Abstract
SHAKESPEARE ALIVE! By Joseph Papp and Elizabeth Kirkland. (Bantam, $4.50.) Like Shakespeare's plays, ''Shakespeare Alive!'' targets a broad-based audience. The authors - Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, and Elizabeth Kirkland, a writer and associate of Mr. Papp's - have performed a remarkable feat of synthesis, weaving together bits and pieces of information, from Elizabethan styles of life to current performance practices, to make the plays understandable in their original context as well as our own.