olsson’s locations, while our Lansburgh store has a selection of other editions as well—Arden III, Oxford, Cambridge, Penguin, New Variorum, and a First Folio Facsimile! Did I mention that they’re all 15% off through May 24?

In fact, every book in our Shakespeare section—a considered selection of criticism, guides, editions of the plays, poems, and Sonnets, as well as “Shakes-fun” books—and selected CDs, DVDs and sidelines are now featured at discounted prices through May 24. To top it off, two Shakespeare-related books are currently featured at 20% off on our Buyer’s Choice (“Would Be Bestsellers in a Perfect World”) tables: Shakespeare the Thinker, by the late A. D. Nuttall (Yale University Press) and The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama and Death in 19th Century America, by Nigel Cliff (Random House).

So hie thee down to Olsson’s and get thee some culture!