Books: Brush Up Your Shakespeare!

"Brush Up Your Shakespeare!" is a celebration of some of the most famous quotes from the Bard.  The book, written by Michael Macrone, quotes a famous passage from a Shakespearean play or sonnet, explains what it means in the context of the story, and then tells you how it is used (correctly or incorrectly) nowadays.

The book is organized alphabetically by the most memorable word of a particular quote, so you can easily look up chestnuts like Get thee to a nunn'ry (slang for a brothel), The lady doth protest too much, methinks (with "protest" meaning "vow" or "declare," not "object" as most people think) and Now is the winter of our discontent (which has a different meaning in "Richard III" because of the second line, Made glorious by this son of York). Charming illustrations by Tom Lulevitch show the literal meanings of these quotes, often to hilarious effect: