No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of As You Like It 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.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Hamlet 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.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Macbeth 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.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Much Ado About Nothing 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.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Romeo and Juliet 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.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of the Sonnets 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.

Penny Gay has written a new Introduction to this updated edition of Shakespeare's popular comedy. She stresses the play's theatricality, its elaborate linguistic games and its complex use of Ovidian myths. In addition, Gay analyzes its delicate balancing of romance and realism and exploration of gender, sexuality and identity.

The Comedy of Errors has been popular on the stage during the last three centuries and has proved itself admirably suited to adaptation as pure farce and musical spectacle. For this updated edition, Ros King has provided a completely new Introduction to the existing text and commentary, in which she argues that the play cannot be regarded merely as a farcical romp based on a classical model, but belongs to the critically misunderstood genre of tragi-comedy. In stressing the seriousness which underlies the story, the Introduction picks out the play's religious imagery for special attention, whilst also engaging fully with the play's deft lightness of touch and its continuing popularity in the theatre. A fresh Reading List guides the reader towards further study.

Alexander Leggatt has written a new Introduction to this updated edition of Russell Fraser's text on one of Shakespeare's most ambiguous plays. Leggatt's interest in performance informs his introduction and account of the instability of the main characters. He offers a thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, as well as of the audience experience. An updated reading list completes the edition.

Enjoy studying Shakespeare using the New Folger study edition, which offers newly edited texts, commentary in a friendly facing-page format, and illustrations drawn from the Folger archives to illuminate the plays and poems. Find the best of modern textual scholarship, up-to-date critical essays, and a handy mass-market paperback format make this a top choice for serious students of Shakespeare. Ages 12 to adult. This affordable mass-market edition is slightly smaller than a standard paperback, with pages that are glued directly into the binding.

Philip Edwards deals succinctly with the exhaustive commentary and controversy which Hamlet has provoked in the manifestation of its tragic energy. Robert Hapgood has contributed a new section on prevailing critical and performance approaches to the play in this updated edition. He discusses recent film and stage performances and actors of the Hamlet role as well as directors of the play. His account of new scholarship stresses the role of memory in the play and the impact of feminist and performance studies upon it.

Professor Evans helps the reader to visualise the stage action of Romeo and Juliet, a vital element in the play's significance and useful to students approaching it for the first time. The history of the play in the theatre is accompanied by illustrations of notable productions from the eighteenth century onwards. A lucid commentary alerts the reader to the difficulties of language, thought and staging. For this updated edition Thomas Moisan has added a new section to the Introduction which takes account of the number of important professional theatre productions and the large output of scholarly criticism on the play which have appeared in recent years. The Reading List has also been revised and augmented.

A new section of the Introduction to this updated edition considers important professional theater productions and the large output of scholarly criticism on the play which have appeared in recent years. The Reading List has been revised and augmented to reflect the scope of the revised edition.

To Shakespeare's contemporaries, Richard II was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the time, how to cope with an unjust ruler. But over the last century or so, the play came to be regarded as the poetic fall of a tragic hero. The Introduction to this edition provides a full context for both the Shakespearean and the modern views of King Richard's fall. For this updated edition the editor has added a new section to the Introduction which takes account of the number of important professional theatre productions and the large output of scholarly criticism on the play which have appeared in recent years. The Reading List has also been revised and augmented.

Charles Edelman focuses on the play's sexual politics and recent scholarship devoted to the position of Jews in Shakespeare's time in this new edition. He surveys the international scope of theatrical interpretations of The Merchant in the 1980s and 1990s as well as different ways of tackling the troubling figure of Shylock.

Much Ado has always been popular on the stage. This edition pays especial attention to the history and range of theatrical interpretation, in which the most famous actors, from the time of Garrick to the present, have appeared as the sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice. A full commentary includes annotation of the many sexual jokes in the play that have been obscured by the complexity of Elizabethan language. For this updated edition Angela Stock has added a new section to the Introduction in which she reviews the romantic and the darker, more cynical aspects of the play in the light of late twentieth-century stage, film and critical interpretations. She also tackles the interesting question of Beatrice's proper age and the critical fortunes of Hero and Claudio in terms of the play's interest in sexuality and misogyny, eavesdropping and deception.

Scott McMillin has added a new section on key events in scholarship and theater since the 1980s (including international, political, feminist and postcolonial analysis) to this updated edition of Shakespeare's Othello. The influence of historicism and cultural materialism are also taken into account, and a complete description of performances of the play on stage, film and television considers the issue of the interracial casting of main characters.

One of Shakespeare's most popular yet controversial plays, this edition of The Taming of the Shrew considers its reception in the light of the hostility and embarrassment it often arouses, taking account of both scholarly defences and modern feminist criticism of the play. For this updated edition Ann Thompson has added new sections to the Introduction which describe the 'deeply problematic' nature of debates about the play and its reception since the 1980s. She discusses recent editions and textual, performance and critical studies.

This important new edition of one of Shakespeare's more neglected plays offers a wide-ranging critical introduction, concentrating on its relevance to Elizabethan political issues and on the role played in it by women, the family, and the law. There is a comprehensive stage history, and full and helpful annotation pays special attention to the play's language and staging.

The Oxford Shakespeare General Editor Stanley Wells The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the works for modern readers — a new, modern-spelling text, based on the 1623 Folio text — on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, language and allusions — detailed introduction considers composition, sources, and critical and theatrical history — includes full text of Plautus' Menaechmi and extracts from Gesta Grayorum and the Geneva Bible — illustrated with production photographs and related art — full index to introduction and commentary — durable sewn binding for lasting use not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship. Times Literary Supplement.