Rating: 
Summary: Makes it easy to prepare for a role in Shakespeare
Review: "All the Words on Stage" has been an excellent resource to use when I am in a production of one of Shakespeare's plays. I used to spend a lot of time searching through dictionaries trying to find these archaic words or calling fellow actors who had been in the same play, hoping they would remember how the words were pronounced. Such a huge waste of time. "All the Words on Stage", has made it much easier to prepare for a role. The specific information of each word is amazing. One of my favorite entries is for what appears to be a simple the word - the word "BOW". There are three pronunciations and examples of the word in the play where it is used. It would be impossible to be confused about which pronunciation to use once you have looked up "bow" in this dictionary. As other reviewers have mentioned, the respelling of the words (to show how they are pronounced) is so clear that you don't even need to refer to the Guide at the front of the book. I wish other dictionaries would apply the system used in this book.
I had the book for a few weeks before I noticed the last chapter which is called "Afterthoughts". It is excellent. Short paragraphs on each of the plays which list the amount of poetry and prose in each play as well as examples of words that use a different stress than we do today. It also alerts you to trick words and words that you might not realize are tricky. It is a wonderful addition to an already superb dictionary.
Recommended to anyone who likes to read Shakespeare, to all actors, and to all students who are studying Shakespeare in high school or college.
Rating:
Summary: a much needed resource; strongly recommended
Review: "All the Words on Stage" is a much needed resource book for every theater company, actor, student-actor, and reader of Shakespeare's plays. Not only is the book organized in a user-friendly way but it is crammed with information - the pronunciation of every word but also a chapter on scanning the lines, a Latin section, and a short paragraph about each of the plays. Thanks to another reviewer, I checked out the book's website and found it extremely informative. It is WWW.ALLTHEWORDSONSTAGE.COM. For anyone who wants some information about the book before purchasing it, this is a terrific way to investigate it.
Rating:
Summary: thorough, clear, excellent
Review: All the Words on Stage should be in every class room and theater in America (and Canada and England). The attention to detail is extraordinary. Not only is the basic pronunciation of each word given but also the pronunciations that are possible depending on how the line is scanned! The chapter on Scanning and the Afterthoughts at the end of the book are also excellent. Strongly recommended for students, actors and everyone who reads Shakespeare.
Rating:
Summary: Finally! All my pronunciation questions answered
Review: As an actor who has been in numerous productions of Shakespeare, I am delighted to find this book. In the past, many hours of wasted time have been spent sitting around rehearsal tables trying to figure out how to pronounce a word. Other dictionaries have been searched but no answers were found. Now all we have to do is open "All the Words on Stage". The subtitle "A Complete Pronunciation Dictionary for the plays of William Shakespeare" is perfect because this really is COMPLETE. Another reviewer mentioned not being able to find "o'er'. I don't know why he couldn't find it. It's on the bottom of page 174. The book is so clearly laid out that it's difficult to understand how someone could miss a word.
In productions of "The Tempest", "Julius Caesar" and "Richard III" we have found every word we looked up. Amazing! I think the "Afterthoughts" at the end of the book are gems. The tidbits of information in them are priceless. One of my fellow actors who is preparing for a production of "Love's Labor's Lost" has found the "Latin" section extremely helpful.
I highly, highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Finally,a Shakespeare pronunciation guide that really works!
Review: For years, actors, directors, and dramaturgs have struggled with a variety of materials for guidance on the pronunciation of Shakespeare's names, along with a multitude of other resources that helped with the pronunciation of obscure words appearing in his plays. Now Shane Ann Younts and Louis Scheeder, who work in the rehearsal studio with this text every day, have put everything - names plus unfamiliar words - into one easy-to-carry book, with phonetic pronunciations that are so easy to read that they can be instantly applied. This is a groundbreaking work for everyone involved in the rehearsal process of Shakespeare's plays. Every Shakespeare actor or student should own a copy, and no rehearsal table should lack one or three copies for easy reference during every stage of the rehearsal process! Thank-you Shane Ann and Louis, for creating a terrific tool to assist us in this day-to-day process of moving the words off the page in order to bring them to life on the stage. Bravo!!!
Rating:
Summary: Clear and concise
Review: I can't say enough in praise of "All the Words on Stage". Until I found this dictionary on Amazon - thank you Amazon! - I had been struggling with not only the pronunciations of words but how to figure out where to stress a word. This extraordinary book does have ALL the words in it and it also explains in a straight forward way why words are stressed as they are. I like the lay out of each page. It's clean and easy to read. Also the way the words are respelled is crystal clear - much easier to follow than other Shakespeare pronouncing dictionaries that I have looked at. Some of my fellow actors are familiar with the phonetic symbols so it is good that the book includes both the respellings and the phonetics.
The research that must have gone in to this book! As I was thumbing through it, I was staggered by the specific information that is covered on each word. The authors must have read, scanned and studied each play many, many times to have been able to compile all of this information.
