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The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Histories, Comedies, Tragedies3-volume cased set
Hailed in The Washington Post Book World as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions of recent decades," the massive one-volume Oxford Shakespeare was based on eight years of full-time research by a team of distinguished British and American scholars. The result of the most fundamental
rethinking of the text and presentation of Shakespeare's works ever undertaken, it offered many remarkable innovations features, including a new chronological order, revised stage directions, modern spelling and punctuation, and two full versions of King Lear --as originally written and as revised
later for performance.
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare divides this excellent book into three handy volumes. It contains all the innovative features of the original, including a lucid General Introduction by Stanley Wells, and brief introductions to each work. It has been organized into Histories (including the poems
and sonnets), Comedies, and Tragedies, with the plays grouped in chronological order in each volume.
Attractively bound, with gold stamping on front and spine, and beautifully designed, these handsome volumes will undoubtably become a treasure for lovers of Shakespeare throughout the English-speaking world.
rethinking of the text and presentation of Shakespeare's works ever undertaken, it offered many remarkable innovations features, including a new chronological order, revised stage directions, modern spelling and punctuation, and two full versions of King Lear --as originally written and as revised
later for performance.
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare divides this excellent book into three handy volumes. It contains all the innovative features of the original, including a lucid General Introduction by Stanley Wells, and brief introductions to each work. It has been organized into Histories (including the poems
and sonnets), Comedies, and Tragedies, with the plays grouped in chronological order in each volume.
Attractively bound, with gold stamping on front and spine, and beautifully designed, these handsome volumes will undoubtably become a treasure for lovers of Shakespeare throughout the English-speaking world.
1486 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1906
About the author
William Shakespeare
30.4k books43.7k followersWilliam Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
February 9, 2017
Reflecting on the oeuvre of Shakespeare, I can’t shake a perverse idea: the Bard is underrated. And I think this feeling is tied to the contradictory knowledge that he is enormous, creating the master shadow in which all others dissolve. He’s the Platonic Form that has made possible, via subsequent authorial study and unconscious absorption, so many of the variations of what we consider the best in literature. The introspection and characterization of Woolf. The zaniness in Melville, Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace. That ‘disease’, love, in Proust. The soul-searching and linguistic proficiency of Joyce. The paradoxical mix of nihilism and hope in McCarthy. The exuberant wordplay of Nabokov. The tragicomedy of Faulkner. Dostoevksy’s meditations on evil, ambition, and the horrifying acts of which we are capable. It’s all there, centuries prior, in the great prolepsis that is Shakespeare.
LOVE
Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.
-Cymbeline
What you do,
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’d have you do it ever: when you sing,
I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
-The Winter’s Tale
Troilus: This is the monstruosity in love, lady: that the will is infinite,
and the execution confined: that the desire is boundless, and the
act a slave to limit.
Cressida: They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able,
and yet reserve an ability that they never perform: vowing more
than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth
part of one.
-Troilus and Cressida
But to be frank and give it thee again;
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep: The more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.
-Romeo and Juliet
So in considering what Shakespeare anticipated and achieved, the underrating is almost inevitable. But I also think it’s related to the perception that reading Shakespeare is the literary equivalent of forcing yourself to eat healthier, to drag yourself to the gym, to decline a night out in order to guarantee adequate sleep. It’s good for us, so let’s get on with it (or, more often, not). Likely this sense of unpleasant edification is instilled in grade school, at which time most of us are confronted with a confusing combination of experiences upon being assigned a Shakespeare play: that of hearing the Bard’s work extolled to impossible heights by our teacher, and the disappointment of the actual, difficult, strangely-worded reading experience.
But are most of Shakespeare’s plays even edifying? And if so, edifying in what sense? Aesthetically, the answer is unequivocal, but as with the imbibing of Dostoevksy’s Underground Man, the absorption of many of these plays* with their nihilistic and misanthropic aspects can lead to feelings of deep disquiet and a heightened awareness that seems at once empowering and exquisitely desolate. For me, there’s something almost unhealthily addicting about Shakespeare; it’s as if he’s holding up a fun-house mirror in which I can see life as it almost is, or could be, or would be if it weren’t for certain social pressures or any number of complicating aspects that Shakespeare can and does control in his plotting. Or maybe it even shows life as it actually is, and me as I really am. And so I can’t turn away, seeking ever for a clearer, deeper, more complete vision of what I can’t help but feel is true and painful and intoxicating and sick and erotic and poignant and disappointing.
* e.g. Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, et al.
DEATH
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place, where each one meets.
-The Two Noble Kinsmen
If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride
And hug it in mine arms.
-Measure for Measure
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
-Richard II
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-Macbeth
In spite of the depravity he often shares with us in his plays and in spite of what has historically crept into criticism, Shakespeare is anything but moralistic. Redeemed characters generally remain problematic, and most of the wedded endings leave the audience with more discomfort than joy, aware that these relationships are doomed based on five acts of intimation. Shakespeare’s not out to steer us toward or away from something; rather, he shows us the abyss into which, being born, we all must sink—an abyss lined with delights, sparse and temporary as they may be, that encourage us to say with Falstaff: “Give me life.”
LIFE
I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life;
which if I can save, so: if not, honour comes unlooked for,
and there’s an end.
-Henry IV, Part I
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our
virtues would be proud if our faults whipp’d them not, and our
crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues.
-All’s Well That Ends Well
Shallow: Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight
and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?
Falstaff: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
-Henry IV, Part II
‘Tis still a dream: or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue and brain not: either both, or nothing,
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
I’ll keep, if but for sympathy.
-Cymbeline
“You can’t really sum that geezer up, really, in a nifty sentence. Because everything about him is contrary.” This is Noel Gallagher on Morrissey, but it could very well be describing the genius of the Bard, whose ostensible breadth of human knowledge and internal experience is nonpareil. Socrates’ unexamined life may not be worth living, but internalizing Shakespeare would certainly seem to satisfy the requirement. His plays and sonnets give the impression of containing the full range of human emotions and motivations, of existing as the Hegelian Absolute that comprises all dialectical opposites (or “contraries”, to stick with the Morrissey comparison). Reading Shakespeare, as with Proust’s novel, has been one of those impossibly rewarding experiences, provoking endless reflection on the world, on existence, on others, on myself. And yet, having finished the complete writings, I already know that Nabokov was correct in insisting that "curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it."
LOVE
Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.
-Cymbeline
What you do,
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’d have you do it ever: when you sing,
I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ord’ring your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that, move still, still so,
And own no other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
-The Winter’s Tale
Troilus: This is the monstruosity in love, lady: that the will is infinite,
and the execution confined: that the desire is boundless, and the
act a slave to limit.
Cressida: They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able,
and yet reserve an ability that they never perform: vowing more
than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth
part of one.
-Troilus and Cressida
But to be frank and give it thee again;
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep: The more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.
-Romeo and Juliet
So in considering what Shakespeare anticipated and achieved, the underrating is almost inevitable. But I also think it’s related to the perception that reading Shakespeare is the literary equivalent of forcing yourself to eat healthier, to drag yourself to the gym, to decline a night out in order to guarantee adequate sleep. It’s good for us, so let’s get on with it (or, more often, not). Likely this sense of unpleasant edification is instilled in grade school, at which time most of us are confronted with a confusing combination of experiences upon being assigned a Shakespeare play: that of hearing the Bard’s work extolled to impossible heights by our teacher, and the disappointment of the actual, difficult, strangely-worded reading experience.
But are most of Shakespeare’s plays even edifying? And if so, edifying in what sense? Aesthetically, the answer is unequivocal, but as with the imbibing of Dostoevksy’s Underground Man, the absorption of many of these plays* with their nihilistic and misanthropic aspects can lead to feelings of deep disquiet and a heightened awareness that seems at once empowering and exquisitely desolate. For me, there’s something almost unhealthily addicting about Shakespeare; it’s as if he’s holding up a fun-house mirror in which I can see life as it almost is, or could be, or would be if it weren’t for certain social pressures or any number of complicating aspects that Shakespeare can and does control in his plotting. Or maybe it even shows life as it actually is, and me as I really am. And so I can’t turn away, seeking ever for a clearer, deeper, more complete vision of what I can’t help but feel is true and painful and intoxicating and sick and erotic and poignant and disappointing.
* e.g. Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, et al.
DEATH
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place, where each one meets.
-The Two Noble Kinsmen
If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride
And hug it in mine arms.
-Measure for Measure
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
-Richard II
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-Macbeth
In spite of the depravity he often shares with us in his plays and in spite of what has historically crept into criticism, Shakespeare is anything but moralistic. Redeemed characters generally remain problematic, and most of the wedded endings leave the audience with more discomfort than joy, aware that these relationships are doomed based on five acts of intimation. Shakespeare’s not out to steer us toward or away from something; rather, he shows us the abyss into which, being born, we all must sink—an abyss lined with delights, sparse and temporary as they may be, that encourage us to say with Falstaff: “Give me life.”
LIFE
I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life;
which if I can save, so: if not, honour comes unlooked for,
and there’s an end.
-Henry IV, Part I
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our
virtues would be proud if our faults whipp’d them not, and our
crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues.
