The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Knickerbocker Classics)

Other ratings said that there was definitions of some of the old world words at the bottom of the pages which is why I bought this particular version. There is not, the defintions are in the back of the book which make it harder to read for someone not versed in old English. Otherwise I would have given it 5 stars.

The reviews for this were for the Bevington edition with annotations, modernized spelling, intros to each play, etc. This ain't it. There are none of those extras, and the spelling is about as easy to read as middle English Chaucer. I may not be able to figure out how to get my $2.18 back, but I'm removing this offal from my phone. It's amazing how the store gets away with using reviews from a good addition to sell a poor one. I realized moments after writing this review that there are only three plays in the whole book - you've got to be kidding me!

Horrible edition. No table of contents. Impossible to navigate. Atrocious print type. And worst of all, fraudulently represented as "Complete" when this edition is most assuredly INCOMPLETE. Save yourself the trouble of returning it and don't buy this edition in the first place.

Unfortunately, the book arrived with the hard cover unglued on one side. I needed it for a class, so had no time to return it,,,Otherwise, I like this edition. The notes are just what is needed for the modern reader to understand the text. No more, no less. The introductions and other critical material are concise and to the point.

The Kindle version is *NOT* the complete set of Shakespeare's works. I need to access "Henry V" for my Shakespeare class and this download did not contain this play. Highly disappointed with the lack of clarification given by the seller.

Navigating a collection of this size on a Kindle is impossible without a functional table of contents. This edition lacks that basic feature, and is, therefore, functionally useless. Save your dollar and look elsewhere, this collection isn't worth even the pennies they charge for it.

Very glad I got this version of Shakespeare's works. The summary and discussion of each play gives valuable insights into the works and I've found them valuable preparation before either reading the plays or attending performances.

It's big! Not the ideal book for a book-bag (which is where mine goes....to and from class). Very good notes and introductions.

Like with any Shakespeare, it's based on certain recordings of the script. There's always another copy that can be a bit different. So, if you're just getting started into Shakespeare remember that you'll want to look at several copies/follios to get a better idea of the language.

Very satisfied!

Great find!!

Let me start this review by saying I am a huge Shakespeare fan as well as being a huge Kindle fan and I was looking for a Kindle collection that had everything in it from him. Now, I already know all his plays and poems and works, or at least I thought I did. I mean, I wasn't aware of these apocryphal plays. I mean, I've always wondered if the plays that we all know were the only ones he ever wrote, but I'd never really gone to find out. When I read the title and description I just had to see what this was about.

When I downloaded it, I must say I was so happy with this great find!! These additional plays were the first ones I went to look at and already just paging through all these new ones, written at different times in his career, has been so interesting!! I can't wait to get into them for real. I feel like I've gotten a new toy that I can play with!

I highly recommend it!!

Terrific book. the printing is large enough for aged eyes and magnifying reading glasses The explanations of both words and historical meanings are wonderfully correct easy to read, and a thoroughly enjoyable book.

thank you , the store
Carol

This was advertised as being a critical edition. Instead it is simply the Gutenberg electronic version without helps (at least for the IPhone). But it works for my purposes, if as somewhat of a disappointment.

This is a must have for any student of literature or lover of Shakespeare. However, this is not meant to be light reading. If you are a student, particularly undergrad, you will be better served by cliffs notes or spark notes.

And securely packaged. And the item (William Shakespeare:The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition) is very good. Nice leather bound, and gold all around. But I hope that the margin of the pages was generous and the fonts were easy to read.

I really don't see how anybody can give this half-finished junk more than one star. However, I must confess I haven't read it all. In fact, I have only looked up the end of Julius Caesar to compare with a recent production I went to. I was appalled to see several instances where a stage comment appeared as part of Shakespeare's glorious lines. For example, where Brutus commits suicide:

BRUTUS. Farewell, good Strato. Runs on his sword
Caesar, now be still;
.....

Even the stupidest, laziest proof reader should have spotted this and at least introduced bracketed italics for the stage instruction - something to make it clear that it is not part of the prose. This type of thing occurs so often with ebooks based on source that is out of copyright that one can only conclude that proof-reading is regarded as an extra. In addition to this type of error, this Shakespeare is very poorly and amateurishly formatted. They don't even bother to ensure that each play begins on a new page!

In short, unless you have no aesthetic appreciation for the greatest of literature, avoid this product - it is utterly without merit. It's time the producers of ebooks realised that it is essential to minimise errors in books - they are regularly used as references in course work, for example, and have to be reliable. Anything less is a confidence trick and should invite legal action.

