During Shakespeare's lifetime, Henry IV was his most popular play. Today, Sir John Falstaff still towers above Shakespeare's other comic inventions. This edition considers the play in the context of various critical approaches, offers a history of the play in performance from Shakespeare's time to ours, and provides useful information on its historical background. Readers will also find detailed commentary on individual words and phrases, and selections from Shakespeare's sources. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has...
During Shakespeare's lifetime, Henry IV was his most popular play. Today, Sir John Falstaff still towers above Shakespeare's other comic inve...
Perhaps the most brilliant political play ever written, Coriolanus is a gripping psychological study of the relationship between personality and politics, and its Roman hero one of the most memorable Shakespeare ever created. The introduction to this new edition offers the first full stage history and analysis of the original production of Coriolanus at the Blackfriars theater, and also examines Shakespeare's adaptation of his historical material while emphasizing the wide range of interpretations that are possible in performance. About the Series: For over 100 years...
Perhaps the most brilliant political play ever written, Coriolanus is a gripping psychological study of the relationship between personality and polit...
A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps Shakespeare's most popular play, particularly as a first introduction to Shakespeare for children--filled as it is with a marvelous mixture of aristocrats, workers, and fairies. For the Oxford Shakespeare edition, Peter Holland's introduction looks at dreams and dreamers, tracing the materials out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps Shakespeare's most popular play, particularly as a first introduction to Shakespeare for children--filled as it i...
When a new play was required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597, Shakespeare created The Merry Wives of Windsor, a warm-hearted and spirited "citizen comedy" filled with boisterous action, situational irony, rich characterization--and the likes of Falstaff, Pistol, Mistress Quickly, and Justice Shallow. In his introduction and commentary, Craik examines a wide range of topics, including the play's probable occasion, its relationship to Shakespeare's English history plays and to other sources, its textual history, with particular reference to the widely diverging 1623 Folio...
When a new play was required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597, Shakespeare created The Merry Wives of Windsor, a warm-hearted and...
Edited by the eminent A.R. Braunmuller, this thorough edition of King John--the first scholarly edition in almost fifteen years--makes a significant contribution to the study of Shakespeare's works. Braunmuller offers a wide-ranging critical introduction, which focuses on the play's political relevance in Elizabethan England, its relationship to legal issues of the day, its treatment of women and families, and its overall aesthetic importance in Shakespeare's early career. He also provides a richly detailed stage history, full annotations that are especially sensitive to the play's...
Edited by the eminent A.R. Braunmuller, this thorough edition of King John--the first scholarly edition in almost fifteen years--makes a sign...
Pericles was one of the most popular plays of its time, and it has regained much of that popularity today. In a wide-ranging introduction, Roger Warren draws on his experience of the play in rehearsal and performance to explore the reasons for this enduring popularity. Unfortunately Pericles survives only in a corrupt text, the Quarto of 1609, in which many passages are nonsensical and others appear to be missing altogether. Earlier editions have merely cleaned-up the Quarto, but this edition offers a conjectural reconstruction of what the original play...
Pericles was one of the most popular plays of its time, and it has regained much of that popularity today. In a wide-ranging introduction, Ro...
A Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's shortest play yet one of his most popular comedies. Here is a new modern-spelling edition, based on the 1623 Folio text with on-page commentary and notes that explain meaning, staging, language and allusions. A detailed and informative introduction describes the play's first performance at Gray's Inn in December 1594, its multiple sources and its uneven critical and theatrical history. Appendices include the complete text of the play's main source, Plautus' Menaechmi, and extracts from Gesta Grayorum and the Geneva Bible. Illustrated with production...
A Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's shortest play yet one of his most popular comedies. Here is a new modern-spelling edition, based on the 1623 Folio...
Timon of Athens is a bitterly intriguing study of a fabulously rich man who wastes his wealth on his friends, and, when he is finally impoverished, learns to despise humanity with a hatred that drives him to his grave. The play's plot structure is schematically clear, and the poetry of Timon's rage is arresting in its savage intensity. Yet readers have often detected loose ends, and the tone of writing is uneven. In his introduction, John Jowett explains how these characteristics arise because the play was written as a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. This...
Timon of Athens is a bitterly intriguing study of a fabulously rich man who wastes his wealth on his friends, and, when he is finally impover...
Based on Chaucer's Knight's Tale, The Two Noble Kinsmen was written at the end of Shakespeare's career, as a collaboration with the rising young dramatist John Fletcher. Neglected until recently by directors and teachers, the play deserves to be better known for its moving dramatization of the conflict of love and friendship. This new edition, compiled by distinguished scholar Eugene M. Waith, offers helpful new material on the play's authenticity as a work of Shakespeare, his collaboration with Fletcher, the relevance to the play of the contemporary ideals of chivalry and friendship, and its...
Based on Chaucer's Knight's Tale, The Two Noble Kinsmen was written at the end of Shakespeare's career, as a collaboration with the rising young drama...
The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most fully realized tragicomedy, noted for the richness and complexity of its poetry. Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realistic psychology and a keen commentary on the violence implicit in family relationships and deep friendships. Orgel traces the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards the play, and places its psychological and dramatic conflicts within the Jacobean cultural and political context. This edition is made complete with a reprint of Shakespeare's source for the...
The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most fully realized tragicomedy, noted for the richness and complexity of its poetry. Though the title may suggest ...