The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition Hardcover Author: Visit Amazon's William Shakespeare Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0199267170 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Review
"State-of-the-art scholarship...has come to stand as the edition of record of Shakespeare's poems and plays."--San Diego Union-Tribune
"Includes stage directions, introductions, and a trove of other scholarly goodies. A beauty."--Library Journal (starred review)
About the Author
Stanley Wells is Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham, the Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Vice-Chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Gary Taylor is Professor in the English Department at the University of Alabama.
John Jowett is Associate General Editor of the Oxford Collected Works of Thomas Middleton and co-author of Shakespeare Reshaped 1606-23.
William Montgomery works for the Guardian newspaper.
Direct download links available for Download The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition Hardcover
- Hardcover: 1344 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2nd edition (August 1, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199267170
- ISBN-13: 978-0199267170
- Product Dimensions: 3.7 x 2.8 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Perhaps, like me, you have held on to the Complete Works of William Shakespeare you've had since college and are wondering if the world really needs yet another edition of the Bard's complete output. Well, the Modern Library edition of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare has a lot to recommend it. The text is beautifully set in single column format, making it easier for actors and those who wish to read the text aloud to scan the poetic lines and to distinguish between poetry and prose. Jonathan Bates's General Introduction is comprehensive, engaging, and lively. As with the introductions to the individual plays, Bates gives special attention to the performance traditions from which these plays emerged as well as those which would shape their interpretation over the centuries. This concern for performance issues is also addressed in the "Key Facts" boxes that follow every play introduction. Here the editors summarize the plot, identify the major parts (with percentage of lines and number of speeches assigned to each character, etc.), take a stab at identifying a dates of composition and first performance, and discuss the plays' sources and state of the texts available. There are ample, but not an overwhelming number of footnotes. And these notes, Bates assures us, do not shy away from discussion of Shakespeare's bawdier puns (something that may not be true of your old college textbook). Another real plus is the inclusion of a fragmentary scene from "Sir Thomas More" based on the only manuscript known to be in Shakespeare's own hand.
But the best reason to buy the RSC Shakespeare is because the editors have gone to great lengths to preserve the First Folio (1623) edition of Shakespeare.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. Updated Fourth Edition. Edited by David Bevington. 2000 pp. New York : Longman, 1997. ISBN 0-321-01254-2 (hbk.)
As complete Shakespeares go, the Bevington would seem have everything. Its book-length Introduction covers Life in Shakespeare's England; The Drama Before Shakespeare; London Theaters and Dramatic Companies; Shakespeare's Life and Work; Shakespeare's Language : His Development as Poet and Dramatist; Edition and Editors of Shakespeare; Shakespeare Criticism.
The texts follow in groups : Comedies; Histories; Tragedies; Romances (including 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'); Poems. Each play is given a separate Introduction adequate to the needs of a beginner, and the excellent and helpful brief notes at the bottom of each page, besides explaining individual words and lines, provide stage directions to help readers visualize the plays.
One extremely useful feature of the layout is that instead of being given the usual style of line numbering - 10, 20, 30, etc. - numbers occur _only_ at the end of lines which have been given footnotes - e.g., 9, 12, 16, 18, 32. Why no-one seems to have thought of doing this before I don't know, but it's a wonderful innovation that does away entirely with the tedious and time-wasting hassle of line counting, and the equally time-wasting frustration of searching through footnotes only to find that no note exists. If the line has a note you will know at once, and the notes are easy for the eye to locate as the keywords preceeding notes are in bold type.
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