This is the reason I love having Kindle!!! The fact that I can have a huge Shakespeare collection with all of his plays in it and I can carry it around with me and read it anywhere I am is so cool! As for the collection itself, it is Shakespeare of course, so it was going to be great stuff anyway, but its also so amazing that I now have a whole bunch of his plays that I've never even heard of before, and carry them along with me too! Just scrolling through them and seeing new characters and stuff makes me think how amazing this modern digital age is. They are really cool! I think this kind of electronic collection in our modern digital age s really making it a great time to be alive!

I'm really looking forward to this writer's next book. His use of language is a bit inventive - although he does tend to use a lot of turns of phrase that are just a bit cliche and overused. For instance, "All that glitters is not gold" is certainly derivative of Tolkien. And statements such as "All's well that ends well" and "wild goose chase" and "vanish into thin air" are really just household words. I do have to note that his dialogue seems to be more suitable for speaking out loud than simply reading. As he matures, it's possible this writer might wind up developing some really ripping yarns. Perhaps he might consider exploring the genre of graphic novel, though.

Little Billy Shakespeare could write, he has nothing to prove. In fact, it irritates me that he was as good as he was. Did he write the plays? His friend and fellow writer and actor, Ben Jonson, said he did. That's good enough for me. And he wasn't perfect: Hamlet is too long, the Merchant of Venice is a very weak play with a couple of good speechs, then there's Macbeth - ooh what a play!

Then there's this Kindle edition.... OUCH! It is nearly impossible to navigate. The Table of Contents is so lacking in detail that I wish you luck in finding anything. What did I expect for $1.99? Not much. But a Table of Contents that would allow you to find whatever you're looking for would have been nice. As it is, it is virtually useless.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by David Bevington
Bevington's edition of Shakespeare's plays is a popular choice, and not without good reason. But that doesn't make an ideal choice. The introduction to this one volume edition is ample with chapters on life in Shakespeare's England, the drama before Shakespeare, Shakespeare's life and work. These are good, but they tend to rely on older scholarship and they may not be current. For example Bevington repeats Hinman's claim that there were 1200 copies of the 1623 Folio printed. However later scholars think the number was quite a bit lower, around 750. It should be said that we don't know for sure how many copies of the 1623 folio were printed and either number could be correct.
Bevington's edition prints the plays by genre. We get a section of Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, Romances and the Poems. He puts "Troilus and Cressida" with the comedies, though we know the play was slated to appear with the tragedies in the 1623 folio. The play was never meant to appear with the comedies, and all the surviving Folios that have the play have it at the beginning of the tragedies.
Let's get down to brass tacks. You are not going to buy an edition of Shakespeare's works because of good introduction. You're going to buy one because the quality of the editing of the plays. Is it reliable? Is it accurate? For the most part this edition is reliable and accurate, but that does not mean it is accurate and reliable in every instance.
Modernized editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems are norm. Since the 18th century (and even before) editors of Shakespeare have modernized and regularized Shakespeare's plays and poems. There are good reasons for this modernization. There is the reader's ease of use and the correcting misprints and mislination. I have no problem with this regularization of spelling or punctuation. But when an editor goes beyond normalizing and modernizing--when an editor interferes with the text then I have a problem.

Let me give two examples of the editorial interference that I am writing about:
King Lear 2-1-14 (p. 1184)
Bevington has:
Edmund
The Duke be here tonight? The better! Best!
This weaves itself perforce into my business.
The Folio has:
Bast. The Duke be here to night? The better best,
This weaues it selfe perforce into my businesse,
Even allowences made for modernization of punctuation and grammar would not account for Bevington's "The better! Best." Bevington glosses this to mean "so much the better; in fact the best that could happen." Nice try, but "The better best" of the folio is a double comparative, (which is a regular feature of Early Modern English) and not two separate adjectival phrases. Interestingly, the Quarto printing of Lear prints this scene in prose, and there is no punctuation between "better" and "best" in that version either.
A few lines down Lear 2-1-19 Edmund continues
Bevington has:
Brother, a word. Descend. Brother, I say!
Enter Edgar
But Bevington has reversed the order. The Folio has:
Enter Edgar.
Brother, a word, discend; Brother I say,
Bevington does not say why he changed the order, though to be fair other modern editors have done the same thing.
These two changes just a few lines apart go beyond regularization or modernization. They interfere with the text as presented in the 1623 Folio. And Bevington does not explain the changes. So next time you pick up this or any other modernized edition you should ask yourself "am I really sure what I'm reading is what Shakespeare wrote?"

