Shakespeare Interactive currently comprises 12 CD‐ROMs representing Shakespeare’s most widely‐read plays. Each CD‐ROM contains the full text of the play with a running commentary explaining each passage and provides pop‐up definitions for unfamiliar words.
Accompanying each text is a stereo digital recording of the play, featuring a professional cast, period music, and sound effects in a radio theatre‐style production. Other features include detailed character profiles, a themes page, glossary, hypertext links, and full‐text Boolean search capabilities for quick and easy research. Users can also browse an image gallery, gaining access to more than 100 engravings from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, some of which are published for the first time. All of the images are printable.
The Contents screen that opens each CD‐ROM in this series contains hotspot buttons which jump to the following screens:
The play (a listing of every act and scene in the play, along with a brief description of the action).
The plot (a detailed summary of every act and scene in the play).
Characters (a listing of every character, with identifying information. Each character’s name is linked to a more detailed profile).
Themes (a discussion of various themes, plus information on soliloquies, sonnets, examples, etc.).
Time line (correlates each act and scene to the passage of objective time).
Images (a gallery of images from that specific play as well as other Shakespeare plays).
How to use (describes the function of each program button).
More … (describes the product, and provides links to the credits and a section on
Shakespeare’s life).
The program buttons allow the user to access the Contents screen, the Index, Search dialog box, Go Back button, History dialog box, arrows that move backward or forward within the play, Summary page, Print, Print Setup, and Exit.
These CD‐ROMs are designed for use in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and public libraries serving students. Since there are a number of multimedia Shakespeare‐related products currently available, a discussion of the pros and cons of this particular series may assist in the decision‐making process. First, this series does not contain any real‐time video clips of Shakespeare play performances, which is a feature of some of the other CD‐ROM products currently available. Unlike some of the other CD‐ROM products, however, it does contain the full text of the play, as well as a digital recording of the play in performance in a radio theatre‐style format. For users who are looking for graphics and video clips, this is not the Shakespeare CD‐ROM to buy. For users who are looking for study analysis of characters, plot, plot commentary and summary, and scene indexes to Shakespeare plays, this is definitely the CD‐ROM to get. Second, this study edition includes a full stereo recording of each play, for study of inflection, drama, language, and innuendo. Most other CD‐ROM products include stereo clips, but not the entire production. Third, the image section in each CD‐ROM is fairly similar, with the only difference being rearrangements focusing on the particular play.
Regarding price, $99 seems pretty expensive for a multimedia product that does not contain video clips/graphics. Other Shakespeare CD‐ROM products are more reasonably priced, in the $50‐75 range. However, the main offering of this particular product is the full text of each play, with appropriate hyperlinks and commentary throughout, as well as the stereo digital recording of each play in its entirety. That is the feature that other Shakespeare CD‐ROM products have not offered. So each user must determine whether these features are worth the cost. So far, the following Shakespeare plays are available: Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello. They can be bought individually or in a set of four.
