Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Illustrated by leading UK manga artists, this series feeds into the growing popularity of manga worldwide, and presents Shakespeare's classic works in a highly visual and dynamic form. Shakespeare's epic history play Richard III reveals the power of the 'dark side'. The series keeps try to the language of Shakespeare, but the text is specially abridged for use in the manga.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.

This new edition of Macbeth for South African schools and collages has been updated to include comprehensive text notes and commentary throughout. This edition includes: an eight-page photographic gallery of scenes from various productions of the play. informative background information on Shakespeare and Elizabethan England an introduction to the play, the themes and characters a synopsis of the action in each scene line-by-line text notes giving explanations of unfamiliar words, interpretations of meanings, and stimulating commentary a selection of notes, illustrations, ideas and activities to increase your understanding of the play questions providing valuable examination practice a list of references offering suggestions for further reading and other useful resources an extensive glossary of useful words and literary terms."

Originally published in 1923, this book addresses the old controversy regarding the exact location of the Globe Theatre. Through a wealth of evidence extracted from the records concerning Shakespeare's London, this book is a direct response to William Westmoreland Braines's pamphlet, issued by the London County Council in 1921, in which Braines demonstrated that the theatre must have stood to the south of Maiden Lane in Southwark. George Hubbard, unconvinced by Braines's theory, presents one of the most important and compelling cases of evidence for placing the site of Shakespeare's playhouse to the north of Maiden Lane. This exchange is the culmination of the controversy over the precise site of the Globe Theatre, which dominated the earlier part of the twentieth century. Detailed maps of London are included. This book will be of considerable value to scholars of Shakespeare as well as to anyone with an interest in theatre.

Abridged specifically for all those interested in Shakespeare's plays, especially teachers and students of English and drama, these one-hour performance scripts maintain the arcs of Shakespeare's plots without compromising the integrity of his original language. What remains are manageable performance texts and the essential elements needed for an introduction to three of Shakespeare's most popular plays.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's gripping political and personal tragedy. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Coriolanus in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with two leading directors - Gregory Doran and David Farr - providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare's career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. King Lear has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare's most powerful tragedy. Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature. In the theatre and on screen King Lear continues to challenge and enthral. This Wordsworth edition of King Lear provides a comprehensive, integrated text of the play.

Newly revised, this edition of "Hamlet" features an extensive overview of Shakespeare's life and world; an editor's introduction; a note on the sources; dramatic criticism from the past and present; a comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors and productions; and more.

The authoritative edition of Measure for Measure from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. Measure for Measure is among the most passionately discussed of Shakespeare's plays. In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his administration, Angelo, to enforce the laws more rigorously. Angelo chooses as his first victim Claudio, condemning him to death because he impregnated Juliet before their marriage. Claudio's sister Isabella, who is entering a convent, pleads for her brother's life. Angelo attempts to extort sex from her, but Isabella preserves her chastity. The duke, in disguise, eavesdrops as she tells her brother about Angelo's behavior, then offers to ally himself with her against Angelo. Modern responses to the play show how it can be transformed by its reception in present culture to evoke continuing fascination. To some, the duke (the government) seems meddlesome; to others, he is properly imposing moral standards. Angelo and Isabella's encounter exemplifies sexual harassment. Others see a woman's right to control her body in Isabella's choice between her virginity and her brother's life. This edition includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play's famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Christy Desmet The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Written at some time between 1602 and 1604, Othello belongs to the period in which Shakespeare's powers as a tragic dramatist were at their peak. On stage, the romantic cast of its story and the remorseless drive of its plotting, combined with operatic extravagance of its emotion and the swelling music of its poetry, have made it amongst the most consistently successful of his tragedies; and numerous anecdotes testify to its extraordinary capacity to overwhelm the imagination of an audience. In recent times the play's bold treatment of love and marriage across the divide of race has made it a work of particular interest to theatre directors and scholars alike. Yet Othello's critical fortunes have been uneven; for, since Rymer's notorious denunciation of this 'tragedy of [a] handkerchief,' at the end of the seventeenth century, its claim to rank amongst Shakespeare's greatest achievements has been challenged by critics who have found its plot too strained, its characters too improbable, and its tale of marital jealousy and murder too meanly domestic to challenge comparison with Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, or even that saga of tragic infatuation, Antony and Cleopatra. The extensive introduction to this new edition answers the play's detractors by stressing the public dimensions of the tragedy, paying particular attention to its treatment of colour and social relations. Although 'race' in the early modern period was still an embryonic category, Othello is explored as a text that-not least in its performance history-has played a formative role (for both good and ill) in the emergence of racial thinking, and that as a result remains deeply controversial. In the play's own time, however, the sensitivities aroused by the hero's colour might well have seemed less significant than the way in which Iago's perfidious role plays out a crisis in the institution of service on which the entire social order, including its treatment of gender, was founded. In this respect, too, Othello emerges as a work profoundly involved in the social and political processes that helped to shape the modern world. The text has been freshly edited in accordance with the general principles of the series. Othello has come down to us in two markedly different early texts; and the substantial differences between the 1622 Quarto and the 1623 Folio have led to its becoming involved, along with Hamlet and Lear, in an intense debate over Shakespearian revision. Michael Neill argues however, that, in the case of Othello, variation is much less likely to be the result of changed authorial intentions than of theatrical cutting and the peculiar circumstances of textual transmission. While the Folio is generally the more reliable of the rival versions, the Quarto's origin in a text that has been modified for performance text make it indispensable, and the two have been fully collated. This edition also makes full use of the Second Quarto (1632) a text which, although it is without independent authority, preserves important textual decisions made by an intelligent and well-informed editor nearly contemporary with the dramatist himself. Further appendices include a discussion of dating problems, an account of the music in the play, and a full translation of the Italian novella from which the story derives. The detailed commentary is designed to alert readers to the play's theatrical life, as well as helping them to explore its rich language and notoriously treacherous word-play.

