Audiences have always delighted in the robust comedy and verbal inventiveness of The Taming of the Shrew. It has survived many adaptations ranging from, probably, the play printed in 1594 as The Taming of the Shrew through several eighteenth-century versions to modern-dress productions and transformations into ballet, musical, film, and opera. Introducing this new edition, H.J. Oliver pays attention to the play's theatrical virtues while also providing a deeply considered study of its textual problems, structural complexities, and interpretive challenges.

There are two love stories in this fast-moving comedy. Brave young Claudio and Leonato's pretty daughter Hero are in love and want to marry, but Don John has a wicked plan to stop their wedding. Will he succeed, or will the truth come out? Will Claudio and Hero marry, after all? Beatrice and Benedick are always arguing with each other, but how do they really feel? Perhaps they are more interested in each other than they seem to be! Their friends work hard to bring them closer together.

This full colour graphic novel presents The Scottish Play in as few words as possible whilst keeping the essence of the story. Macbeth is probably the most dramatic of Shakespeare's tragedies and this version will give you a brand new and totally fulfilling view of the sheer genius of Shakespeare's story telling.

The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most perfectly realized tragi-comedy, as notable for its tragic intensity as for its comic grace and, throughout, for the richness and complexity of its poetry. It concludes, moreover, with the most daring and moving reconciliation scene in all Shakespeare's plays. Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realist psychology and a powerful commentary on the violence implicit in family relationships and deep, longlasting friendships. Stephen Orgel's edition considers the play in relation to Renaissance conceptions of both dramatic genre and the family, traces the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards it, and places its psychological and dramatic conflicts within the Jacobean cultural and political context. The commentary pays special attention to the play's linguistic complexity, and the edition also includes a complete reprint of Shakespeare's source, Pandosto, by Robert Greene.

As You Like It is Shakespeare's most light-hearted comedy, and its witty heroine Rosalind has his longest female role. In this edition, Alan Brissenden reassesses both its textual and performance history, showing how interpretations have changed since the first recorded production in 1740. He examines Shakespeare's sources and elucidates the central themes of love, pastoral, and doubleness. Detailed annotations investigate the allusive and often bawdy language, enabling student, actor, and director to savour the humour and the seriousness of the play to the full.

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This edition provides a newly edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Textual analysis, four appendices — including the theatrical practice of doubling, and a select chronology of performance history — and a reading list complete the edition.

In his own time, Shakespeare was best known to the reading public as a poet, and even today copies of his Sonnets regularly outsell everything else he wrote. For this edition, Stephen Orgel offers a warmly personal and original introduction to Shakespeare's best-loved and most widely read poems. Careful readings emphasize their sexual and temperamental ambiguity, their textual history and the special perils an editor faces when modernizing the original quarto's spelling, punctuation, and even layout. The edition retains the text of the Sonnets prepared by Gwynne Evans, together with his detailed notes on each, and a line-by-line commentary. Throughout, the 'voices' of the sonnets appear in all their intricacy and dramatic power.

Since the rediscovery of Elizabethan stage conditions early this century, admiration for Measure for Measure has steadily risen. It is now a favourite with the critics and has attracted widely different styles of performance. At one extreme, the play is seen as a religious allegory; at the other, it has been interpreted as a comedy protesting against power and privilege. Brian Gibbons focuses on the unique tragi-comic experience of watching the play, the intensity and excitement offered by its dramatic rhythm, the reversals and surprises which shock the audience even to the end. His introduction considers how the play's critical reception and stage history have varied according to prevailing social, moral and religious issues, which have remained highly sensitive. This updated edition contains a new introductory section by Angela Stock, which describes recent stage, film and critical interpretations, and an updated reading list.

Titus Andronicus is still regarded by many as a bad play of dubious authorship. Its adversaries have abhorred the violence of the action and the apparent lapses in the quality of the verse. Since 1945, however, the play has been taken increasingly seriously in both the theatre and the study: the violence and cruelty it depicts were disconcertingly matched by the events of two World Wars. Hughes joins those critics who take the play seriously, arguing for its unity of theme and its grim humour, and demonstrates that it is the work of a brilliant stage craftsman, confident in his mastery of space, movement and verse. The text is based on the first quarto, supplemented by crucial additions and stage directions from the Folio. For this updated edition, a new section is included on recent stage, film and critical interpretations by Sue Hall-Smith. An updated reading list completes the edition.

