Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970) by Isaac Asimov is a two-volume guide to the works of the celebrated English writer William Shakespeare. The numerous maps were drafted by the artist Rafael Palacios. The work gives a short guide to every Shakespeare play, as well as two epic poems. Asimov organizes the plays not in the usual way — as tragedies, comedies, and histories — but regionally, as follows: The last two categories are treated broadly; 'Italian' applies to neighbouring countries, and both "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" are listed with 'The English Plays'. Asimov gives a detailed justification
Characters of Shakespear's Plays stated theme, to which Hazlitt returns several times—in "Macbeth", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Henry IV", and elsewhere—is that Shakespeare does not only create highly individual characters. More than any other dramatist, he creates characters that are of similar general types, and yet, as in real life, differ in subtle ways: Shakespear was scarcely more remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of his characters than for the truth and subtlety with which he has distinguished those which approached the nearest to each other. For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly more distinct from that of Iago than that of