Product Description

The Arden Shakespeare is the established edition of Shakespeare's work. Justly celebrated for its authoritative scholarship and invaluable commentary, Arden guides you a richer understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's plays.This edition of Romeo and Juliet provides, a clear and authoritative text, detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text, a full introduction discussing the critical and historical background to the play and appendices presenting sources and relevant extracts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125483 in Books
• Published on: 1980-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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!