I finally received the Shakespeare, and the packaging was terrible. Just an envelope and one end was opened up and someone tried to secure it with scotch tape that came loose. Amazingly, the book is fine and I see no need to return it. Much more care needs to be taken when packaging any books for shipment.

Perhaps this actually is the complete works of Shakespeare,but with no table of contents, or section headings or anything similar, it is impossible to use. It is one long file starting with the sonnets. NO search capabilities, no way to find King Lear except by beginning on page 1 and going page-by-page till you find it.

Overpriced.

Don't buy this if you want to read it, the formatting is terrible. It's like whoever created it just rendered the public domain version in notepad and converted that to a e-book. Instead buy "The Complete Plays Of Shakespeare (Special Kindle Illustrated and Commented Edition) for the same price.

Don't take my word for it, download a sample. I ended up buying the other one. This version should get zero stars.

The content is ok, but it would be nice if you can post in the information thatit doesn't have explantory notes for each page or so, and regarding the physical apperance i can say that it looks used and damaged on the edge of the cover of the book, i know that i chose the regular mail, but you could invest a little more on the cardboard boxes you send things in, the book is ok but becase of it's size it was definitely damage from the momento it was send , and not only in my country did this happendm i asked the mailman and he said the the way the pakege arrived to the country was not so good . I hope you can take my coments into account and change this little things when you send big books . Thanks

I fell for the Oxford edition and like the speaker of the Sonnets relative to the Dark Lady, I was blind to its defects too long.

I bought two copies in 2005 when I was "rich" owing to the financial boom: the paperback for my teaching to be used in class, and the hardbound for my home study. I could see how relatively flimsy they are, for Oxford has long compensated for the flimsiness of its books with the prestige of its name, and the genuine scholarship it's put into editing. Oxford offered successively higher priced editions of its standards at the turn of the last century, from a flimsy blue buckram with India (very thin) paper to higher-priced editions in "Moroccan" leather, sporting gold leaf and more durable paper.

Sure enough, the paperback King Lear disintegrated after being repeatedly copied and passed around, but not so much that I wasn't able to rescue the text of each play and staple it into a separate, handy little "Quarto" suitable for copying under "fair use" for students, and as an actor's prompt book.

But while the hardbound endured at my home, I am now re-reading all of Shakespeare having read his complete works in 1962 as a lad of 12. I have Stage IV/D1 prostate cancer and the opportunity to live in a hospice style facility awaiting results from chemotherapy, and re-read Shakespeare in the light of modern scholarship, notably, the two versions of Lear (1608 in Quarto, 1623 in the Folio).

This has exposed the relative and understandable flimsiness of the hardbound. It was made to be taken from the shelf and read at the desk. It can survive a Churchill chuckling and dozing over Falstaff and Timon of Athens in an easy chair with a cigar and whisky soda.

But in a hospital room while I have my lunch is problematic for the book is being deformed past the limits set by its binders as it is distended in my bed, and I find that even small drops of food can remove the print from the opposite page when the pages are separated (I have no data as to the sticking-together action of another substance called "baby batter" but I imagine it isn't good.)

Another problem is what I consider the "vanity", or perhaps self-filfilling, admission of a new play, Edward III, which may include passages by Shakespeare, but in which S, perhaps burned out at the time of Edward III on "history" plays, and not noted in what we know as exceptionally willing to put his nose to the grindstone, simply did not take an interest in the architecture of this history play.

All the other history plays except for in part King John, Richard II and All Is True (Henry VIII), that is, the "core" plays from Henry IV Part 1 to Richard III, are layered pictures of England in the 15th century. In the "Henrician trilogy" S cannot resist all sorts of clever scenes, such as the Cade rebellion, Pucelle's nonsense, and Talbot v Mad Duchess and Crazed Dwarf.

This is under better control in Richard III but only because the main character was an unusually dastardly person and therefore, given audience's eternal fascination with dastardly individuals, Richard can fill out the play in a way the non-dastardly Edward II could not. When Edward III goes at the Countess of Salisbury with wicked intent, the audience cheers him on, for wicked intent is theatrical, allowing the audience vicarious Thrills. But when Edward III stands down, wishing to be a virtuous ruler, we approve of this while stifling a yawn.

This is just a mediaeval miniature snookered from Froissart. I fear that even at the zenith of their profession there was pressure - whether internal or external I don't know, to "discover" Edward III as a "Shakespeare" play even though it has lain, like Poe's Purloined Letter, in plain view for many years.

