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 is the predominant feeling of the mind." A focal point of Hazlitt's account of "Troilus and Cressida" is a comparison of the characterisation in this play and that in Chaucer's poem "Troilus and Criseyde" (one of Shakespeare's sources). Chaucer's characters are full and well developed; but Chaucer unfolded each character in itself, one at a time. Shakespeare displayed characters as they see themselves as well as how others see them, and showed the effects each has on the others. Shakespeare's characters were so distinctive that it is as if each were expressed by a distinct "faculty" of his mind; and,