-All’s Well That Ends Well
Shallow: Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight
and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?
Falstaff: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
-Henry IV, Part II
‘Tis still a dream: or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue and brain not: either both, or nothing,
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
I’ll keep, if but for sympathy.
-Cymbeline
“You can’t really sum that geezer up, really, in a nifty sentence. Because everything about him is contrary.” This is Noel Gallagher on Morrissey, but it could very well be describing the genius of the Bard, whose ostensible breadth of human knowledge and internal experience is nonpareil. Socrates’ unexamined life may not be worth living, but internalizing Shakespeare would certainly seem to satisfy the requirement. His plays and sonnets give the impression of containing the full range of human emotions and motivations, of existing as the Hegelian Absolute that comprises all dialectical opposites (or “contraries”, to stick with the Morrissey comparison). Reading Shakespeare, as with Proust’s novel, has been one of those impossibly rewarding experiences, provoking endless reflection on the world, on existence, on others, on myself. And yet, having finished the complete writings, I already know that Nabokov was correct in insisting that "curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it."
February 3, 2018
Edward III
For anyone saying, "Huh?" right now, let me say that EIII is one of the "Apocryphal Plays" that have been credited wholly or in part to Shakespeare at one time or another but that do not have conclusive proof of authorship by Big Bill Rattlepike. In the Second Edition of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, the whole text of all plays the editors are convinced Shakespeare had a hand in is printed. This means that they have made the brave decision to include Edward III, convinced as they are that Shakepeare wrote up to four scenes in the play. The text has undergone every stylistic and vocubulary test known to scholarship and there is a growing consensus that Shakespeare wrote some, at least, of this play. Now, I don't know anything about these tests, but if you'd asked me which scenes stood out as the best, I'd have picked the four that the present editors claim were by Big Bill the Bard.
The play is a straightforward history, showing Edward the III first having trouble with the Scots then invading France, where his son gets caught, massively outnumbered, in a valley surrounded by hills...Cue ridiculous triumph-against-the-odds...
Between the two are some scenes where the King meets an exceptionally attractive member of the Nobility and woos her, despite being already married himself. These scenes raise the bar in terms of the language used and feeling expressed and are reminiscent of numerous similar scenes by Shakespeare - I could easily believe he wrote them. Later, the Prince of Wales, pensive before apparently insurmountable odds of battle, finds courage whilst meditating on the inevitability of death. Once again these passages are reminiscent of other famous Shakespeare scenes.
The plot is reminiscent of Henry V and I can easily imagine that Shakespeare took this play and used it as the model for that later, greater and entirely solo effort.
What Edward III lacks are depth of characterisation, depth of feeling conveyed by the language (outside the four scenes mentioned above) and a unity in the whole. The early part with Edward's attempted adultery seems disconnected from the subsequent invasion of France.
Even taken alone, Henry V eliminates all these problems.
This play illustrates to me the genius of Shakespeare: he was able to take a populist form that demanded a continuous supply of fresh material that allowed little time for rehearsal and create work that showed such psychological and dramatic insight in such glorious language that it transcended his era to the extent of him being widely considered the best Britsh playwright ever to have lived, 400 years later.
The Merchant of Venice
Well that was - short! Also, fun. It's a mess of a play in some respects - the plotting and structure are a muddle. The dramatic crisis occurs in act 4, leaving the entire last act over to the kind of banter and romantical silliness typified by As You Like It's forest scenes, which could feel anti-climactic if not played up to the hilt in performance, because when it come down to it,this play is dominated by Shylock. So much so that it ended up also popularly known by the alternative title The Jew of Venice and, in an era when actors dominated performance decisions, frequently curtailed at the end of act 4 when Shylock's part is over and the dramatic crisis is resolved.
This seems typical of the comedies, where much of the plot is an excuse to get a bunch of people into romantic shenanigans and the women into disguise as men, with little of the concern for pace or structure that we tend to demand of an genre of film these days. It's not that he couldn't do it - Richard III and Hamlet, even if bloated in places, certainly show how to organise things and Henry V doesn't even have much excess verbiage. MacBeth (aided no doubt by Middleton's many interventions) is superbly constructed and never slow - hence I conclude that Shakespeare was all about the laughs in his early comedies and never mind the preposterousness or the plots that go away for three acts.
There is no escaping the fact that Shylock dominates this play; his character is the only one developed to any real depth and the fact that the debate rages to this day as to whether Shakespeare and his contemporary audiences would have seen him as sympathetic or merely a pantomime villain testifies to this. Because a case can be made either way, villain or victim it seems plain to me that what we have is a sympathetic antagonist - not a monster everybody loves to hate but a human whose flaws in the end bring his own downfall in the very definition of Shakespearean Tragedy. He's abused and railed against for doing what Christians won't whilst at the same time being patronised by the very same people because he is fulfilling an essential function in a market economy and earning a living from it. When the opportunity arises he must have revenge, not the moral high ground of magnanimity and mercy - there-in lies the seed of his destruction.
It's hard not to compare this with Jonson, given that they were contemporaries and I recently finished a five play volume by one of the men said to have drunk Shakespeare into the fever that killed him. The contrasts are in fact stronger - Jonson being more prosaic, less witty in banter and more prone to showing off his learning, especially by quoting Latin and more concerned with "ordinary" folk than the rich and powerful. Shakespeare here also shows his mastery of character (if only in the form of Shylock) whilst the best of Jonson is much more in the way of caricature.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
This play doesn't seem to have enjoyed much popularity in my (adult) lifetime - I can't remember hearing about, let alone actually seeing, any film or stage production of it - and I can't understand why. It's ripe with opportunities for visual humour, has everybody's favourite character from Henry IV, much wit and punning, a more coherent plot than many another Shakespeare comedy and even offers wide scope to set and costume designers. I'd love to see this, filmed, or, even better, live on stage.
For those not in the know, the play revolves around an episode from John Falstaff's life prior to his association with Prince Hal, in which he attempts to cuckold his neighbours. There is a subplot regarding who will marry one Anne Page, from three suitors, leading to a typically Shakespearean ending with (implied) happy marriage.
In one sense this is a-typical Shakespeare - despite ostensibly being historical - set in the reign of Henry IV - it could, if you changed the characters' names, not be identified as anything other than contemporary with the author. It also deals not with the high-born and rich but with professionals and labourers - and rogues and thieves - making it very Jonsonian.
Julius Caesar
My first exposure to Shakespeare was this play, read in English class, when I was 13. Apparently it is a very popular choice in schools because it has no "bawdy." This wasn't any concern of my teacher, though, as he had us reading MacBeth later the same year.
Julius Caesar didn't go down very well; it was terribly confusing. Caesar dies half way through having done and said very little. What was that all about? The only bit that I remember liking was Antony's great rhetorical swaying of the plebians. The way he achieved that was fascinating.
My second encounter with the play was an outdoor performance in the courtyard of Conwy Castle, my main memory of which was having a sore bum because of inadequate cushioning from the courtyard floor (sat as I was on a couple of camping mats placed directly on the flagstones). So not much joy there either. And the whole structure was still confusing - it isn't about Julius! This fact was never explained by my teacher. But there is an explanation: the play is based on Classical dramatic models where-in this type of thing happens quite often. The central figure of the title is an enigma around which the real action revolves - the motive force for chaos and tragedy more by other people's responses to him than by his direct actions. And that's what we have here. Shakespeare writing a play after the fashion of the Latin dramatists he was familiar with from school, who in turn were following the fashion and subject matter of the Greek plays of antiquity.
Now, having learned this and also having come into contact with some of that ancient drama, I re-read Julius Caesar and find that it does in fact make sense, structurally if looked at this way. There is no central character except Caesar, despite him being conspicuous by his absence. There have been attempts to re-cast (and re-name) it as the Tragedy of Brutus but these are distortions or adaptations. The fact is that Cassius, Antony and Brutus are all compared and contrasted with each other and with Caesar and this is a necessary thing for understanding the character of each. Cassius's worldly motivations and ready perception of character are the opposite of Brutus's lofty ideals and inability to recognise that he is being used. Antony is motivated as much by will to power as by revenge; Cassius is aware of this. Brutus is a fool politically but is the superior general it turns out; they ould have won if Cassius had been more careful on the battlefield and Caesar - he's a greater figure than all of them put together, though he's just a man, with human frailties as Cassius points out, remembering how he saved Caesar from drowning in the Tiber. Greater - but for reasons not clear, not ever expressed - and the eye of the storm.
It's a fascinating mess and everybody ends up dead except Antony who walks off with the power and all the best lines in the play, back in that crucial "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." scene that forms the bulk of Act 3. The bit I liked even when I didn't have a clue about the rest - still the best part, even with the rest suddenly making sense.