Missing, or pressured out of Wells and Taylor in academic science worship of atomic facts, and a concomitant over-rating of details. A "Shakespeare" play "must" contain the diversity of incident and depth of characterization we associate with Shakespeare otherwise it "must" by critical consensus anyway, be relegated with the numerous times we know Shakespeare was a "script doctor", always ready to help stuck authors with a script.

Edward III is archtecturally tight as a drum but its chivalric military ethic is unrelieved by Shakespeare's questioning, thru Hotspur's psychotic exaggeration of the chivalric ideal (plucking bright honor out of the sea by her locks, etc.) thru its very absurdity and the effect it has on his wife. Or, for that matter, by Falstaff's speech on "Honour", Shakespeare's and Falstaff's obvious disgust with Prince John's dishonorable if bloodless victory in Henry IV Part 2. It's also hard to believe that Shakespeare's colleagues, or, the Master of the Revels, would have been able to "gag" Shakespeare on the issues raised in the canonical History plays given the success of his plays and the fact that questioning the chivalric ideal was no big deal, as far as we know, and that it was a frequent source of comedy, culminating, probably, in the "lost" play Cardenio.

The fault of treating Edward III as canonical, however, is redeemed elsewhere, for following modern practice found in the Norton edition, Wells and Taylor include two version of King Lear, The History of King Lear and his History.

Two polished versions of Lear exist. One came out in Quarto form in 1608 and featured a bit more excitement than the very different Folio version. The Quarto version features very interesting development of the character Albany until it is he, and not Edgar, who emerges as the natural leader of the end of the play, delivering the last and solemn lines:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

The Quarto version has also a more interesting revolt of Cornwall's servants and some Elizabethan tips on what to do for a gouged eye. Its scenes of reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia are a little more elaborate and plangent and were used in the definitive BBC version of Lear on video tape (and DVD now).

But both are rewarding in their own way and both should be read to say "I have read King Lear".

I am compelled to award this book a "four" because of its physical flimsiness as a paperback and the Edward III "canonization".

Did I really need another edition of William Shakespeare: The Complete Works and a digital version at that? Of course not. But it had Oxford in the title and I could not resist. An informative addition to my collection.

My twenty-five year old version of David Bevington's Complete Works of Shakespeare's is quite worn (and that's an understatement) so I wanted to replace it. This newer version is more compact and therefore weighs less...nice.

This is the best complete Shakespeare on the market. Why?
First, the introductory essays to individual plays by Bevington are excellent, reviewing all the major themes and issues. These alone justify the price.
Second, the footnotes are excellent; not too many and not too few.
Third, the introductory material for the book as a whole: a great collection of essays on the historical, biographical, and literary context of the plays.
My only criticism is that the paper is a little thin, but it's better than the Norton in this regard. There's really no way to keep the book to a manageable size and weight without using thin paper. The only other option is to split it up into volumes. Overall, the construction quality of the book is fine.

You get what you pay for, and you can get so much more for just a couple cents more. In this Kindle ebook, stage directions fall right inline with the text, undelimited, hard to distinguish from the dialogue. Also, the speaker's name is not offset. The Mobi edition Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 154 Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, King ... Cressida, The Winter's Tale & more (mobi) is just a few cents more and puts stage directions in brackets and tabs in the speaker's name. Those are subtle differences that actually make a huge difference when reading the play.

This is the second time I have tried to get a complete works of William Shakespeare in Spanish and they send me the English edition. I paid 29.29 cents to return a set of books that cost only 22 dollars to purchase. Not happy. Dan C

This is a revision of my original petty review, which had only two sentences and rightfully got several neutral votes. I hope that all who chance upon it are helped by it.

***

PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS

"After God, Shakespeare has created most." The great James Joyce, King of English prose, says that in Ulysses, quoting Alexandre Dumas. And TS Eliot: "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them; there is no third." Universal consensus names this lad from Stratford, an illiterate glover's son, one of the largest creative intellects that ever lived, a luminary of mankind, as great as the supremely gifted Old Testament authors, Homer, Jesus, Plato, Muhammad, the offspring of the Islamic Golden Age and the geniuses behind ancient Greek thought and Tang Dynasty Chinese poetry. Like Mozart and da Vinci, he remains a miracle: one of those rarest of instances where a supreme intelligence joins with an inexhaustible imagination, passion, tolerance and empathy in the same soul. If Dante is the Poet of the Sacred, Shakespeare is the Poet of the Human. There is the Bible, the Qur'an, the Gita, the Dao De Ching, divine revelations to fallen man. And there is Shakespeare: fallen man revealing himself to himself, Hamlet and Falstaff alike. The human soul coming to know itself in the working-house of its own despair and absurdity.

