The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare, Richard Proudfoot (Editor)

The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works contains the texts of all 38 of Shakespeare's plays, including The Two Noble Kinsmen, which has only recently been widely accepted as partly written by Shakespeare, and also the Poems and Sonnets. The play and verse texts are edited by learned academics. Brief introductions to each play, written specially for this volume by the three Arden Shakespeare General Editors, discuss the date and contemporary context of the play, its position within Shakespeare's works, and its subsequent performance history. An extensive glossary explains vocabulary which may be unfamiliar to twentieth-century readers.

Genres: Shakespeare, Plays, Classics, Poetry, Literature, The World, Drama

1200 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1998

About the author

William 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".

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 1 out of 5]

For Harold Bloom*:

Can 35 Thousand Literary Critics and 3 Million Groundlings Be Wrong? Yes.

Taking arms against Shakespeare, at this moment, is to emulate Harry Potter standing up to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Simply opposing Lord V-- won't end him. The Shakespeare epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as J. R. R. Tolkien did, and then wane. Or so one can hope.

The official newspaper of our dominant counter-culture, The New York Times, has been startled by Shakespeare's plays into establishing a new policy for its not very literate book review. Rather than crowd out the Grishams, Clancys, Crichtons, Kings, Rowlings and other vastly popular prose fictions on its fiction bestseller list, the Shakespeare plays will now lead a separate theatre list. William Shakespeare, the chronicler of such characters as "Hamlet" and "King Lear," thus has an unusual distinction: he has changed the policy of the policy-maker.

Imaginative Vision

I read new dramatic literature, when I can find some of any value, but had not tried Shakespeare until now. I have just concluded "The Comedy of Errors," purportedly the funniest of the lot. Though the play is not well written, that is not in itself a crucial liability. It is much better to see the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," than to read the book upon which it was based, but even the book possessed an authentic imaginative vision. "The Comedy of Errors" does not, so that one needs to look elsewhere for the play's remarkable success. Such speculation should follow an account of how and why "The Comedy of Errors" asks to be read.

The ultimate model for "The Comedy of Errors" is "Menaechmi" by Plautus, performed in Ancient Rome. The play depicts the mistaken identity of a set of twins named Menaechmus. But Plautus' play, still quite performable, was a Roman musical, not an Elizabethan comedy. Shakespeare has taken "Menaechmi" and re-seen it in the silly mirror of slapstick. The resultant blend of mistaken identities with cheesy Elizabethan idiocy may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of theatregoers and their parents desire and welcome at this time.

In what follows, I may at times indicate some of the inadequacies of "The Comedy of Errors." But I will keep in mind that a host are watching it who simply will not watch superior fare, such as Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist" or the "Tamburlaine" plays of Christopher Marlowe. Is it better that they watch Shakespeare than not watch at all? Will they advance from Shakespeare to more difficult pleasures? One doubts both possibilities.

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Rest is available at [http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205...]

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*This review is a spoof of Bloom's attack on JK Rowling, which can be found here.

I should also mention that I love Shakespeare. I don't think he'll mind me bringing down his 4.75 average rating too much.

[Jay Daze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very heavy. Do not read in bath. Oh, and some great plays.

[Lilac Lowenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I add to such a masterpiece? What can I say about it that haven't been said for a thousand times or more? It's brilliant, witty, touching, exciting, funny, and at times the language is excruciatingly hard to understand, but even then the structure of each sentence and paragraph is so perfect and delighting that it seems almost unimportant to understand while those magical words roll on your tongue.

[Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stranded-on-a-desert-island must have.

[Michael]

A present fom the Globe Theatre, London.

[Megha Kalra · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great compilation. But for beginners like me I have to simultaneously use an online interpreter to understand the plays much better.
http://m.sparknotes.com/nfs/hamlet/pa...