Troilus and Cressida
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare mentions that early 19th Century critics were "baffled" by this play. I have some sympathy with them; I don't really know what Bill was trying to do with this one. No contemporary writer worth the name would plot the final two acts this way, for a start. Now plotting was never Bill's strongest suit but we aren't talking about one of his daft comedies where you can ignore plot development in exchange for extreme verbal and physical comedy down in the woods tonight and go home chuckling at what you've seen and heard and not really caring about the absurdity of it all. Nor is this Romeo and Juliet 2.0, despite the set up in the first three acts where we start with a lot of wit and word play and silliness but get progressively more serious as time goes on, ending up with a full-on Tragic denouement and a bold statement about the destructive nature of feuding and partisan violence within respectable society that is alarmingly relevant 400 years later. Here, if there is a Tragic figure at all it is Hector, sadly too naively trusting in others' honour because his own is impeccable, rather than Troilus or Cressida, let alone both. And the play, despite having two endings, never really resolves the issue of the Troilus-Cressida-Diomedes love triangle at all. It's a mess.
Apparently more recent criticism has focused on Shakespeare's treatment of sexuality in the play but I don't really find the idea that people can be fickle and inconstant and driven by other people's looks all that profound or interesting, though I find it believable that Bill might have been aiming at a discussion of it.
So what I'm left with is a play that starts humourous then becomes amusingly chaotic and diverting in the final act (alarums and excursions abound) but stops rather than really concludes and suffers horribly in comparison with the Iliad's treatment of all the characters they have in common - a comparison that, at least while reading off the page, is unavoidable to anyone who has previously encountered Achilles' rage as described by Homer.
And on we go to Sir Thomas More, a play for which Shakespeare wrote probably only one or two scenes.
The Book of Sir Thomas More
The editors believe Shakespeare wrote a three page passage in the extant "book" of this play, which was originally composed by Munday. Those pages were included in the 1st Ed. of this volume but, as with Edward III, here in the 2nd Ed. they print the full text of the play. The parts attributed to Shakespeare are higher quality than the rest but some of the material by Munday is almost as good. However, for me the real interests of this play, which overall is disjointed, unbalanced and a second rate work of the period, are twofold and not really related to Shakespeare directly, namely, the portrayal of More and the insight into the politics, censorship and mode of operation of playwrights of the period.
What we have is a playbook originally written by Munday dealing with the rise and fall of Thomas More, which was heavily criticised by the Master of the Revels who read all plays before performance and had the power to demand any alterations he deemed fit or suppress the play entirely. More was a controvercial figure in Elizabethan politics still, being considered a Catholic martyr by many and a champion of the working people to boot. Catholicism vs. Protestantism was inextricably mixed up with the right to the throne and international power politics. Nevertheless, the Master of the Revels didn't ban the play out-right but instead gave copious instructions for deletions and modifications that were written directly on the play-book.
Subsequently various authors, including Chettle, Heywood and Dekker as well as Shakespeare, revised the play, replacing passages and altering existing ones - it's a professional critic's wet dream. The demand for original material for the stage was difficult to keep up with and collaborations between playwrights were commonplace, as were revisions of extant plays. (Middleton appears to have revised two of Shakespeare's plays, for example.) Here we get a good look at an extreme example of attempting to rescue a play because writing a new one from scratch was too long a process, as well as an insight into the role and attitudes of the Master of the Revels, which clearly was considered politically important and taken seriously. Despite all of the effort by nearly everyone, it seems the play was never performed on the contemporary stage.
Which brings me to the character of More himself. Here he comes over as a trickster and humourist who uses pranks to teach more pompous folks and genuine fools various lessons but also a champion of mercy and restraint in keeping the peace between the lower classes and the aristocracy. He goes in humble and brave fashion to his martyrdom, refusing to break with his Catholic principles regarding Henry VIII's divorce.
In A Man for All Seasons More is presented as a much more serious but still saintly martyr who dies for his principles. A biography of William Tyndale that I once read, gives a different picture, by illustrating what some of those principles were: More had a network of agents who spied and informed on anybody connected with translating the Bible from Latin to English or printing or distributing such. Anybody found guilty of said "crimes" were burned alive at the stake - no mercy whatsoever.
All of these authors had a partisan agenda regarding More: Catholic martyr, champion of the unprivileged, murderer of anybody who opposed the Church's control of Christian thought. Could he have been all of these things?
Measure for Measure
The editors believe that this play was adapted somewhat by another writer and additionally that it was Thomas Middleton. The same view is widely held regarding MacBeth, which to my mind loses it's unity of view and expression in the scenes of the witches spell casting and giving cauldrons a bad reputation forever after. Here, though, any adaptation is more subtle and doesn't impair the play at all.
This is also the earliest of what are known as the "problem plays" so called, as far as I can tell, because they do not fit neatly into any of the three conventional genres of the time, namely, comedy, tragedy or history. Earliest problem play does not mean early play, however - we are in the second half of Shakespeare's career by now. This leads me to propose a simple solution to the "problem": By this time Shakespeare was successful and confident enough to dispense with convention and write whatever kind of play he wanted and it seems to me that this is a morality play.
This play attacks everything that was appalling about the status of and attitudes towards women of the period, making it a stark contrast with The Taming of the Shrew. The law that the plot hinges upon is an ass, along with the prevailing obsession with virginity prior to marriage and as some kind of morally pure state that gets you extra bonus points from the Heavenly authorities. The convention of dowries and concomitant "wife as chattel" is also attacked.
There are no really memorable speeches but the play gets its points across successfully and doesn't outstay its welcome.
Henry V
Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be reading King Lear, but the BBC broadcast Brannagh's Henry V film and I thought I'd catch it on iPlayer before it disappears. Go here for the review because there isn't room left here for it all:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
King Lear (Quarto)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Tragedy of Richard III
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Timon of Athens
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
MacBeth
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
All's Well that Ends Well
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Pericles
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Coriolanus
Fierce warrior, great general, total prat.
The Winter's Tale
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Cymbeline
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Two Noble Kinsmen
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
For anyone saying, "Huh?" right now, let me say that EIII is one of the "Apocryphal Plays" that have been credited wholly or in part to Shakespeare at one time or another but that do not have conclusive proof of authorship by Big Bill Rattlepike. In the Second Edition of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, the whole text of all plays the editors are convinced Shakespeare had a hand in is printed. This means that they have made the brave decision to include Edward III, convinced as they are that Shakepeare wrote up to four scenes in the play. The text has undergone every stylistic and vocubulary test known to scholarship and there is a growing consensus that Shakespeare wrote some, at least, of this play. Now, I don't know anything about these tests, but if you'd asked me which scenes stood out as the best, I'd have picked the four that the present editors claim were by Big Bill the Bard.
The play is a straightforward history, showing Edward the III first having trouble with the Scots then invading France, where his son gets caught, massively outnumbered, in a valley surrounded by hills...Cue ridiculous triumph-against-the-odds...
Between the two are some scenes where the King meets an exceptionally attractive member of the Nobility and woos her, despite being already married himself. These scenes raise the bar in terms of the language used and feeling expressed and are reminiscent of numerous similar scenes by Shakespeare - I could easily believe he wrote them. Later, the Prince of Wales, pensive before apparently insurmountable odds of battle, finds courage whilst meditating on the inevitability of death. Once again these passages are reminiscent of other famous Shakespeare scenes.
The plot is reminiscent of Henry V and I can easily imagine that Shakespeare took this play and used it as the model for that later, greater and entirely solo effort.
What Edward III lacks are depth of characterisation, depth of feeling conveyed by the language (outside the four scenes mentioned above) and a unity in the whole. The early part with Edward's attempted adultery seems disconnected from the subsequent invasion of France.
Even taken alone, Henry V eliminates all these problems.
This play illustrates to me the genius of Shakespeare: he was able to take a populist form that demanded a continuous supply of fresh material that allowed little time for rehearsal and create work that showed such psychological and dramatic insight in such glorious language that it transcended his era to the extent of him being widely considered the best Britsh playwright ever to have lived, 400 years later.
The Merchant of Venice
Well that was - short! Also, fun. It's a mess of a play in some respects - the plotting and structure are a muddle. The dramatic crisis occurs in act 4, leaving the entire last act over to the kind of banter and romantical silliness typified by As You Like It's forest scenes, which could feel anti-climactic if not played up to the hilt in performance, because when it come down to it,this play is dominated by Shylock. So much so that it ended up also popularly known by the alternative title The Jew of Venice and, in an era when actors dominated performance decisions, frequently curtailed at the end of act 4 when Shylock's part is over and the dramatic crisis is resolved.
This seems typical of the comedies, where much of the plot is an excuse to get a bunch of people into romantic shenanigans and the women into disguise as men, with little of the concern for pace or structure that we tend to demand of an genre of film these days. It's not that he couldn't do it - Richard III and Hamlet, even if bloated in places, certainly show how to organise things and Henry V doesn't even have much excess verbiage. MacBeth (aided no doubt by Middleton's many interventions) is superbly constructed and never slow - hence I conclude that Shakespeare was all about the laughs in his early comedies and never mind the preposterousness or the plots that go away for three acts.
There is no escaping the fact that Shylock dominates this play; his character is the only one developed to any real depth and the fact that the debate rages to this day as to whether Shakespeare and his contemporary audiences would have seen him as sympathetic or merely a pantomime villain testifies to this. Because a case can be made either way, villain or victim it seems plain to me that what we have is a sympathetic antagonist - not a monster everybody loves to hate but a human whose flaws in the end bring his own downfall in the very definition of Shakespearean Tragedy. He's abused and railed against for doing what Christians won't whilst at the same time being patronised by the very same people because he is fulfilling an essential function in a market economy and earning a living from it. When the opportunity arises he must have revenge, not the moral high ground of magnanimity and mercy - there-in lies the seed of his destruction.