Yet comparisons & praise are odious. On to the review.

Among these complete works, which shall we moderns purchase? I'm not truly so learned in this matter, but I'm pursuing a career in higher education and my principal area of study is Shakespeare and Renaissance dramaturgy. I'll also start working on a biographical novel of Shakespeare's life not too long from now, after the mountains of research are finished. He's been close to my heart for a long time, since I was a boy and tried to make sense of Brutus and Hamlet from an old edition from the '20s, and I can paraphrase Erasmus in saying that with what money I earn, I buy my Shakespeares; if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. I hope to at least steer people toward what might be 'their' edition of choice, and do so in as unbiased a way as possible. Everyone approaches the swan of Avon differently and each edition caters to different needs and assumptions, different ages and levels (though all have students in mind). Many rivers run into the same sea.

PRICING

I'll start with the pragmatic matter of PRICING, which in this hyper-inflated day and age ought to be relevant to all but billionaires. Books usually cost six times as much as they cost to make: the 600% profit, =/-100%, is a cornerstone fact of the publishing industry. Sometimes the Bevington sells on the store for $65, sometimes for $95. Originally it was in the $90s but I guess most people, students especially, were turned off by this fat price and opted for the cheaper Norton instead. Then it became $65, entirely more reasonable, and it's been wavering between the two since. Wait for when prices go down to $65 to buy it; don't waste your money. Save your hard-earned $30. No book deserves upward of $80 dollars unless it's a first folio or an original manuscript from Nag Hammadi. Or an Atlantean magical inscription on the sea-bottom. Usually the Riverside doesn't go below $80, and the Norton alternates between the high $50s and about $70. The RSC is reasnably cheap at around $47 on the store Prime. Again, wait for the $65-ish Bevington, unless you have the $90 or so to spend on the Riverisde or Bevington as it is when it's more expensive, either of which will last you for decades. The Pelican is cheaper, only in the $30s, but it is very poor in its introductory material and mediocre in notes, It is best to purchase wisely, which in this case means foregoing cheapness for once.

COMPARISON TO OTHER EDITIONS

Here in the States we're lucky to have so many great editions. The English have only one- Bate's RSC, which is a splendid edition- but we can choose from myriad editions: Pelican, Riverside, Norton, Arden, Bevington, etc. America has outdone its Mother Country in doing justice to the national poet (get to work, Brits!). Now Bevington's book is and has always been third in the official hierarchy of sacred Complete Shakespeares. The Riverside and Norton have been dominating the market since 1997. Both will be publishing new editions sometime this coming year (my professor and advisor has told me personally that she is writing introductions to several comedies for the upcoming Riverside, which will come out in 2014), and I have no doubt, unless something goes terribly wrong, that this new Riverside will be the finest collection of the complete works yet published. The upcoming Norton will be up there. Right now, all in all, bookmaking taken into account, I would say the Riverside is the single greatest edition ever created: its paper is thick, its construction sturdy, its font elegantly archaic but not difficult. In majesty it is like the folio. Its footnotes are a bit poorer than Bevington's, though, and it has A Funeral Elegy, which everyone agrees was an egregious mistake. But error is human.

FOOTNOTES AND COMPARISON TO OTHER EDITIONS' NOTES

For now the Bevington is really so fine and well-made that it's astounding it's not more popular. Its footnotes (I mean the latest edition now, which is also the most recent great edition of the complete works in existence) are without a doubt the best out of any complete works except the RSC. Footnotes have been added to every new Bevington edition, so what you're getting is a nearly perfectly footnoted work now, with very practical and intelligent remarks about the often confusing Elizabethan phraseology. It's nicely footnoted too, with a line number next to each line that has a footnoted word, and the footnotes are listed on the bottom of the page for convenience. Shakespeare's extraordinary intellect worked on a level far beyond that of most waking people, and that makes him inaccessible to a lot of individuals, so good footnotes are absolutely necessary for any reader of his works. These are my specific ratings as far as footnotes are concerned: Individual Folger and Arden editions 10/10, RSC 9.7/10, Bevington 9.5/10, Norton 9.3/10, Riverside 9/10, Pelican 8/10. The Complete Arden and the Complete Oxford, which the Norton is based on, have no footnotes. The people who buy them are seasoned readers of Shakespeare, and their value is academic and textual, not edifying to undergraduate students and non-experts.

