The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. These ground breaking editions present a historical overview of Shakespeare’s plays in performance, recommend film versions and look in detail at specific productions (including interviews with leading Directors) so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible - a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made ‘our contemporary’ four centuries after his death.
One column layout with plenty of space for notes, on page glossary, on page notes, Folio stage directions, running scene count and line numbers, also make these ideal student editions.
‘The scholarly apparatus is discreet, elegant and pertinent. For each play, we get brief accounts of plots, dates and sources ... footnotes are found snugly and legibly at the bottom of each page … there is a universe to be found in these annotations: the Renaissance world of power and fate, sex and death, language and philosophy. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen have given us an edition full of endless fascination.’ — Tom Deveson, Times Education Supplement
Each book includes:
● A new introduction to the play by established academics ● The play – with clear explanatory notes on each page ● A scene-by-scene analysis ● An introduction to Shakespeare’s career and the Elizabethan theatre ● A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play