It's hard not to compare this with Jonson, given that they were contemporaries and I recently finished a five play volume by one of the men said to have drunk Shakespeare into the fever that killed him. The contrasts are in fact stronger - Jonson being more prosaic, less witty in banter and more prone to showing off his learning, especially by quoting Latin and more concerned with "ordinary" folk than the rich and powerful. Shakespeare here also shows his mastery of character (if only in the form of Shylock) whilst the best of Jonson is much more in the way of caricature.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
This play doesn't seem to have enjoyed much popularity in my (adult) lifetime - I can't remember hearing about, let alone actually seeing, any film or stage production of it - and I can't understand why. It's ripe with opportunities for visual humour, has everybody's favourite character from Henry IV, much wit and punning, a more coherent plot than many another Shakespeare comedy and even offers wide scope to set and costume designers. I'd love to see this, filmed, or, even better, live on stage.
For those not in the know, the play revolves around an episode from John Falstaff's life prior to his association with Prince Hal, in which he attempts to cuckold his neighbours. There is a subplot regarding who will marry one Anne Page, from three suitors, leading to a typically Shakespearean ending with (implied) happy marriage.
In one sense this is a-typical Shakespeare - despite ostensibly being historical - set in the reign of Henry IV - it could, if you changed the characters' names, not be identified as anything other than contemporary with the author. It also deals not with the high-born and rich but with professionals and labourers - and rogues and thieves - making it very Jonsonian.
Julius Caesar
My first exposure to Shakespeare was this play, read in English class, when I was 13. Apparently it is a very popular choice in schools because it has no "bawdy." This wasn't any concern of my teacher, though, as he had us reading MacBeth later the same year.
Julius Caesar didn't go down very well; it was terribly confusing. Caesar dies half way through having done and said very little. What was that all about? The only bit that I remember liking was Antony's great rhetorical swaying of the plebians. The way he achieved that was fascinating.
My second encounter with the play was an outdoor performance in the courtyard of Conwy Castle, my main memory of which was having a sore bum because of inadequate cushioning from the courtyard floor (sat as I was on a couple of camping mats placed directly on the flagstones). So not much joy there either. And the whole structure was still confusing - it isn't about Julius! This fact was never explained by my teacher. But there is an explanation: the play is based on Classical dramatic models where-in this type of thing happens quite often. The central figure of the title is an enigma around which the real action revolves - the motive force for chaos and tragedy more by other people's responses to him than by his direct actions. And that's what we have here. Shakespeare writing a play after the fashion of the Latin dramatists he was familiar with from school, who in turn were following the fashion and subject matter of the Greek plays of antiquity.
Now, having learned this and also having come into contact with some of that ancient drama, I re-read Julius Caesar and find that it does in fact make sense, structurally if looked at this way. There is no central character except Caesar, despite him being conspicuous by his absence. There have been attempts to re-cast (and re-name) it as the Tragedy of Brutus but these are distortions or adaptations. The fact is that Cassius, Antony and Brutus are all compared and contrasted with each other and with Caesar and this is a necessary thing for understanding the character of each. Cassius's worldly motivations and ready perception of character are the opposite of Brutus's lofty ideals and inability to recognise that he is being used. Antony is motivated as much by will to power as by revenge; Cassius is aware of this. Brutus is a fool politically but is the superior general it turns out; they ould have won if Cassius had been more careful on the battlefield and Caesar - he's a greater figure than all of them put together, though he's just a man, with human frailties as Cassius points out, remembering how he saved Caesar from drowning in the Tiber. Greater - but for reasons not clear, not ever expressed - and the eye of the storm.
It's a fascinating mess and everybody ends up dead except Antony who walks off with the power and all the best lines in the play, back in that crucial "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." scene that forms the bulk of Act 3. The bit I liked even when I didn't have a clue about the rest - still the best part, even with the rest suddenly making sense.
Troilus and Cressida
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare mentions that early 19th Century critics were "baffled" by this play. I have some sympathy with them; I don't really know what Bill was trying to do with this one. No contemporary writer worth the name would plot the final two acts this way, for a start. Now plotting was never Bill's strongest suit but we aren't talking about one of his daft comedies where you can ignore plot development in exchange for extreme verbal and physical comedy down in the woods tonight and go home chuckling at what you've seen and heard and not really caring about the absurdity of it all. Nor is this Romeo and Juliet 2.0, despite the set up in the first three acts where we start with a lot of wit and word play and silliness but get progressively more serious as time goes on, ending up with a full-on Tragic denouement and a bold statement about the destructive nature of feuding and partisan violence within respectable society that is alarmingly relevant 400 years later. Here, if there is a Tragic figure at all it is Hector, sadly too naively trusting in others' honour because his own is impeccable, rather than Troilus or Cressida, let alone both. And the play, despite having two endings, never really resolves the issue of the Troilus-Cressida-Diomedes love triangle at all. It's a mess.
Apparently more recent criticism has focused on Shakespeare's treatment of sexuality in the play but I don't really find the idea that people can be fickle and inconstant and driven by other people's looks all that profound or interesting, though I find it believable that Bill might have been aiming at a discussion of it.
So what I'm left with is a play that starts humourous then becomes amusingly chaotic and diverting in the final act (alarums and excursions abound) but stops rather than really concludes and suffers horribly in comparison with the Iliad's treatment of all the characters they have in common - a comparison that, at least while reading off the page, is unavoidable to anyone who has previously encountered Achilles' rage as described by Homer.
And on we go to Sir Thomas More, a play for which Shakespeare wrote probably only one or two scenes.
The Book of Sir Thomas More
The editors believe Shakespeare wrote a three page passage in the extant "book" of this play, which was originally composed by Munday. Those pages were included in the 1st Ed. of this volume but, as with Edward III, here in the 2nd Ed. they print the full text of the play. The parts attributed to Shakespeare are higher quality than the rest but some of the material by Munday is almost as good. However, for me the real interests of this play, which overall is disjointed, unbalanced and a second rate work of the period, are twofold and not really related to Shakespeare directly, namely, the portrayal of More and the insight into the politics, censorship and mode of operation of playwrights of the period.
What we have is a playbook originally written by Munday dealing with the rise and fall of Thomas More, which was heavily criticised by the Master of the Revels who read all plays before performance and had the power to demand any alterations he deemed fit or suppress the play entirely. More was a controvercial figure in Elizabethan politics still, being considered a Catholic martyr by many and a champion of the working people to boot. Catholicism vs. Protestantism was inextricably mixed up with the right to the throne and international power politics. Nevertheless, the Master of the Revels didn't ban the play out-right but instead gave copious instructions for deletions and modifications that were written directly on the play-book.
Subsequently various authors, including Chettle, Heywood and Dekker as well as Shakespeare, revised the play, replacing passages and altering existing ones - it's a professional critic's wet dream. The demand for original material for the stage was difficult to keep up with and collaborations between playwrights were commonplace, as were revisions of extant plays. (Middleton appears to have revised two of Shakespeare's plays, for example.) Here we get a good look at an extreme example of attempting to rescue a play because writing a new one from scratch was too long a process, as well as an insight into the role and attitudes of the Master of the Revels, which clearly was considered politically important and taken seriously. Despite all of the effort by nearly everyone, it seems the play was never performed on the contemporary stage.
Which brings me to the character of More himself. Here he comes over as a trickster and humourist who uses pranks to teach more pompous folks and genuine fools various lessons but also a champion of mercy and restraint in keeping the peace between the lower classes and the aristocracy. He goes in humble and brave fashion to his martyrdom, refusing to break with his Catholic principles regarding Henry VIII's divorce.
In A Man for All Seasons More is presented as a much more serious but still saintly martyr who dies for his principles. A biography of William Tyndale that I once read, gives a different picture, by illustrating what some of those principles were: More had a network of agents who spied and informed on anybody connected with translating the Bible from Latin to English or printing or distributing such. Anybody found guilty of said "crimes" were burned alive at the stake - no mercy whatsoever.
All of these authors had a partisan agenda regarding More: Catholic martyr, champion of the unprivileged, murderer of anybody who opposed the Church's control of Christian thought. Could he have been all of these things?
Measure for Measure
The editors believe that this play was adapted somewhat by another writer and additionally that it was Thomas Middleton. The same view is widely held regarding MacBeth, which to my mind loses it's unity of view and expression in the scenes of the witches spell casting and giving cauldrons a bad reputation forever after. Here, though, any adaptation is more subtle and doesn't impair the play at all.
This is also the earliest of what are known as the "problem plays" so called, as far as I can tell, because they do not fit neatly into any of the three conventional genres of the time, namely, comedy, tragedy or history. Earliest problem play does not mean early play, however - we are in the second half of Shakespeare's career by now. This leads me to propose a simple solution to the "problem": By this time Shakespeare was successful and confident enough to dispense with convention and write whatever kind of play he wanted and it seems to me that this is a morality play.