CLARITY OF INTRODUCTIONS

The Bevington's introductory essay is magnificent and useful. It covers hundreds of years of Shakespeare scholarship and talks about his age, like the Norton and Riverside intros. Its style is far more accessible to the average reader than the Norton's, which is a little pretentious for my taste. The Norton has the better general information, and Jonathan Bate's introduction for the RSC is superb, but they're really not as interesting and Norton is kind of boring and pedantic. The Riverside has the finest essays on historical criticism, which the Norton kind of skips over, but overall the Bevington has the most up-to-date information and it's never useless. Introductions in the Bevington are brilliant too. I love that the Bevington is the most traditional of all. Its introductions aren't spoiled by the excesses and deficiencies of modern scholarship. In short, they're human and enlightening. Where the Norton tends to be too academic, the Bevington is clear-headed and direct. And it doesn't obsess over textual sources like the Riverside. The Riverside introductions are beautiful too (Frank Kermode, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of the century, wrote many of them), but the Bevington ones are incisive in a different way. Bevington is a brilliant scholar with a kind of commoner's sense for simplicity and clear-headedness, and his style is easy to follow. Again, not pretentious. Almost perfect. Let's be honest: how many people have been turned-off by Shakespeare because of the imposing, dry introductions? Too many for comfort. Shakespeare himself made fun of everything and everyone, including his own work; he was a man of inexhaustible comic energy, an ever-satirical joker. And what we often get in editions of his works is the most humorless, tedious, uninspired academic jargon that's harder to decipher than the plays themselves. Thank Jove Bevington can't be accused of that. The Norton people can and that's the new-historical outlook filtering through the essays. The tedium...

TEXTUAL VALUE

Unlike the Riverside, this edition doesn't put textual variations in brackets. I mean that in the Riverside, where there are two or three readings of a word, the word itself is put in brackets, so you read "the pangs of [despised] love" because some editors choose disprized instead of despised because no one knows what the original word was. This is irrelevant so long as you're not a scholar or grad student doing serious work on Shakespearian textual criticism. Bevington's texts are obviously solid and reasonable (he edited the Bantam Classics Shakespeares for a long time, for Modern Library). And that makes sense. He's one of the greatest living Shakesperians, along with Stephen Greenblatt. When it comes to pure textual focus, the Riverside wins the race hands-down; but when it comes to not having to beat yourself up over deciding if Hamlet means solid or sullied, going with Bevington's sullied will be a good enough bet. All textual variations are listed at the back. Tread lightly: the business of textual criticism is a tough one. Trust the text, but if you remember a line differently from a different edition, check out the variations too. Shakespeare, like the Bible, is infinitely malleable. He didn't want himself to be set in stone. His handwriting was doubtless messy (his huge mind worked ridiculously fast and his hand understandably had trouble keeping up. When he couldn't decide on a word, he made one up), and I doubt he cared much what words were made out of his gooey ink-marks here and there. I can imagine an actor asking him, "Hey Will, is this 'aslant a brook' or 'askaunt a brook' here?" And him saying in response, "Words, words, words," with a smile (who cares, man?).

AESTHETICS

It has great pictures of productions leading up to 2012, a magnificent cover with the Chandos portrait on it, and clear, relatively large font, making this a choice text for the elderly and those whose vision isn't tiptop. The script is nice and legible and the text is in double columns. Textual notes are in the back, so there's no distraction between plays. The sonnets and poems are in the back also. The plays are printed by kind: Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, Romances, and in just about the order most scholars think they were written, so you have the first to last comedies, then first to last histories, first to last tragedies, finally romances, then the poems. This is a great way to do it; Norton prints the whole plays chronologically but Riverside takes after Bevington in doing them chronologically within genre.

BOOKMAKING

It is a large book, nearly a foot in length, but its spine is thin and won't bend even with a lot of use. The paper is very thin, but with care it will not perish. A lot of the time even new books will come with some bent or wrinkled pages, a fault that must be overlooked and understood as an inevitable consequence of Longman's effort to save money by printing on cheap, thin paper. Bookmaking is a dying art in general, and this edition is no exception. The fourth edition from '92 had much better paper and was thicker, this one being a fraction of its size with much thinner paper. The length and width ratio is very good though. On an upside, the paper for this edition isn't really thinner than the Norton paper. It's about the same. And with care, the book will last decades because it has sewn binding and there's not much stress on it when it's laid open. The cover and back are shiny and get scratched easily (scratches show), which is a slight design flaw that might annoy some people, and the book has no dust jacket. But that's a miniscule complaint, and those without OCD will find little to it.

