Synopses & Reviews
The Taming of the ShrewRobust and bawdy, The Taming of the Shrew captivates audiences with outrageous humor as Katharina, the shrew, engages in a contest of wills-and love-with her bridegroom, Petruchio, in a comedy of unmatched theatrical brilliance, filled with visual gags and witty repartee.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Fairy magic, love spells, and an enchanted wood turn the mismatched rivalries of four young lovers into a marvelous mix-up of desire and enchantment, all touched by Shakespeares inimitable vision of the intriguing relationship between dreams and the waking world.
The Merchant of Venice
This dark comedy of love and money contains one of the truly mythic figures in literature-Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. The “pound of flesh” he demands as payment of Antonios debt has become a universal metaphor for vengeance. Here, pathos and farce combine with moral complexity and romantic entanglements, to display the extraordinary power and range of Shakespeare at his best.
Twelfth Night
Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy juxtaposes a romantic plot involving separated twins and mistaken identity with a more satiric one about the humiliation of a pompous killjoy. The hilarity is touched with melancholy, and the play ends, not with laughter, but with a clowns plaintive song.
Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
Synopsis
An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages.
Synopsis
The Taming of the Shrew • A Midsummer Night’s Dream • The Merchant of Venice • Twelfth Night
Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
About the Author
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. In London, Shakespeare became the principal playwright and shareholder of the successful acting troupe the Lord Chamberlin's men (later, under James I, called the King's men) which built and occupied the Globe theater. In 1616, he died in Stratford after having written 37 plays, sonnets, and other poetry which would become crucial to the cannon of English literature.
DAVID SCOTT KASTAN,editor, is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of SHAKESPEARE AND THE BOOK (Cambridge, 2001), SHAKESPEARE AFTER THEORY (Routledge, 1999) and he is the editor of A COMPANION TO SHAKESPEARE (1999), and co-editor of THE NEW HISTORY OF EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA (1998 award winner for the best book on theater history). He is general editor of the Arden Shakespeare (the first American ever to serve in this capacity in the Arden's hundred-plus year history). He serves on the board of the Folger Institute, the executive committee of the MLA Division on the Teaching of Literature, and on the editorial boards of a number of scholarly journals. Kastan is the Chair of the English Department at Columbia, and in 2000 he won the University's Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching and in 2004 became the first winner of the Faculty Mentoring Award.
DAVID BEVINGTON, editor, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1959. He has been teaching at The University of Chicago since 1967. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature, in the Committee on General studies, and Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities. He is the director of undergraduate studies in comparative literature. He was one of three editors of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF BEN JONSON (Cambridge UP, 2003), senior editor of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF RENAISSANCE DRAMA (2002), senior editor of the Revels series, and senior editor of the Revels students editions. He edited THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE, HarperCollins, fifth edition (Longman, 2003).
Table of Contents
The taming of the shrew -- A midsummer night's dream -- The merchant of Venice -- Twelfth night.