This play attacks everything that was appalling about the status of and attitudes towards women of the period, making it a stark contrast with The Taming of the Shrew. The law that the plot hinges upon is an ass, along with the prevailing obsession with virginity prior to marriage and as some kind of morally pure state that gets you extra bonus points from the Heavenly authorities. The convention of dowries and concomitant "wife as chattel" is also attacked.
There are no really memorable speeches but the play gets its points across successfully and doesn't outstay its welcome.
Henry V
Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be reading King Lear, but the BBC broadcast Brannagh's Henry V film and I thought I'd catch it on iPlayer before it disappears. Go here for the review because there isn't room left here for it all:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
King Lear (Quarto)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Tragedy of Richard III
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Timon of Athens
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
MacBeth
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
All's Well that Ends Well
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Pericles
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Coriolanus
Fierce warrior, great general, total prat.
The Winter's Tale
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Cymbeline
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Two Noble Kinsmen
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
October 6, 2020
The Oxford Complete served as my guide through Shakespeare's plays. Its introduction is highly recommended and very insightful. The book itself is rather bulky, so I often restored to Kindle or to paperbacks for some of the plays. The book collects all known Shakespeare plays and attributions including two copies of King Lear, Edward III, Henry VIII, and Two Noble Kinsman all in chronological order with a one-page introduction to each play. I did not really use the Glossary due to the book's bulk and the inconvenience of their having placed it at the end, and there are no notes in the text. This is a blessing (fewer distractions from the text) and a curse (fewer insights into the texts) so your mileage may vary.
As for other versions of Shakespeare, I found that the Folger Shakespeare was more practical (numbered notes on even pages, Shakespeare's original on the odd pages) than the Signet Classics which I had read in high school (non-numbered notes at the bottom of the page). It was fun, however, to see my notes from thirty years ago as I was reading!
I would still recommend the Oxford for its completeness and the quality of the printing for the Shakespeare fan with a hefty bookshelf to store it. Regardless, the Bard is a pleasure in nearly any format.
As for other versions of Shakespeare, I found that the Folger Shakespeare was more practical (numbered notes on even pages, Shakespeare's original on the odd pages) than the Signet Classics which I had read in high school (non-numbered notes at the bottom of the page). It was fun, however, to see my notes from thirty years ago as I was reading!
I would still recommend the Oxford for its completeness and the quality of the printing for the Shakespeare fan with a hefty bookshelf to store it. Regardless, the Bard is a pleasure in nearly any format.
February 9, 2017
My first reading of the plays, sonnets, and Venus and Adonis (maybe not Lucrece) was in the Kittredge edition; my professor, in the yearlong course in all the plays, was a student of Kittredge's.
When I came to teach the plays, I used Harrison until this one-volume edition appeared, and definitely improved students' access by modernizing some spelling and punctuation. Since there's evidence Shakespeare punctuated rarely, using the line ends as punctuation (the "D Hand" of the Book of Sir Thomas More) all punctuation proceeds from editors, be they Hemings and Condell, or possibly Florio, etc.
This edition includes clear renderings of the D Hand of Sir T.M, and photographs of Shakespeare's handwriting in that MS, in the most controversial passage. Shakespeare seems to have been given More's speech to the uprising, as the Bard was expert at not offending authorities ready to jail playwrights for public incitements. I used to tell my classes that one of Shakespeare's main accomplishments as a playwright was NOT to be jailed. Contrast Jonson (in his case, not for his writing, but killing a man in a duel), Marston and Chapman.
The D Hand also features many Shakespearean phrases, like :"ravenous fishes," and especially "this your mountainish inhumanity." Note that More addresses artisans uprising to defend poor London craftsmen against foreigners, "strangers" now working in England. (Shades of Brexit?)
In the sixties I first read about the D Hand in Samuel Tannenbaum's 1929 study, at the U Minnesota Library before it had moved across the Mississippi to the great brick pile it now occupies.
Perhaps it's a failure to fill my review of this major edition with such a detail, but it serves to illustrate how useful the volume is throughout, concise in scholarship (separate volume contains scholarly references) but pertinent and readable.
When I came to teach the plays, I used Harrison until this one-volume edition appeared, and definitely improved students' access by modernizing some spelling and punctuation. Since there's evidence Shakespeare punctuated rarely, using the line ends as punctuation (the "D Hand" of the Book of Sir Thomas More) all punctuation proceeds from editors, be they Hemings and Condell, or possibly Florio, etc.
This edition includes clear renderings of the D Hand of Sir T.M, and photographs of Shakespeare's handwriting in that MS, in the most controversial passage. Shakespeare seems to have been given More's speech to the uprising, as the Bard was expert at not offending authorities ready to jail playwrights for public incitements. I used to tell my classes that one of Shakespeare's main accomplishments as a playwright was NOT to be jailed. Contrast Jonson (in his case, not for his writing, but killing a man in a duel), Marston and Chapman.
The D Hand also features many Shakespearean phrases, like :"ravenous fishes," and especially "this your mountainish inhumanity." Note that More addresses artisans uprising to defend poor London craftsmen against foreigners, "strangers" now working in England. (Shades of Brexit?)
In the sixties I first read about the D Hand in Samuel Tannenbaum's 1929 study, at the U Minnesota Library before it had moved across the Mississippi to the great brick pile it now occupies.
Perhaps it's a failure to fill my review of this major edition with such a detail, but it serves to illustrate how useful the volume is throughout, concise in scholarship (separate volume contains scholarly references) but pertinent and readable.
February 7, 2017
. I've been watching the old BBC An Age of Kings. For those who don't know, this is an old BBC series of Shakespeare's history cycle from Richard II though to Richard III. It has a young Sean Connery as Hotspur and Tom Hardy as Henry V. Judi Dench is there as is Angela Baddley (Mrs. Bridges from Upstairs, Downstairs. It got me thinking about the timeless of Shakespeare.
Why does everyone on the planet read Shakespeare? Why does the Bard's work appear on stage, in film, on television? Why does his work inspire other stories? Why can his work be placed in almost any context and still be good (okay, Julius Caesar set in Panama didn't work, but that was the smoky cap guns).
Perhaps the answer to the above questions is that Stratford-Upon-Avon needed a good tourist draw. No, of course not. It is because Shakespeare is da bomb.
There is something for everyone in Shakespeare. There is love in R&J or any of the comedies. There is murder in several plays. There is family relationships constantly being examined such as in Lear and Hamlet. There are thousands, if not millions, of dirty jokes. And don't forget the sonnet that is only about sex. Shakespeare was a beautiful poet who had a really perverted sense of humor sometimes. I half agree with one of my professors, Titus just might be Shakespeare's attempt at comedy, trying to mock the revenge tradition. It does, as the Reduced Shakespeare Company has shown, make a really good cooking show.
I personally find the less well known plays to be the better ones. I love Tony and Cleo. I love Much Ado. Even King John has its high points It is in lesser known plays that the average reader can discover gems. It’s true that Hamlet and the other big plays are wonderful, brilliant, but the reader should also play attention to the others, the ones that haven’t been talked to death. Because it is in those, that in many ways, the reader can reach Shakespeare. If you know what I mean.
It’s true that the Bard has had some misses. I don’t think anyone truly, really knows what he was doing with Trolius and Cressida, though I have a soft spot for that play. I read The Phoenix and the Turtle but can’t remember it very well.
But Shakespeare is still da bomb.
The important thing to remember about Shakespeare is that he wasn't meant to be read, but meant to be seen, to be heard. The plays work best when they come off the page, either though performance or simply reading aloud. It also helps to have a working knowledge of the Bible and mythology.
Why does everyone on the planet read Shakespeare? Why does the Bard's work appear on stage, in film, on television? Why does his work inspire other stories? Why can his work be placed in almost any context and still be good (okay, Julius Caesar set in Panama didn't work, but that was the smoky cap guns).
Perhaps the answer to the above questions is that Stratford-Upon-Avon needed a good tourist draw. No, of course not. It is because Shakespeare is da bomb.
There is something for everyone in Shakespeare. There is love in R&J or any of the comedies. There is murder in several plays. There is family relationships constantly being examined such as in Lear and Hamlet. There are thousands, if not millions, of dirty jokes. And don't forget the sonnet that is only about sex. Shakespeare was a beautiful poet who had a really perverted sense of humor sometimes. I half agree with one of my professors, Titus just might be Shakespeare's attempt at comedy, trying to mock the revenge tradition. It does, as the Reduced Shakespeare Company has shown, make a really good cooking show.
I personally find the less well known plays to be the better ones. I love Tony and Cleo. I love Much Ado. Even King John has its high points It is in lesser known plays that the average reader can discover gems. It’s true that Hamlet and the other big plays are wonderful, brilliant, but the reader should also play attention to the others, the ones that haven’t been talked to death. Because it is in those, that in many ways, the reader can reach Shakespeare. If you know what I mean.
It’s true that the Bard has had some misses. I don’t think anyone truly, really knows what he was doing with Trolius and Cressida, though I have a soft spot for that play. I read The Phoenix and the Turtle but can’t remember it very well.