FINISHING THOUGHTS

So overall, I'd get this seventh edition while I can. It's a treasure, no less. It makes studying Shakespeare such an indescribable joy. I recommend it to everyone and would buy it for friends, family or loved ones as a gift. If I were a professor (which I hope to be one ), this is the edition I'd assign my students, though I'd give them the liberty of the Norton, RSC and Riverside too. It would one of the very finest of choices and greatest of gifts.

Other reviews have complained of the binding and the printing, but a much more major flaw infects the Oxford Shakespeare (from which the Norton Shakespeare is derived): the editing of Shakespeare's texts themselves. The editors seem to have been driven by a desire to make a splash, even if this meant questionable and arbitrary editing of the texts, and so the Oxford Shakespeare features such oddness as:

* Two versions of King Lear, 90% identical and each missing some familiar lines (the Norton has three versions)
* A Macbeth that has had non-Shakespearean material added in to it, allowing it to be co-credited to Thomas Middleton (one editor is a Middleton fan)
* A Hamlet that has lost some of its most significant passages to an appendix
* Significant, damaging cuts to many of the other plays
* A Pericles with huge chunks of non-Shakespearean material added in, all of it terrible.
* Falstaff renamed to "Oldcastle" in Henry IV Part 1, though not in Part 2
* Wholly new stage directions that have been added in without note
* A horribly inept poem, "Shall I die", near-universally agreed upon not to be by Shakespeare, yet claimed as such

So be aware that you will be reading versions of the plays that are substantially different than from what most people have read over the last century, or indeed, the last few centuries. And, usually, substantially worse versions. The changes tend to damage the plays, not improve them. The Norton Edition removes some of the most grotesque alterations (like Falstaff/Oldcastle), but hardly enough to undo the damage. It also raises the question of why Norton chose to use Oxford in the first place.

David Bevington's The Complete Works of Shakespeare (6th Edition) is an entirely more reasonable, thoughtful, and better-produced choice. Jonathan Bate's William Shakespeare Complete Works (Modern Library) is similarly sensible and somewhat cheaper.

For evidence on the specifics, I will turn matters over to expert Shakespeareans, who have complained loudly about this edition for the last 25 years:

David Bevington: "Hamlet is another matter, for here we deal primarily not with duplicatory passages but with whole speeches that the Oxford editors remove (or banish to an appendix) on the hypothesis that Shakespeare wished to excise them in his revised (Folio) version of the play. My problem with the adoption of this bold option is in being uncertain that Shakespeare made these particular cuts willingly. Many familiar passages from Richard III are missing from the text now given to us, having been relegated to a supplementary list of additional passages where they are out of context. A note at the head of these additional passages states that they were 'apparently omitted from performances,' but I question whether they were omitted from all performances, and, even if so, whether Shakespeare really preferred things that way. This edition cuts some Q materials from its text of Troilus and Cressida, along with Pandarus's epilogue. The text of Measure for Measure will surprise some of its readers by its omission of certain well-known passages."

Brian Vickers: "The editors' evidence (only published in 1993) for Middleton's hand in Measure for Measure mostly concerns Act One Scene Two, where several stylistic features, and some dramaturgical loose ends, suggest a revision by Middleton in about 1621. While accepting their attribution, I find it perverse that the Oxford-Norton editors should have printed Middleton's revised scene in their text, knowing that it was "made for Shakespeare's company after his death", and consequently relegating Shakespeare's briefer and wittier original to an appendix called "Additional Passages". But this textual waste bin should really be called "Passages Deducted by the Oxford Editors"."

Grace Ioppolo: "Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, William Montgomery and John Jowett, the editors of William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, constructed their edition from two unsustainable arguments about scribal copy. First, these editors argued that any manuscript copy that contained act notations could not be authorial but must be scribal prior to 1609, when they assume Shakespeare's company moved into the private Blackfriars theatre at which music was played between acts. Second, they argued that scribes routinely introduced `interference' into the manuscripts they were copying, either by extensively adding their own or cutting the author's material."

What can I say? Shakespeare is the man. For any of you who love shakespeare, or just need a good reference for class; this book is amazing... not only that but you will look really intelligent if you have a thick leather bound shakespeare book on your bookshelf haha

This is a terrible edition (perhaps I got what I paid for, since this is one of the cheapest “official” Shakespeare editions available for Kindle). First of all, there are no glosses. If you don’t know a particular Elizabethan word or phrase, you’re out of luck. Second, the line breaks are wrong; there are glaring examples on every single page.

