Product Description

This new edition of Romeo and Juliet is part of the established Cambridge School Shakespeare series and has been substantially updated with new and revised activities throughout. Remaining faithful to the series' active approach it treats the play as a script to be acted, explored and enjoyed. As well as the complete script of Romeo and Juliet, you will find a variety of classroom-tested activities, an eight-page colour section and an enlarged selection of notes including information on characters, performance, history and language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5049 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
This is undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, spawning a host of imitators on stage and screen, including Leonard Bernstein's smash musical West Side Story, Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet filmed in 1968, and Baz Luhrmann's postmodern film version Romeo + Juliet. The tragic feud between "Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona", the Montagues and Capulets, which ultimately kills the two young "star-crossed lovers" and their "death-marked love" creates issues which have fascinated subsequent generations. The play deals with issues of intergenerational and familial conflict, as well as the power of language and the compelling relationship between sex and death, all of which makes it an incredibly modern play. It is also an early example of Shakespeare fusing poetry with dramatic action, as he moves from Romeo's lyrical account of Juliet--"she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" to the bustle and action of a 16th-century household (the play contains more scenes of ordinary working people than any of Shakespeare's other works). It also represents an experimental attempt to fuse comedy with tragedy. Up to the third act, the play proceeds along the lines of a classic romantic comedy. The turning point comes with the death of one of Shakespeare's finest early dramatic creations--Romeo's sexually ambivalent friend Mercutio, whose "plague o' both your houses" begins the play's descent into tragedy, "For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo". --Jerry Brotton

Customer Reviews

That's the point
The Arden Shakespeare is a scholarly edition intended for students andthose doing research on Shakespeare. The extensive notes are very usefulfor those who study Shakespeare at degree level and above. Since moststudents already know the meanings of archaic words there is little needto explain them in the notes - which are not there to entertain but toinform. Don't buy it if you aren't studying Shakespeare, there are cheaperversions available for the casual reader.

Arden Shakespeare
In some respects I think it'd be rather presumptuous of me to attempt to review Shakespeare. Someone so well known and influential wouldn't benefit from my opinions on their work, plus there are more scholarly and concise reviews out there. But I can comment on these Arden versions. Of all the Shakespeare I've read I've always found the Arden copies to be well laid out and to have excellent commentary and notes on the text. They really add to your understanding of Shakespeares outstanding plays and introduce you to the depth in his work. They have superb paper quality and are bound well, withstanding repeated readings and intensive study. For your collection of Shakespeare you can't do much better than Arden publications, some are quite hard to get hold of but it's worth the effort.

Pretentious intellectual edition!
The play itself is most definitely a classic. If I were reviewing the actual play, I would award it five stars.
I am, however, not a fan of this particular edition. I just feel compelled to write a short review, warning readers about the "detailed commentary" promised on each page ot this not inexpensive book. Sadly, rather than giving meanings to some of the more archaic words used in the text (as you tend to expect in a Shakespeare play), the footnotes seem almost entirely preoccupied with the following trivia: what kind of paper the bard was using; why Oscar Wilde (or other noted intellectuals) reckons he dropped certain letters from certain words; why capital letters were used in the First Edition, but dropped in subsequent editions etc . . .
You get the picture. Do yourself a favour and opt for one of the cheaper editions and save yourself the inevitable migraines that reading these torrid footnotes entails!