But Shakespeare is still da bomb.
The important thing to remember about Shakespeare is that he wasn't meant to be read, but meant to be seen, to be heard. The plays work best when they come off the page, either though performance or simply reading aloud. It also helps to have a working knowledge of the Bible and mythology.
May 21, 2017
Any edition but this.
Can't speak for individual volumes, but the text on the Complete edition is lousy, unglossed, often with intrusive editorial choices. One of their concerns is that the plays should be considered theatrical pieces. No duh. Problem is, this is a *book*, to be *read*, not watched. They presumptuously edit the plays as if they were scripts, when there are a thousand theater directors who are perfectly capable of handling that task. Ultimately, this leads to the splitting of some of the more famous works, like "King Lear". Pre-Taylor & Wells, editors simply indicated Folio or quarto provenance in the gloss, and properly conflated the text so that we could get all of Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare himself never bothered editing and collecting his plays (he was more fastidious about his long poems like "Venus and Adonis"). Evidently he didn't care about printing some kind of Ultimate Director's Edition of his plays, and he certainly had the time and means to do that. (Jonson & others did do that with their own plays.) Why Wells & Taylor are so concerned about it, when he wasn't, is mystifying.
The worst of it is that these guys seem hell-bent on stripping Shakespeare of authorship as much as possible. According to Wells & Taylor, half the plays are "co-written" by some lesser light, based on zero evidence. Their latest folly is attributing half of the "Henry VI" plays to Christopher Marlow, again with zero evidence. (Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Greene certainly "blamed" Shakespeare for those plays, but hey, what the heck did he know, right?)
If you want as much of Shakespeare's words with the least amount of modern literary quackery, try any other edition.
Can't speak for individual volumes, but the text on the Complete edition is lousy, unglossed, often with intrusive editorial choices. One of their concerns is that the plays should be considered theatrical pieces. No duh. Problem is, this is a *book*, to be *read*, not watched. They presumptuously edit the plays as if they were scripts, when there are a thousand theater directors who are perfectly capable of handling that task. Ultimately, this leads to the splitting of some of the more famous works, like "King Lear". Pre-Taylor & Wells, editors simply indicated Folio or quarto provenance in the gloss, and properly conflated the text so that we could get all of Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare himself never bothered editing and collecting his plays (he was more fastidious about his long poems like "Venus and Adonis"). Evidently he didn't care about printing some kind of Ultimate Director's Edition of his plays, and he certainly had the time and means to do that. (Jonson & others did do that with their own plays.) Why Wells & Taylor are so concerned about it, when he wasn't, is mystifying.
The worst of it is that these guys seem hell-bent on stripping Shakespeare of authorship as much as possible. According to Wells & Taylor, half the plays are "co-written" by some lesser light, based on zero evidence. Their latest folly is attributing half of the "Henry VI" plays to Christopher Marlow, again with zero evidence. (Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Greene certainly "blamed" Shakespeare for those plays, but hey, what the heck did he know, right?)
If you want as much of Shakespeare's words with the least amount of modern literary quackery, try any other edition.
Shelved as 'to-be-continued'
February 19, 202013. KING LEAR (p. 2351 - 2433)
12 February 2020 - 17 February 2020
13. OTHELLO (p. 2111 - 2195)
11 February 2018 - 17 February 2018
12. MACBETH (p. 2501 - 2565)
28 July 2017 - 02 August 2017
11. HAMLET (p. 1993 - 2099)
18 January 2017 - 29 January 2017
12 February 2020 - 17 February 2020
13. OTHELLO (p. 2111 - 2195)
11 February 2018 - 17 February 2018
12. MACBETH (p. 2501 - 2565)
28 July 2017 - 02 August 2017
11. HAMLET (p. 1993 - 2099)
18 January 2017 - 29 January 2017
August 2, 2019
Finally over.
Man, this was one hell of the ride.
When I first took this book, I thought I will read all the play written by Shakespear in 2 months, tops.
Little did I know it stretched over 8 months.
There were bad plays, good plays, and amazing plays, but overall Shakespeare is class of its own.
Man, this was one hell of the ride.
When I first took this book, I thought I will read all the play written by Shakespear in 2 months, tops.
Little did I know it stretched over 8 months.
There were bad plays, good plays, and amazing plays, but overall Shakespeare is class of its own.
February 8, 2017
Phew, I finally finished this. It only took... What, ten months?
This edition was remarkable in that it not only included all of the plays and sonnets, but also different folio versions or stage versions of the same. I found that redundant and interesting by turn, depending on the play (and how many changes there were). I did have some trouble with the formatting, but the plays overall were presented very well.
I fell in love with "Titus Andronicus" all over again and re-affirmed my dislike for "Romeo and Juliet" (grow up, Romeo), and discovered a few new plays.
This edition was remarkable in that it not only included all of the plays and sonnets, but also different folio versions or stage versions of the same. I found that redundant and interesting by turn, depending on the play (and how many changes there were). I did have some trouble with the formatting, but the plays overall were presented very well.
I fell in love with "Titus Andronicus" all over again and re-affirmed my dislike for "Romeo and Juliet" (grow up, Romeo), and discovered a few new plays.
June 2, 2023
At some point, I simply had to invest in The Complete works. It didn't make sense to go on collecting mismatched editions of Shakespeare's plays!
Read
December 26, 2021MACBETH Read 2020
It's a bit difficult to review Shakespeare. The man is famous. His works have been taught at school, performed ofter, watched by millions, read and enjoyed by many more. In short, Shakespeare has pervaded modern society.
Macbeth is a fairly simple play. There are few characters to keep track of, the action occurs chronologically, and the plot is uncomplicated. The play also has many memorable characters, especially Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the three witches. The various psychological effects of evil deeds is nicely examined through the Macbeth couple - their disintegration as a married couple, as well as the "evolution" of their personal moral feelings for their actions. This is an entertaining, though dark, drama that makes use of eloquent language to create evocative imagery, and sneaks in questions of human free-will, the role of fate and an analysis of human character.
____________________
KING LEAR Read November 2021
Not my favourite play. There are a whole lot of horrible and gullible/stupid people that get exactly what they deserve.
It's a bit difficult to review Shakespeare. The man is famous. His works have been taught at school, performed ofter, watched by millions, read and enjoyed by many more. In short, Shakespeare has pervaded modern society.
Macbeth is a fairly simple play. There are few characters to keep track of, the action occurs chronologically, and the plot is uncomplicated. The play also has many memorable characters, especially Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the three witches. The various psychological effects of evil deeds is nicely examined through the Macbeth couple - their disintegration as a married couple, as well as the "evolution" of their personal moral feelings for their actions. This is an entertaining, though dark, drama that makes use of eloquent language to create evocative imagery, and sneaks in questions of human free-will, the role of fate and an analysis of human character.
____________________
KING LEAR Read November 2021
Not my favourite play. There are a whole lot of horrible and gullible/stupid people that get exactly what they deserve.
Shelved as 'collections-unread'
July 21, 2019Reviews:
- Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Taming of the Shrew
- Henry VI, part 1
- Henry VI, part 3
- Titus Andronicus
- Henry VI, part 2
- Richard III
- The Comedy of Errors
- Love's Labours Lost
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Romeo and Juliet
- Richard II
- King John
- The Merchant of Venice
- Henry IV, part 1
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Henry IV, part 2
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Henry V
- Julius Caesar
- As You Like It
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
- Twelfth Night
- Troilus and Cressida
- Measure for Measure
- Othello, Moor of Venice
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Timon of Athens
- The Tragedy of King Lear
- Macbeth
- Anthony and Cleopatra
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre
- Coriolanus
- Winter's Tale
- Cymbeline
- The Tempest
- Henry VIII
- Sonnets
- Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Taming of the Shrew
- Henry VI, part 1
- Henry VI, part 3
- Titus Andronicus
- Henry VI, part 2
- Richard III
- The Comedy of Errors
- Love's Labours Lost
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Romeo and Juliet
- Richard II
- King John
- The Merchant of Venice
- Henry IV, part 1
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Henry IV, part 2
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Henry V
- Julius Caesar
- As You Like It
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
- Twelfth Night
- Troilus and Cressida
- Measure for Measure
- Othello, Moor of Venice
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Timon of Athens
- The Tragedy of King Lear
- Macbeth
- Anthony and Cleopatra
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre
- Coriolanus
- Winter's Tale
- Cymbeline
- The Tempest
- Henry VIII
- Sonnets
February 6, 2017
I have a very old (1943) edition of this book, which I use mostly for reference. My edition has very little in the way of footnotes or annotation, although there is a very useful glossary of Elizabethan terms in the back. Additionally, there are indices of characters and of first lines of songs and soliloquys.
This book (at least the 1943 edition) is not for those who have to read just a play or two for class-- go pick up a Folger edition if that is the case-- or for those who are performing a play-- I like the Pelican editions for stage reading. But if you enjoy Shakespeare and are looking for a good reference, this is it.
P.S. All the sonnets and poems are included, also! What a bargain!
This book (at least the 1943 edition) is not for those who have to read just a play or two for class-- go pick up a Folger edition if that is the case-- or for those who are performing a play-- I like the Pelican editions for stage reading. But if you enjoy Shakespeare and are looking for a good reference, this is it.
