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Presents the works of William Shakespeare, along with an analysis of the nature and authority of the early documents, a list of the canon and chronological order of composition, an essay on Shakespeare's language, and a bibliography.
shurikt: What would a SF writer know about Shakespeare? A lot, apparently. This is a great book to refresh your memory before the occasional Shakespeare in the Park -- if you don't want to read the play again.
A mediocre Shakespeare collection. Not comprehensively stuffed with annotations and commentary like the Arden series nor light and easy to transport like the Folger collection. Even compared to other Shakespeare 'complete works' volumes, its cover is cheaply made and the preliminary essay is saccharine and factually inaccurate. But, Shakespeare's writing can elevate even the most poorly made of publications ( )
What an exquisite edition of one of the greatest works in the Western canon. Armed with an authoritative editorial team, Professor Jonathan Bate has reworked all of Shakespeare's plays, as well as his poems. The footnotes are extensive and cover all meanings of words (including the more salacious ones that many school texts leave out), while also providing informative historical and contextual information.
This edition seeks to give us every word attributed to Shakespeare (although, as it points out at length, we can't really know what he wrote: all of our current versions come from a variety of sources typeset in his later years, and primarily from the First Folio printed after his death. Any work of the Bard's is distorted in some way). With appendices and footnotes, notable textual errors or areas of debate are highlighted.
There is so much to love here. Epic tragedies - Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear - joined by their lesser, but poetically affecting counterparts like Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare plays with and shuffles around comic tropes in his wide variety of comedies: peaks include The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.
In his more subdued romances, Shakespeare often seems reduced to more typical characters yet imbues than with layer upon layer of subtlety: Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale are particularly splendid examples. Some of the tragedies and comedies aren't as startling, and some are challenging - such as his part-satire Troilus and Cressida - but every work brims with characters whose opinions, beliefs and motives are individual, and not simply echoing those of an author. Beyond these plays lies a staggering cycle of love poems in The Sonnets, as well as his other various poetry which always makes fascinating, lyrical reading.
Capping all this is Shakespeare's incredible cycle of English history, which details the country's fate from 1199 to 1533, through the stories of the English monarchs: their battles, their loves, their lives and the effect their squabbles have over countless citizens. The cycle begins with the somewhat talky King John (far from my favourite work, but well presented in the BBC Complete Works cycle) and ends with the autumnal King Henry VIII. In between are eight plays (two tetraologies) which encompass the Wars of the Roses, and they are astonishing. From the private thoughts of the monarch to the most unimportant peasant, Shakespeare captures an age.
The introductions on each play detail cultural successes over the centuries, as well as basic historical information. I've seen people suggest other aspects that could improve this - such as a suggestion of ways to double parts (this is defined as the "actor's edition"). Certainly, I can accept that, but as it stands this is already beyond a 5-star piece of work. A place of honour on my shelf, that's for sure. ( )
It's Shakespeare - what can I say? I haven't read this volume all the way through, but have read many of the plays at one time or another. Two-colums of text, no notes, illustrations look to be black-and-white copies of paintings from various artists.
Taped to the inside I put a Frank and Ernest cartoon: Nice speech, but you don't have that many friends -- you better add "Romans and Countrymen." ( )
There are moments when one asks despairingly why our stage should ever have been cursed with this "immortal" pilferer of other men's stories and ideas, with his monstrous rhetorical fustian, his unbearable platitudes, his pretentious reduction of the subtlest problems of life to commonplaces against which a Polytechnic debating club would revolt, his incredible unsuggestiveness, his sententious combination of ready reflection with complete intellectual sterility, and his consequent incapacity for getting out of the depth of even the most ignorant audience, except when he solemnly says something so transcendently platitudinous that his more humble-minded hearers cannot bring themselves to believe that so great a man really meant to talk like their grandmothers.
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespear when I measure my mind against his. The intensity of my impatience with him occasionally reaches such a pitch, that it would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him, knowing as I do how incapable he and his worshippers are of understanding any less obvious form of indignity. To read Cymbeline and to think of Goethe, of Wagner, of Ibsen, is, for me, to imperil the habit of studied moderation of statement which years of public responsibility as a journalist have made almost second nature in me.
added by SnootyBaronet | editThe Saturday Review, George Bernard Shaw(Sep 26, 1896)
William Shakespeare's date of birth is not precisely known, but it probably preceded his baptism on April 26, 1564, in Stratfordon-Avon, by only a few days.
