Shakespeare Experiment

THE BLURB:
Perhaps the finest mindreading book effect ever printed.

It's the ultimate luxury in mentalism.

LIMITED EDITION OF 1000 COPIES
Order yours now! Now shipping!

Lavish quality for the collector, designed for the
professional
Looks like a genuine Complete Works of William Shakespeare
...but it's gaffed to the hilt!

Impressive 800 pages
Luxurious leather binding with gold foil stamping
Lavish production with gilt-edged, satin-finish paper, and
distinctive ribbon bookmark
Tipped-in color frontispiece
Over forty beautiful Gustave Doré engravings
Deluxe endpapers
Individually numbered

Diabolically gimmicked but looks totally normal
No forces, no fishing, no guiding to "the longest word," no
spelling-bee anagrams
No gimmicks, breaks, or glimpses
No additional props needed
No guessing or asking the first letter of the word
You don't ever have to touch the book!
Instantly repeatable
Different plays, pages, and text throughout the book
Easy to perform!
Powerful effects incorporated into not only the plays but
also the Sonnets, glossary, and illustrations
Instant reading of several words or a complete passage
anywhere the book is opened
Built-in words for comedy, romantic, or dramatic
presentations
Actual Shakespearean text from classics like Hamlet and
Romeo and Juliet
Several methods incorporated so they can be combined for
deceptive routining
Bonus secret Elizabethan Dirty Words feature
Final pages include The Trick Glossary, a gimmicked
Shakespearean lexicon

The Shakespeare Experiment is possibly the most elegant book
test ever created, and so cleverly gimmicked, they'll think
the Bard's ghost is helping you!

Anywhere the spectator opens the book, you immediately
divine several different words from various locations the
volunteer chooses, and you can even recite a complete
Shakespearean passage!

The volunteer can then pass the book around and you can
instantly give readings for different words on pages other
spectators turn to!

The Shakespeare Experiment combines several distinctly
clever methods, so the spectators won't be able to follow
your technique. And yes, the text is different from page to
page.

Designed for the professional entertainer, this amazing book
lets you completely customize your presentation with
specific words for comedy, romantic, or dramatic styles. The
plays, Sonnets, glossary, and even the illustrations have
all been gimmicked to allow you to perform several distinct
effects.

And if you're daring enough for the right audience, you'll
love the secret Elizabethan Dirty Words feature.

It's easy to learn and perform, with none of the usual
obvious methods: no forces, fishing, anagrams, gimmicks, or
guiding to the longest word on a page or line.

The book is elegantly bound in leather with gold-foil
stamping and golden gilt-edged pages, and comes to you
complete with The Shakespeare Experiment instruction manual
and optional performance accessories.

"The Shakespeare Experiment a is beautifully crafted
product. But to me, the real beauty lies in the addition of
the gimmicked graphic elements, which open a whole new
avenue to book-test mentalism."
— Levent

"A book test with The Complete Works of Shakespeare, you
say? Verily. Instead of being Much Ado About Nothing, here
is an approach which demands the performer use a book — and
what a book it is. It seems carefully prepared so as not to
be the Comedy of Errors that so many recent book tests have
turned out to be. Measure for Measure, this is one of the
cleverest and most useful tests of late. They say that
"All's Well That Ends Well," and if that is true, the
routine for which the book was designed is all well indeed.
If you are looking for a beautiful object, a powerful effect
and a "novel" method, you will find this very special book
to be As You Like It."
— Michael Weber

"William Shakespeare wrote, 'I am not bound to please thee
with my answers.' But this book is — literally!"
— Max Maven

"This is the stuff that dreams are made of! The Miracle
Factory raises the bar and the Bard. A great idea that will
make you look very, very smart."
— Jeff McBride

"This is staggering, just staggering."
— Andy Nyman

"It's the motherf***** of all book tests!"
— Lee Asher

MY COMMENTS:
Everything the blurb says about it is accurate. This is a
handsome collector's edition of Shakespeare that no one will
suspect could ever be a cleverly gimmicked-to-the-hilt book,
but it is. I was quite impressed with the amount of details
and the versatility that the book offers. Originally, when
I first saw this advertised, I thought that this book would
be quite large and heavy and totally impractical for many
stage performances. In fact, I wrote Todd about that. When
I finally saw it, I was pleasantly surprised that my
assumptions were wrong. Though it still is heavier than
most books (nearly 4lbs, 9" x 8" x 2") or book tests, it is
still portable enough that it can easily be put into one's
briefase.

The best book tests are ones that operate without a lot of
procedure. In other words, the participant opens the book
to any page and has a free choice of words. For The
Shakespeare Experiment, the participants certainly do that,
but they are directed to certain places in the text. They
must choose the first word of either of the two columns or
the bottom word of either of the two columns. Though you can
certainly direct a participant to select a particular
column, top word, or bottom word, it is not necessary. It
is a completely free choice. However, there are two choices
that require the performer to obtain some information in
order to determine which word they are looking at. In
performance, this will not be noticed by the audience and I
mention it here only for comparison to other book tests.

As pointed out in the blurb, selecting words from the
Shakespearean plays is only part of what can be done. Words
can be selected from the sonnets and the glossary at the
back of the book. Even the pictures can be selected for
revelations. Unfortunately, all the pictures are in the
back section of the book and they should have been
interspersed throughout the whole text. It's the one detail
that really bothers me about the book, but it's really minor
and doesn't make it any less functional or effective.

To perform the main effect with the plays, one does have to
remember a fair amount of words (less than 50), but The
Miracle Factory has included two very clever "performance
accessories" that eliminate the need for the memorization.
On the other hand, putting forth the time to memorize the
material will make for a stronger performance.

There are a couple of considerations to using this. First,
I think it rather obvious that this is not suitable for
walkaround purposes, but I'll point that out anyway. More
importantly, this book cannot be given to a Shakespearean
scholar. It is very possible you can fool one, but it's
quite risky. This means that this may not be suitable for
one-on-one, unless you know that the person you're
performing this for is not a student of the Bard. Again,
it's a minor point, but if you perform mostly one-on-one,
then this is definitely a consideration.

Besides the book and two performance accessories, the
package includes a CD-Rom that contains the 21 page
instructions which are on a PDF file. If you're looking for
a fine book test and you feel that a book containing the
works of Shakespeare can fit into your act, then I do
recommend this handsome, extremely well-made product.