P.S. All the sonnets and poems are included, also! What a bargain!
February 8, 2024
How do you read the works of Shakespeare? One play at a time.
A phenomenal pastiche of the very human soul.
What can be said that hasn't already been said?
A phenomenal pastiche of the very human soul.
What can be said that hasn't already been said?
February 8, 2017
probably the definitive edition. Taylor's a renaissance scholar, but got his start in textual criticism, with some BCCCS-style cultural materialist influence. Prioritizes folio texts over quartos, with impressive rationale. Two Lears and inclusion of More and Edward likely piss off the conservative folks. Good times to be had by all. Annoying that much paratextual material is deferred to supplemental volume--not sure if the editors thought that the consequent derridean joke was salient or not.
February 5, 2017
This would probably be my second choice for a complete Shakespeare edition. I much prefer the Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare because of the higher quality of the critical commentary.
June 4, 2019
I wish this edition had footnotes because literally everything else about it is great.
December 31, 2020
There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to texts of Shakespeare's work; (a) the works should be brought as individual texts to form a collection, usually to obtain more detailed commentary for each work and for use as a script during performance rehearsals and (b) the works should be compiled as a whole for easy access and universal consistency across texts.
The reason this particular work was purchased comes down to space limitations on my bookshelf, and the original use being for a single elective university paper. The methodology you adopt will depend entirely on circumstances.
Nonetheless, the Oxford Shakespeare is a prime reference for those wishing to simply hold a copy of Shakespeare for display purposes as well as those studying Shakespeare at the university level (undergraduate). This is because any extra academic commentary or annotations will largely be provided by the professor or historical research into each line, scene, act or work. Moreover, no understanding of Shakespeare is complete without actually observing a Shakespeare performance (Pop-Up Globe provides easily accessible renditions) because the works were designed to be performed rather than read. Thus, the Oxford Shakespeare is a starting point rather than finishing line for a study of the Bard's works.
Pros:
- Accessible due to affordable pricepoint (NZD$39.90 incl. shipping) for the entirety of Shakespeares accepted works.
- Brief historical summary of Shakespeare's life and times, as well as the plot summary of each play, is included for context.
- Formatting of pages and sections of the book make for easy quick reference and access, and the hardcover design overall is elegant and timeless.
Cons:
- Due to being a general compilation, there is no in-text footnoting or commentary provided which may hinder further academic study or explanation without reference to external sources.
- Size and scope of the work means the book itself is rather bulky if weight and dimensions are a factor to consider.
- Texts of each play are presented in an easy-to-read format, but lack stage directions making this a copy not suited to rehearsals or performances (although this is often subject to directors calls).
Rating: 8/10
The reason this particular work was purchased comes down to space limitations on my bookshelf, and the original use being for a single elective university paper. The methodology you adopt will depend entirely on circumstances.
Nonetheless, the Oxford Shakespeare is a prime reference for those wishing to simply hold a copy of Shakespeare for display purposes as well as those studying Shakespeare at the university level (undergraduate). This is because any extra academic commentary or annotations will largely be provided by the professor or historical research into each line, scene, act or work. Moreover, no understanding of Shakespeare is complete without actually observing a Shakespeare performance (Pop-Up Globe provides easily accessible renditions) because the works were designed to be performed rather than read. Thus, the Oxford Shakespeare is a starting point rather than finishing line for a study of the Bard's works.
Pros:
- Accessible due to affordable pricepoint (NZD$39.90 incl. shipping) for the entirety of Shakespeares accepted works.
- Brief historical summary of Shakespeare's life and times, as well as the plot summary of each play, is included for context.
- Formatting of pages and sections of the book make for easy quick reference and access, and the hardcover design overall is elegant and timeless.
Cons:
- Due to being a general compilation, there is no in-text footnoting or commentary provided which may hinder further academic study or explanation without reference to external sources.
- Size and scope of the work means the book itself is rather bulky if weight and dimensions are a factor to consider.
- Texts of each play are presented in an easy-to-read format, but lack stage directions making this a copy not suited to rehearsals or performances (although this is often subject to directors calls).
Rating: 8/10
Read
February 6, 2024I became interested in this work because of Stanley Wells' invaluable essay Shakespeare and Revision. For it is a fact that there is a discrepancy between the quarto editions and the folios of the play. I had not perceived the significance of this until reading Wells essay. He states the two explanations for this discrepancy:
The less popular has been the [the Revisionist] hypothesis that the first edition of each play represents it, more or less accurately, at one stage in its evolution from conception to performance, and that the Folio represents it, also more or less accurately, at a different stage.
The second, and more prevalent, basic explanation for the many discrepancies between certain quarto and Folio texts is that each of the variant texts derives from a lost archetype variously misrepresented by the surviving printed versions, and that this lost archetype can be hypothetically reconstructed by conflating the variant versions and adding to one passages that are only in the other, and making a choice between the local variants in passages that are common to both texts.
As soon as he stated the second position, which I unconsciously had held, I realized the folly of it. Wells in that essay goes on to make a solid point for the first position.
One is E.A.J. Honigmann’s book The Stability of Shakespeare’s Text, of 1965, in which he is concerned primarily with verbal rather than with structural variation. One of the most interesting facets of this book lies in its demonstration from manuscripts of various periods that writers transcribing their own work frequently make minor changes – substitutions, transpositions, and the like – of an indifferent rather than a substantive nature. Two aspects of this are of particular importance to the revisionist theory. One is the demonstration that authorial variants may be of exactly the same kind as scribal or compositorial variants: in other words, variants which conflationist editors have ascribed to corruption may represent the author in two states of mind about his own work.
It was this essay that convinced me to read the two versions of Lear (contained here), and I would very much be interested in reading the different versions of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Othello as well.
The less popular has been the [the Revisionist] hypothesis that the first edition of each play represents it, more or less accurately, at one stage in its evolution from conception to performance, and that the Folio represents it, also more or less accurately, at a different stage.
The second, and more prevalent, basic explanation for the many discrepancies between certain quarto and Folio texts is that each of the variant texts derives from a lost archetype variously misrepresented by the surviving printed versions, and that this lost archetype can be hypothetically reconstructed by conflating the variant versions and adding to one passages that are only in the other, and making a choice between the local variants in passages that are common to both texts.
As soon as he stated the second position, which I unconsciously had held, I realized the folly of it. Wells in that essay goes on to make a solid point for the first position.
One is E.A.J. Honigmann’s book The Stability of Shakespeare’s Text, of 1965, in which he is concerned primarily with verbal rather than with structural variation. One of the most interesting facets of this book lies in its demonstration from manuscripts of various periods that writers transcribing their own work frequently make minor changes – substitutions, transpositions, and the like – of an indifferent rather than a substantive nature. Two aspects of this are of particular importance to the revisionist theory. One is the demonstration that authorial variants may be of exactly the same kind as scribal or compositorial variants: in other words, variants which conflationist editors have ascribed to corruption may represent the author in two states of mind about his own work.
It was this essay that convinced me to read the two versions of Lear (contained here), and I would very much be interested in reading the different versions of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Othello as well.
March 4, 2021
Meh.
Okay I just thought that was funny.
There are two things to review. The editorial comment, arrangement and selection and, of course the Shakespeare part.
I'm not impressed with the editor content. There is very little of it. Nothing grand to put a play in context or discuss the meaning or history. Of course, the book is already well over a thousand pages and quite heavy and cumbersome. I don't think I would have wanted it longer. It claims to have included everything and then some. There are pages explaining plays he probably wrote and no longer exist. There are plays that he only helped to write. That was nice to learn.
Now for the Shakespeare. I'm sorry, but they just aren't good stories. For the most part all of the characters are at best interchangeable cardboard cut outs. It isn't good.
The prose. Well, that part is pretty fancy. After reading it all I found that I could pick out the parts of the plays that he wrote and the parts that other authors wrote .... well, at least I pretended I could. His characters talk like Yoda, very strange word ordering. And very complex sentences.
So READING the stuff is hard. It is good mental exercise. And also much of it went over my head. I didn't understand the words used, the archaic references and the word order.
I very much enjoyed the Sonnets and poetry. The plays were only decent when read for their poetry. Like, I said the stories and the characters really are garbage.
My plan is to pick one of the plays I liked and read it over, and read it over with a reference and then try to find a video of the same play and watch it. I'm assuming that will make it more enjoyable and I'd probably recommend anyone do that rather than just read this book in its entirety.
Okay I just thought that was funny.
There are two things to review. The editorial comment, arrangement and selection and, of course the Shakespeare part.
I'm not impressed with the editor content. There is very little of it. Nothing grand to put a play in context or discuss the meaning or history. Of course, the book is already well over a thousand pages and quite heavy and cumbersome. I don't think I would have wanted it longer. It claims to have included everything and then some. There are pages explaining plays he probably wrote and no longer exist. There are plays that he only helped to write. That was nice to learn.
Now for the Shakespeare. I'm sorry, but they just aren't good stories. For the most part all of the characters are at best interchangeable cardboard cut outs. It isn't good.
