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Title: The Riverside Shakespeare by William Shakespeare, G. Blakemore Evans, Harry Levin, Herschel Baker, Anne Barton, Hallet Smith, Marie Edel, Frank Kermode ISBN: 0-395-75490-9 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 January, 1900 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $68.76 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The most complete edition of the Bard and a superb companion
Comment: This one-volume edition of Shakespeare's works is the most complete I found on the market: it includes "The Two Noble Kinsmen", Shakespeare's addition to "Sir Thomas More" (with photographical reproduction of the pages believed to be in his handwrite), the currently hot debated poem "A Funeral Elegy by W. S." and, above all, "The Reign of King Edward III", a new play recently accepted in the canon by many authoritative editors (Arden, Cambridge, Oxford). The text of each work is carefully edited and accompanied by helpful glossarial notes, a textual discussion with short bibliography, and an impressive collation which allows the reader to find variant readings and emendations. An exhaustive critical introduction precedes each play and poem, dealing with authorship, date, sources, textual differences between quarto and folio texts, and of course the principal thematic issues. What makes this a superb edition - and indeed a real "companion" to Shakespeare studies! - is the great amount of subsidiary material, including a general introduction - focusing on Shakespeare's life, art, language, style, and on the Elizabethan historical and theatrical background - and a series of useful essays on various themes: critical approaches to the plays and poems, philological issues, history of the plays on the stage, television and cinema. There are also many interesting documents, synoptic tables, glossaries, indexes, illustrated tables (both coloured and b&w) , the reproduction of the introductory pages of the First Folio of 1623, and a rich bibliography. I personally consider this book a must have for every teacher, scholar, or simply amateur of the greatest of all poets. Buy it!
Rating: 3
Summary: Lousy format spoils otherwise good edition
Comment: This book has useful (though not terribly complete) introductions to each of the plays, focusing mainly on comparing various Folio and Quarto editions of the plays. It also contains some nice pictures, though I wish the Latin in them were translated or shown at a legible size. It has very nice appendicies nothing the first appearances of all the characters in the plays, and a timeline showing what historical events were occuring in relation to works written by Shakespeare and events in his life, as well as to plays by other playwrights and other literature produced at that time. The pages are relatively thin and the print small. However (this referes to the '74 edition, maybe they have changed it since then) the plays are a royal pain to read. The pages are about a foot high and the notes are at the bottom. There is no marking to indicate whether a line has a note, so the reader must read a line or two, glance down at the notes, read another few lines, look at the notes again, and so on. Were it not for this major annoyance, this would be a very good (and very complete) edition of Shakespeare's works.
Rating: 5
Summary: Much Better to Use Than Norton
Comment: I bought this edition after using the Norton in my last semester Shakespeare class, and have found my reading of the plays for this semester's class much more enjoyable. The format is beautiful: the pages are thicker, lie flatter, and hold more content. Unlike the Norton, whose footnote numbers interrupt the reading of the text, forcing you to lose momemtum, the Riverside's are unobtrusive, available if you need them and when you want them. The introductions are prescient, interesting, and well-written. The text itself is more accurate, also. Harold Bloom, for example, in his introduction to The Invention of The Human, says he uses the Riverside and Arden, and that the Oxford (upon which the Norton is based) tries to publish the worst possible poetry. This I found amusing, if not also accurate.
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Title: Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary: A Complete Dictionary of All the English Words, Phrases, and Constructions in the Works of the Poet (Volume I) by Alexander Schmidt ISBN: 048622726X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1971 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: A Shakespeare Glossary by Robert D. Eagleson, Charles T. Onions ISBN: 0198125216 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 1986 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction With Documents by Russ McDonald ISBN: 0312248806 Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.75 |
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Title: Playing Shakespeare : An Actor's Guide by John Barton ISBN: 0385720858 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 21 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion by David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Stanley Wells ISBN: 0140291172 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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