The authoritative edition of Henry IV, Part 2 from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. Henry IV, Part 2 is the only Shakespeare play that is a "sequel," in the modern sense, to an earlier play of his. Like most sequels, it repeats many elements from the previous work, Henry IV, Part 1. This play again puts on stage Henry IV's son, Prince Hal, who continues to conceal his potential greatness by consorting with tavern dwellers, including the witty Sir John Falstaff. As in Part 1, Prince Hal and Falstaff seek to best each other in conversation, while Falstaff tries to ingratiate himself with Hal and Hal disdains him. Part 2 adds some fresh characters, the rural justices Shallow and Silence and Shallow's household. Political rebellion, while important to the plot, does not loom as large as in Part 1. There are no glorious champions; combat is replaced by deception, cunning, and treachery. This edition includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play's famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by A. R. Braunmuller The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

The authoritative edition of Coriolanus from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. Set in the earliest days of the Roman Republic, Coriolanus begins with the common people, or plebeians, in armed revolt against the patricians. The people win the right to be represented by tribunes. Meanwhile, there are foreign enemies near the gates of Rome. The play explores one reason that Rome prevailed over such vulnerabilities: its reverence for family bonds. Coriolanus so esteems his mother, Volumnia, that he risks his life to win her approval. Even the value of family, however, is subordinate to loyalty to the Roman state. When the two obligations align, the combination is irresistible. Coriolanus is so devoted to his family and to Rome that he finds the decision to grant the plebians representation intolerable. To him, it elevates plebeians to a status equal with his family and class, to Rome's great disadvantage. He risks his political career to have the tribunate abolished--and is banished from Rome. Coriolanus then displays an apparently insatiable vengefulness against the state he idolized, opening a tragic divide within himself, pitting him against his mother and family, and threatening Rome's very existence. This edition includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play's famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Heather James The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

The authoritative edition of Antony and Cleopatra from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers. Antony and Cleopatra dramatizes a major event in world history: the founding of the Roman Empire. The future first emperor, Octavius Caesar (later called Augustus Caesar), cold-bloodedly manipulates other characters and exercises iron control over himself. At first, he shares power with Mark Antony, Rome's preeminent military leader, and the weaker Lepidus. Caesar needs Antony to fend off other Roman strongmen like Pompey; he even offers his sister Octavia to him as a bride, despite Antony's reputation as a libertine and his past rivalry with Caesar. Once Caesar defeats Pompey, however, he needs no allies. He brings charges against Lepidus, denies Antony his spoils from Pompey's defeat, and seizes cities in the eastern Roman colonies that Antony rules. The play's emphasis, however, is on those whom Caesar defeats: Antony and his wealthy Egyptian ally, Queen Cleopatra. The play does not sugarcoat Antony and Cleopatra's famous love affair, including her calculated attempts to seduce Antony from his duties and his rage when he thinks she has betrayed him to Caesar. Nonetheless, the lovers find such sensual and emotional satisfaction that Caesar's world conquest seems smaller than what they find in each other. This edition includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play's famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Cynthia Marshall The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.