There is no proof that Shakespeare personally superintended the printing of any of his plays.
Publisher's Preface: In the words of the First Folio of 1623, "The Riverside Shakespeare" is addressed 'To the great Variety of Readers. From the most able, to him that can but spell.'" - Harold T. Miller, President Houghton Mifflin Company
Quotations
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. - (The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2, Line 213)
Last words
To this urn let those repair / That are either true or fair; / For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
This work contains all works written by Shakespeare – this is not the Complete Plays only. Shakespeare wrote sonnets and poems in addition to the plays.
Presents the works of William Shakespeare, along with an analysis of the nature and authority of the early documents, a list of the canon and chronological order of composition, an essay on Shakespeare's language, and a bibliography.
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Book description
This book's contents include a 90 page, illustrated introduction, 37 Plays, 154 Sonnets and 5 other Poems; Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, The Phoenix and The Turtle, and A Lover's Complaint and 30 Appendices. Other material such as may aid the college student in his or her study of Shakespearian literature are also included but not itemized here. This book was written for the beginning to intermediate student of Shakespearian literature.
Note: The above description applies only to the single volume omnibus edited by G.B. Harrison, not the 38 volume set published by Penguin, nor, likely, any other set or omnibus of William Shakespeare's work.
Ebook comes with main table of contents and interlinked sub table of contents.
• Each play Illustrated with Illustrations unique to this release, over 350 Illustrations in total. • Biography and literary critique includes annotated inline footnotes.
The Plays. The Comedies of William Shakespeare. • All's Well That Ends Well. (Illustrated) • As You Like It. (Illustrated) • Comedy of Errors. (Illustrated) • Cymbeline. (Illustrated) • Love's Labour's Lost. (Illustrated) • Measure for Measure. (Illustrated) • Merchant of Venice. (Illustrated) • Merry Wives of Windsor. (Illustrated) • Midsummer Night's Dream. (Illustrated) • Much Ado about Nothing. (Illustrated) • Taming of the Shrew. (Illustrated) • Tempest. (Illustrated) • Troilus and Cressida. (Illustrated) • Twelfth Night. (Illustrated) • Two Gentlemen of Verona. (Illustrated) • Winter's Tale. (Illustrated)
The Histories of William Shakespeare. • Henry IV, Part 1. (Illustrated) • Henry IV, Part 2. (Illustrated) • Henry V. (Illustrated) • Henry VI, Part 1. (Illustrated) • Henry VI, Part 2. (Illustrated) • Henry VI, Part 3. (Illustrated) • Henry VIII. (Illustrated) • King John. (Illustrated) • Pericles. (Illustrated) • Richard II. (Illustrated) • Richard III. (Illustrated)
The Tragedies of William Shakespeare. • Antony and Cleopatra. (Illustrated) • Coriolanus. (Illustrated) • Hamlet. (Illustrated) • Julius Caesar. (Illustrated) • King Lear. (Illustrated) • Macbeth. (Illustrated) • Othello. (Illustrated) • Romeo and Juliet. (Illustrated) • Timon of Athens. (Illustrated) • Titus Andronicus. (Illustrated)
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare.
The Poems of William Shakespeare.
The Biographies of William Shakespeare. • Some Account Of The Life Of Mr. William Shakespeare By Nicholas Rowe. • Shakespeare His Life, Art, And Characters By Henry Norman Hudson. • The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote By Charles Dudley Warner. • Life Of William Shakespeare By Sir Sidney Lee. • Shakespeare's Family By Mrs. C. C. Stopes. (Inline Footnotes) • The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story by Frank Harris. • Shakespearean Playhouses: A History Of English Theatres Joseph Quincy Adams, Jr. (Illustrated / Inline Footnotes)
The Critical Works of William Shakespeare. • Notes To Comedies By Samuel Johnson. • Notes To Tragedies By Samuel Johnson. • A Study Of Shakespeare By Algernon Charles Swinburne. • Preface To Shakespeare And Notes On Plays By Samuel Johnson. • Eighteenth Century Essays On Shakespeare By D. Nichol. • Shakespeare's Attitude Toward The Working Classes By Ernest Crosby. • Shakespearean Tragedy by A. C. Bradley. (Inline Footnotes) • Leo Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay. (Inline Footnotes) • Shakespeare By Samuel Taylor Coleridge. • Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Hazlitt.
Includes all the plays and peoms, followed by an index of characters, index of first lines of songs, etc.; glossary; list of plays in historical order; note on the sequence.
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