Product Description

Comprising the complete works of William Shakespeare, based on the Oxford edition, this book has been edited and annotated to provide a single-column text. Each play has an introduction aimed at encouraging a fresh approach to the work. In the general introduction, the editor draws a picture of everyday life in Elizabethan England: the culture, the people, commerce, politics and religion. He describes Shakespeare's family life and his professional career as a working man of the theatre. He also discusses the printing and publishing of the plays, and recent developments in textual scholarship. Lastly, he considers questions affecting Shakespeare criticism. An essay by Andrew Gurr (University of Reading), on the staging of Shakespeare's plays explains, for example, how the plays were performed at the "Globe" theatre. An accompanying CD-ROM, "The Norton Shakespeare Workshop" is also available.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124617 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Textbook Binding
• 3420 pages

Customer Reviews

A Superior Complete Works
Let me list the winning features of this edition:

* it is based on the reputable, and widely referenced Oxford Shakespeare, and although an 'American edition', follows the English spelling in all but the notes and introductions;
* the plays are in (conjectured) choronological order;
* most importantly, all glosses, explications and historical notes are on the text page itself (either as foot-, or marginal-notes) - no endless back-turning;
* furthermore, the quality of the notes is almost equal to that of the major multi-volume editions, although less verbose, and more relevant. Indeed it makes you appreciate that you are paying for a lot of scholarly fluff when you pay for an Arden or a single-play Oxford, with their endless quibbles on Latinisms and rewordings. Indeed, often the Norton has more direct glosses, and is more semantically illuminating and clarifying than those other editions, which assume too much in the reader. But the Norton also gives you scholarly references as well. You only lack the obscurest of literary references , which only the most scrutinizing of academics would ever need, and for that you would be working from a single-play text;
* textual variants are listed at the end of each play, showing editorial decisions clearly;
* spelling and names are modernised, and conventional/archaic spellings are rejected (e.g. banquet, for banket - which some Arden editors retain for not even academic reasons);
* consistently more stage directions, with assistance on who is addressing whom, who is front-stage, upper-stage, kneeling, armed, motioning etc.;
* genealogical tables, choronology, facsimiles of the frontispiece, introduction, commemorations and contents pages of the first Folio;
* copious illustrations in the 6-7 large-page, small-text introductions to each play;
* textual notes, and bibliographies for each play
* 20-page general bibliography on critics, history, performance, textual criticism, contexts;
* 3 versions of King Lear!;
* includes Two Noble Kinsmen, the Funeral elegy, and explanations/summaries of the missing works;
* 100-pages of Documents, and 80-page general introduction.

This is truly a complete and comperehensive Shakespeare edition.
BUY!

Best on the market
The Norton Shakespeare is quite simply the best complete edition of Shakespeare currently available. Based on Taylor and Wells' already excellent Oxford edition, the Norton contains a mass of extra material, including extensive introductory essays by leading Shakespeare scholars. It contains everything by Shakespeare that anyone could ever want, from the general reader to graduate students.

The Bard
This is indeed a wonderful edition of Shakespeare. It is very accesible to the modern reader, even those who find his language daunting. The editors preface all the plays with the issues surrounding them and the period they were written in. The volume also contains an overview of all the events surrounding the times like the state of stagecraft and the attitudes towards withches. Overall, a very useful volume that will allow easy access to Shakespeare's masterpieces.