Another reviewer mentioned wanting to know Elizabethan pronunciations. I don't know what Elizabethan pronunciations have to do with modern speakers of Shakespeare. It seems that it is only something that a scholar might find interesting. As an actor, I need help on how I should be pronouncing these words today and this book has answered all my questions.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant. Excellent research.
Review: I have been searching for a book like this for years but nothing existed until the authors researched and wrote "All the Words on Stage"! It is so thorough - every word you need is here. The only other pronunciation books I've seen are incomplete (don't include all of the plays) or one of them just has the character names. I don't understand one of the previous reviewers talking about Elizabethan pronunciations. Why would anyone write a book with Elizabethan pronunciations??? Maybe some scholar might find it interesting but it would never help an actor or director or even a reader. This book is so accessible and can be used in any productions from professional to community theater. It will get Shakespeare off of the dusty library shelves and on to the stage. I think the point of a production of Shakespeare is for it to be clear enough that the audience understands the extraordinary language. This book will go a long way towards making that happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Gives some answers, not all...
Review: In A Midsummer's Night Dream there is a line that reads:Demetrius! How fit a word
(...) to perish on my sword! Since most of the play is in rhymes, there obviously is a pronunciation problem here. How did Shakespeare pronounce these two words was the question I had and which I put to "All the Words on Stage". Unfortunately and contrary to the orgasmic reviews below, the book did not answer my query. The reason for that is very simple: this is not even remotely a guide to Elizabethan pronunciation but a compilation of all the difficult words in Shakespeare's plays as they are and should be pronounced by American actors, the pronunciation of which is indicated both in the International Phonetic Alphabet and the authors' own phonetic system. The subtitle of this book should really be: A Complete Guide to Pronouncing Shakespeare the American Way. Does such a title sound paradoxical and even ludicrous to you? But that is exactly what this book is all about! What is wrong with reciting Shakespeare with an American accent? Nothing...except that it will leave the reader looking for a historically accurate reconstruction of the Bard's language quite dissatisfied. Nothing...except that it seems rather strange to me to make so much fuss about how to pronounce Shakespeare's words in accordance with the rules of the iambic pentameter, while at the same time completely disregarding the much more basic question of HOW HE pronounced these words himself. Some reviewers (is there a claque on amazon.com?) claim that ALL difficult words are covered in this book. Well, I looked up the quite commonly used "o'er" and guess what? I did not find it...! The chapter on Latin pronunciation is quite funny: the authors propose to pronounce Cicero's words 1)as modern scholars think they were uttered in Classical Rome 2)as American audiences are accustomed to hear them 3)as the Roman Catholic clergy used to pronounce them! Granted, this is a very minor point but it shows you the methodology followed by the authors. For me, the most useful passage in this manual is the one in the introduction in which the authors discuss previous similar books. I will copy it for you to help you in your search: "Theodora Irvine's "How to Pronounce the Names in Shakespeare" stems from a survey of leading English actors around 1900. The pronunciation reflect the upper class speech of the Edwardian era. Helge Koekeritz's "Shakespeare's Names: A Pronouncing Dictionary" was the standard work on pronunciation of charcter names for many years. The pronunciations tend to be those of English speech with occasional American variants. The book also includes some indications of what Elizabethan pronunciations might have been like. Delbert Spain's "Shakespeare sounded Soundly" contains much valuable information on the working of the verse. He includes an appendix of some 250 words, giving the stresses for polysyllabic words, though without phonetic transcription. Dale Coye's "Pronouncing Shakespeare's Words" is based primarily on a survey of professors in Britain, Canada, and the US. It embraces both names and words but does not include phonetics. Louis Colaianni's "Shakespeare's Names" is a pronunciation guide to the names in the plays, but does not include the rest of the Shakespearean vocabulary nor does it take into account the effects of the iambic pentameter line on pronunciation." What is "the rest of the Shakespearean vocabulary" covered by this book? Page 127: -hale, halfpence, halfpenny, halidom, hallo, halloed, halloing, handkercher, handkerchief, hap, haplyharbinger, hardiment
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary, thorough, a winner
Review: Thank you, thank you for making this pronunciation dictionary available. Like some of the other reviewers, I wish I had known about it years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and confusion. The book is so clear! Everyone in my theater group is buying a copy and my kids want a copy for their school library. ("All the Words on Stage" really should be in every high school in the country. It would make reading Shakespeare a lot easier for those who are new to his plays.) Before I purchased it I found a web site for the book which gives example pages and actually pronounces some of the words. Reading the web pages reinforced that I wanted to buy the book. For anyone who might be interested it's www.allthewordsonstage.com
Rating:
Summary: Great for all who love Shakespeare
Review: This excellent pronunciation dictionary should be in every theater, high school and college. It is clearly laid out and has all of the words in all of the plays. I found the website for the book informative - www.allthewordsonstage.com.
Strongly recommended for anyone who loves Shakespeare.
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