The prose. Well, that part is pretty fancy. After reading it all I found that I could pick out the parts of the plays that he wrote and the parts that other authors wrote .... well, at least I pretended I could. His characters talk like Yoda, very strange word ordering. And very complex sentences.
So READING the stuff is hard. It is good mental exercise. And also much of it went over my head. I didn't understand the words used, the archaic references and the word order.
I very much enjoyed the Sonnets and poetry. The plays were only decent when read for their poetry. Like, I said the stories and the characters really are garbage.
My plan is to pick one of the plays I liked and read it over, and read it over with a reference and then try to find a video of the same play and watch it. I'm assuming that will make it more enjoyable and I'd probably recommend anyone do that rather than just read this book in its entirety.
February 28, 2018
Shakespeare is a master because of language, not because of structure, plot creation, or character development. You can easily fault his plays for lacking the latter qualities, but his language is worth reading even in the weaker plays. Occasionally you come upon a work that is a masterpiece in every area--Hamlet, when you come upon it after reading the other plays, is so amazing, you can't believe the same person wrote it--but there are probably only five masterpieces, more that are masterful in certain scenes, and the rest we are entranced with the amazing language and forgive him for weak character development, soap opera type plots, and uneven structure. Why do many of the plays fail in these areas? I don't know, but sometimes his techniques are borrowed or dated (especially the humor), often he seems rushed or trying to please the boys in the pit. Even in this light, no one in world drama can compare because there are passages in every play where his language and insights are impressive. I look forward to my next journey through the complete works.
August 26, 2018
It was my goal to read the complete works of Shakespeare in a single summer, and I am proud to say that I met my goal with a week to spare.
While it was certainly a massive undertaking to read this book, it is not one that I regret in the slightest. Certainly some of the plays are much better than others, and not all of the sonnets are worthy of remembrance (in particular, those sonnets which urge beautiful women to produce offspring lest their beauty be for naught are not at all worthwhile), but one cannot help but stand in awe at the impact of Shakespeare on the English language.
It was an absolute pleasure to revisit some of the plays I haven't seen since high school, and it was an utter delight to find some new favorites among the few plays I had never read (for instance, one cannot help but be delighted by Falstaff's folly in The Merry Wives of Windsor"). I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with the patience to read it.
While it was certainly a massive undertaking to read this book, it is not one that I regret in the slightest. Certainly some of the plays are much better than others, and not all of the sonnets are worthy of remembrance (in particular, those sonnets which urge beautiful women to produce offspring lest their beauty be for naught are not at all worthwhile), but one cannot help but stand in awe at the impact of Shakespeare on the English language.
It was an absolute pleasure to revisit some of the plays I haven't seen since high school, and it was an utter delight to find some new favorites among the few plays I had never read (for instance, one cannot help but be delighted by Falstaff's folly in The Merry Wives of Windsor"). I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with the patience to read it.
August 7, 2018
The Absolutely Correct Shakespeare
Shakespeare is something people are 'made to' read on certain "tracks" in American education, but due to the vicissitudes of my schooling I wasn't: for most of my life I'd read Julius Caesar and looked at Hamlet and that was about it. (I fancied myself a bit clever to have done this, since the "anxiety of influence" is a concept people don't totally figure into the mix when considering Shakespeare—what if reading him was going to make your writing worse?) Two or so years ago I got a very good deal on the second edition of The Oxford Shakespeare, and I've spent about a year somewhat systematically working through the plays and Sonnets; even if I was a fool to have 'waited' until my late 30s to do so, it was time well spent at this age.
First, some comments considering the second Oxford edition. Very few Americans really spend time thinking about Oxford and its role in Anglophone intellectual life; which on the one hand is well enough, since it's not particularly "scrutable" to us, but also slights the 'public-service' element of many Oxford intellectual productions, including this one. The scholars who produced this edition, with modernized spelling and many plays of 'dubious' authorship, could easily have produced another kind of edition and very deliberately chose not to—the character of this edition is purposive, it's the Shakespeare we ought to have now. If you are an American who trips about orthographic 'sharp practise', get yourself PDFs of the Folio and Quarto editions; if you think we oughtn't to have time for works we don't know to be truly Immortal, you may have a very impoverished sense of literary study. (I will also say that the 'compact' format of the second Oxford edition easily bests the behemoth omnibus editions that have traditionally been distributed to American undergraduates to punish them.)
Now, on to the works themselves. I am far from a scholar of literature, but having carefully worked through all the plays I do think there are a few caveats about Shakespeare's style that go woefully unmentioned in light of his tremendous literary celebrity. You might be led to believe that Shakespeare was the ne plus ultra of good English literary style, but I will say more tentatively than I would like to that's really not quite true. Most great English poets are 'didactic', that is to say they have a moral message they're willing to "prate on about" a little bit, even; Shakespeare is not, and in fact the plays contain very systematic ambiguities and a lot of material that is dark and 'lascivious' by the overall standards of the English canon (point-blank, the teen romance Romeo and Juliet begins with a man bragging that he is a "pretty piece of flesh").
Furthermore, it's very much not beside the point that Shakespeare was a 'commoner' who made his mark in rough-and-tumble London without the benefit of an Oxford or Cambridge education; the "Earl de Vereans" miss the entire point of the supernova of Öffentlichkeit ("publicness") that Shakespeare was, along with some other early moderns like Cervantes and Rabelais. In fact, if I will leave the realm of what I am comfortably confident in asserting, I would essay that Shakespeare's newfangled literary celebrity is the real topic of one-half of the Sonnets, the ones directed to an "ostensible" male lover; Shakespeare is "trying to love himself" as a celebrated public figure, not dripping honey on a lovely inamorato. (The other half presumably have something to do with one Anne Hathaway, whom he finds rather less appealing.)
This is really a fine thing to own, and I would recommend it to any reader of English.
Shakespeare is something people are 'made to' read on certain "tracks" in American education, but due to the vicissitudes of my schooling I wasn't: for most of my life I'd read Julius Caesar and looked at Hamlet and that was about it. (I fancied myself a bit clever to have done this, since the "anxiety of influence" is a concept people don't totally figure into the mix when considering Shakespeare—what if reading him was going to make your writing worse?) Two or so years ago I got a very good deal on the second edition of The Oxford Shakespeare, and I've spent about a year somewhat systematically working through the plays and Sonnets; even if I was a fool to have 'waited' until my late 30s to do so, it was time well spent at this age.
First, some comments considering the second Oxford edition. Very few Americans really spend time thinking about Oxford and its role in Anglophone intellectual life; which on the one hand is well enough, since it's not particularly "scrutable" to us, but also slights the 'public-service' element of many Oxford intellectual productions, including this one. The scholars who produced this edition, with modernized spelling and many plays of 'dubious' authorship, could easily have produced another kind of edition and very deliberately chose not to—the character of this edition is purposive, it's the Shakespeare we ought to have now. If you are an American who trips about orthographic 'sharp practise', get yourself PDFs of the Folio and Quarto editions; if you think we oughtn't to have time for works we don't know to be truly Immortal, you may have a very impoverished sense of literary study. (I will also say that the 'compact' format of the second Oxford edition easily bests the behemoth omnibus editions that have traditionally been distributed to American undergraduates to punish them.)
Now, on to the works themselves. I am far from a scholar of literature, but having carefully worked through all the plays I do think there are a few caveats about Shakespeare's style that go woefully unmentioned in light of his tremendous literary celebrity. You might be led to believe that Shakespeare was the ne plus ultra of good English literary style, but I will say more tentatively than I would like to that's really not quite true. Most great English poets are 'didactic', that is to say they have a moral message they're willing to "prate on about" a little bit, even; Shakespeare is not, and in fact the plays contain very systematic ambiguities and a lot of material that is dark and 'lascivious' by the overall standards of the English canon (point-blank, the teen romance Romeo and Juliet begins with a man bragging that he is a "pretty piece of flesh").
Furthermore, it's very much not beside the point that Shakespeare was a 'commoner' who made his mark in rough-and-tumble London without the benefit of an Oxford or Cambridge education; the "Earl de Vereans" miss the entire point of the supernova of Öffentlichkeit ("publicness") that Shakespeare was, along with some other early moderns like Cervantes and Rabelais. In fact, if I will leave the realm of what I am comfortably confident in asserting, I would essay that Shakespeare's newfangled literary celebrity is the real topic of one-half of the Sonnets, the ones directed to an "ostensible" male lover; Shakespeare is "trying to love himself" as a celebrated public figure, not dripping honey on a lovely inamorato. (The other half presumably have something to do with one Anne Hathaway, whom he finds rather less appealing.)
This is really a fine thing to own, and I would recommend it to any reader of English.
December 30, 2020
A few months ago I decided to read the complete works by the end of the year. Mission accomplished. This is a great volume for doing a full read. The plays are written in the presumed order Shakespeare wrote them in which allows you to follow his style over time. How can this be anything but 5 stars?
October 13, 2018
what can i say about this - i have owned it for 50 years and read most of it
October 29, 2019
Shall Rome, et cetera.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
Read
August 17, 2021I just read As You Like It, but from this version
March 25, 2022
This book is actually exellent. I love it
May 16, 2022
i like
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews