The bestselling 30-Second series takes a revolutionary approach to learning about those subjects you feel you should really understand. Each title selects a popular topic and dissects it into the 50 most significant ideas at its heart. Every idea, no matter how complex, is explained in 300 words and one image, all digestible in just 30 seconds. 30-Second Shakespeare uses this unique approach to grapple with the worlds most famous playwright. From what we know of his life and the intrigue of the authorship question, to uncoding the meanings of key concepts, themes and motifs, and the Bards extraordinary enduring literary and linguistic legacy.

Author Biography

Dr. Rosalind Barber is a lecturer on the MA course in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, and Director of Research at the Shakespearean Authorship Trust. Her articles on Shakespeare and on Christopher Marlowe are widely published. She is author of The Marlowe Papers, published in 2012, and written entirely in Shakespearean blank verse. It was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize, jointly awarded the Author's Club Best First Novel Award, and long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Mark Rylance is an actor who recently appeared as Thomas Cromwell in the BBC's Wolf Hall. He is also a trustee of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust and an Honorary Bencher of The Middle Temple Hall. He was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for ten years and wrote the play I Am Shakespeare.