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems which are now generally regarded as Shakespeare's, excluding the Sonnets. It contains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. The introduction to the two long narrative poems examines their place within the classical and Renaissance European traditions, an issue which also applies to The Phoenix and the Turtle. John Roe analyses the conditions in which the collection was produced, and weighs the evidence for and against Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover's Complaint and the much-debated question of its genre. He demonstrates how in his management of formal tropes Shakespeare, like the best Elizabethans, fashions a living language out of handbook oratory. This updated edition contains a new introductory section on recent critical interpretations and an updated reading list.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of The Comedy of Errors on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains: The complete text of the original play; A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday language; A complete list of characters with descriptions; Plenty of helpful commentary.

This inexpensive Dover edition brings together 5 of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, all filled with humor, joy, and, above all, happy endings. From the magic and mischief of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the rollicking farce of The Merry Wives of Windsor, these masterpieces are in demand by students of literature and by general readers.

This new edition of Shakespeare's Cymbeline takes full account of the critical and historical scholarship produced in the late twentieth century. It foregrounds the elements of romance, tragicomedy and Jacobean stagecraft which together shape the play; it also acknowledges the postmodern indeterminacy of the play's key moments. Martin Butler breaks with the legacy of the sentimental Victorian reading of the heroine, Innogen, which still exerts some hold on production and interpretation today, and has given greater space than his predecessors to the politics of 1610, especially to questions of British union and nationhood. The play has been freshly edited from the text in the 1623 folio, with some interesting textual choices, and has a detailed commentary on linguistic and historical aspects of the text. There is also a full treatment of the play's stage history, from 1610 to the present day.

For this updated edition of Shakespeare's most celebrated war play, Professor Gurr has added a new section to his introduction which considers recent critical and stage interpretations, especially concentrating on the 'secret' versus 'official' readings of the play. He analyses the play's double vision of Henry as both military hero and self-seeking individual. Professor Gurr shows how the patriotic declarations of the Chorus are contradicted by the play's action. The play's more controversial sequences are placed in the context of Elizabethan thought, in particular the studies of the laws and morality of war written in the years before Henry V. Also studied is the exceptional variety of language and dialect in the play. The appendices provide a comprehensive collection of source materials, while the stage history shows how subsequent centuries have received and adapted the play on the stage and in film. An updated reading list completes the edition.

For this updated critical edition of King Lear, Professor Halio has added a new introductory section on recent stage, film, and critical interpretations of the play. He gives a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's sources and the literary, political and folkloric influences at work in the play; a detailed reading of the action; and a substantial stage history of major productions. Professor Halio chooses the Folio as the text for this edition. He explains the differences between the quarto and Folio versions and alerts the reader to the rival claims of the quarto by means of a sampling of parallel passages in the Introduction and by an appendix which contains annotated passages unique to the quarto. An updated reading list completes the edition.

Includes 4 of the playwright's greatest works: Hamlet, featuring the drama world's most discussed and contentious character; Macbeth, concerning a Scots nobleman's overweening ambition; Othello, in which a gallant soldier is undone by jealousy; and Romeo and Juliet, the tale of the lovers whose names are synonymous with star-crossed romance.

An embittered Roman General returns from war, having captured the Queen of the Goths and her three sons. Sacrificing the eldest, in memory of his own sons killed in battle, he provokes the queen's unending hatred. And when she is made empress by the new emperor of Rome, she quickly begins to plot a murderous revenge of barely conceivable cruelty.

Leaving behind both home and beloved, a young man travels to Milan to meet his closest friend. Once there, however, he falls in love with his friend's new sweetheart and resolves to seduce her. Love-crazed and desperate, he is soon moved to commit cynical acts of betrayal. And comic scenes involving a servant and his dog enhance the play's exploration how passion can prove more powerful than even the strongest loyalty owed to a friend.

A poor physician's daughter cures the King of France, and in return is promised the hand of any nobleman she wishes. But the man she chooses, the proud young Count of Rosillion, refuses to consummate the forced marriage and flees to Florence. Depicting the triumph of trickery over youthful arrogance, All's Well that Ends Well is among Shakespeare's darkest romantic comedies, yet it remains a powerful tribute to the strength of love.

This most famous of love stories is uniquely presented in picture book form for children. The tale is told scene by scene in a simple lively style, with dialogue reproducing Shakespeare's own words so that the most celebrated passages of the play are retained in their original form.