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The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition

by William Shakespeare, Andrew Gurr, Stephen Greenblatt (Editor), Walter Cohen (Editor), Jean E. Howard (Editor), Katharine Eisaman Maus (Editor)

ISBN-10: 9780393970876
ISBN-10: 0-393-97087-6
ISBN-13: 9780393970876
ISBN-13: 978-0-393-97087-6
Textbook Binding
1997-03
W. W. Norton & Company


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Editorials


Book Description
A vibrant, new complete Shakespeare that brings readers closer than ever before possible top Shakespeare's plays as they were first acted. The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition invites readers to rediscover Shakespeare-the working man of the theater, not the universal bard-and to rediscover his plays as scripts to be performed, not works to be immortalized. Combining the freshly edited texts of the Oxford Edition with lively introductions by Stephen Greenblatt and his co-editors, glossaries and annotations, and an elegant single-column page (that of the Norton Anthologies), this complete Shakespeare invites contemporary readers to see and read Shakespeare afresh. Greenblatt's full introduction creates a window into Shakespeare world-the culture, demographics, commerce, politics, and religion of early-modern England-Shakespeare's family background and professional life, the Elizabethan industries of theater and printing, and the subsequent centuries of Shakespeare textual editing.

Reviews


A college must
Most students who have taken any college course on Shakespeare have purchased this book. I purchased one for my Shakespeare class and found myself reading the plays included in the book that weren't even assigned. If you want to get a concise book of Shakespeare's work, this Norton version is the way to go.

Norton quality - always the best
This is an excellent collection of all the works by William Shakespeare. Each work features a fabulous introduction by one of the editors focusing on the play itself and its zeitgeist. Obsolete vocabulary is not indicated as a footnote but in the margin, which makes reading far more fluently. Additional and comprehensive explanations to certain passages are given in the footnotes. Even though the pages are very thin, a marker does normally not shimmer through the pages, which makes this book excellent for literature studies. However, it is to cumbersome for everyday use at school/university. The only drawback I encountered so far was the fact that the release date was set to January 1, 2008 and I got it in mid April.

Norton Anth. Shakespeare
Sweet. I'm glad this includes timelines and background information. I'm happy to have my only Shakespeare Anthology. I think it will last me forever.

I can't believe I read the whole thing!
Initially, I had to buy this mammoth of a book for a college course covering Shakespeare's early commedies and histories. I've been fascinated with Shakespeare ever since I read Romeo and Juliet in high school, and my college studies merely increased that fascination. This book served me very well in the course; the introductions are extremely relevant to and informative about both the background of play and also the period in which it is written. I appreciate that the introductions are well-written and easy to understand. (Shakespeare is hard enough to understand without having to wade through a difficult introduction as well.) The footnotes are also excellent; they provide much needed explanations, descriptions, and definitions. There are also side notes with the more common words for archaic words used. I certainly wouldn't want to try to read Shakespeare without all the tools provided in this edition. Since college, I have spent nearly two years working my way through Shakespeare's works, and it has been extrememly gratifying. I like some plays better than others and find some plays easier to understand than others, but I couldn't be happier with the edition required back in college.

I would also like to add that the book is much sturdier than it seems, especially the tissue thin pages. This book was toted around in a backpack with me for a semester in college and has been most abusively treated since then. I've dropped it numerous times, had it sliding around in the trunk whenever I went on vacation, and toted it with me to many a doctor's appointment. My puppy tried to chew up the corner of it when I wasn't looking, and my husband spilled coffee on the open pages and down the side while I was reading. With the exception of a little wear on the corners of the cover, a coffee stain, and a few wrinkled pages, the book is in fine condition. I would have expected ripped or severly damaged pages from some of the things my book has endured, but all the pages are whole, which is remarkable considering how thin they are.

Overall, I think this book is a wonderful edition of Shakespeare's work for both the student and also the reader who just wants to improve his or her mind. I'm not some fancy college professor, but this book has served me equally well in my endeavors as a student and as a reader.

school use
At my university this book was used in the tragic/comedy Shakespeare English classes. I found it to be very useful as a resource.


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