Third, and most important, THE TEXT IS RIDDLED WITH TYPOS. In Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet, “tenable” is mistyped as “treble,” and “it’s” is rendered as “it.” In the next scene, “this temple waxes” is written as “his temple waxes,” which is clearly wrong since he’s talking about a female body (Ophelia’s, in particular). For an author who is worth reading and analyzing down to the level of single words, this is unpardonable sloppiness. These examples took me just minutes to find; to list all the mistakes in this version of Hamlet alone — much less in every included play — would take forever.

Caveat emptor.

This is truly worthy of your consideration, O reader, among the many editions of Shakespeare, for several reasons, summarizd below.

But first clarification of which "this." The"this" being reviewed is the hard-cover, 1936 printing by Garden City Books, Garden City, NY of the Cambridge Edition Text, edited by William Aldis Wright, including the Temple Notes, illustrated by Rockwell Kent, and with a preface ("Letter to the Reader") by Christopher Morley.

This is the edition which has two columns per page, black-and-white illustrations by Rockwell Kent at his best, and an introductory essay by that passionate Shakespearian, Christopher Morley. Ihe edition was copyrighted in 1936 by Doubleday & Company, Inc., although printed by Garden Ciy Books.

There are other editions with the Rockwell Kent illustrations. However, these have been criticized for production problems and are not of the signature-bound legacy quality of this one. It can be worth any extra search to find this olden & golden classic edition, perhaps even if you luck on to a First Folio in a bookstall.

Still, why "buy this?"

--This is the complete works as we know them (circa 1936) including all the plays and all the poems such as "Venus and Adonis," the luminous & troubling "Sonnets," and "The Phoenix and the Turtle."

--There are many reader-friendly features, such as extensive and erudite notes for all the works, given as an appendix

--A glossary, clear and thorough

--An index of characters and an index of first lines; nice, nice, very nice!

--There are forty-four full-page illustrations by Rockwell Kent, each illustrating a well-chosen line from the play being introduced ("O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books," says the smitten Orlando (p. 664) and "Why is my lord enrag'd against his love?" asks the sensuous Cleopatra entwined against a brows-bent Anthony (p. 1058).

--The print is clear, the type-size easily readable, the 1,529 pages while not vellum-like, will stand-up to years of use. At least the pages of my copy, much read for almost 65 years, are not foxed, torn, or crumbling and this book has travelled with me over the hills and far away.

--Most of all, the editor has done his work brilliantly: choices among texts are explained in the appendix notes, the plays read with the trumpets and thunder and where appropriate, the flutes and flagolets of Shakespeare, and whatever most readers may seek of Shakespeare, they are likely to find it here, in one beautifully produced book.

Reader Alert: Light, this is not. A strong lap, a reading table, on your bed----all work, or maybe a mighty two-handed reader can hold it. Does take 4 inches on your bookshelf, too.

Recommended with all my heart, and with hopes that other readers will buy and treasure this splendid edition.

As the owner of a number of rare leather books I was a bit skeptical about the Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Classics. However, I have purchased two of them, the first being The Complete Works of Shakespeare and I am very pleased. It does not have the same quality elements as say an Easton Press book, but for the price I think it is great.

On the outside this book is very nice looking. The decorations are attractive and it has four raised hubs on the spine. To me it has a nice feel and seems durable. It does not at all give the sense of being cheaply constructed which is what I at first expected for the price.

On the inside I enjoy the contents and the lay out. There are however a couple of possible concerns. First is that the paper is fairly thin and somewhat transparent. You can definately see through a page to the writing on the other side. If this bothers you it may not be the version you want. Second is that the type is a bit small. If you do not have good reading eyes, again this may not be the copy for you. It is a bit reminiscent of a standard bible on the inside. There are also some places in which the type is slightly faded or has various imperfections. I dont find it to be particularly bad considering this is a value buy. I think these are simply a result of the massive amount of content in the book. The complete works of shakespeare coming to nearly 1300 pages.

All in all I think this book looks great on the shelf, has a very large amount of content for the price, and seems to me like it will last fairly well. The only concern I have is the readability of the print for some people.

I bought this Wordsworth edition based on the the store review blurbs and the review by Charles S. Houser, all under the Wordsworth edition.

the store (as is its wont with reviews for multiple editions of the same title) has placed the excellent review by Charles S. Houser for the William Shakespeare Complete Works (Modern Library) (Hardcover) under their listing for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Wordsworth Edition). Also, the Editorial Review blurbs in the the store description for the Wordsworth edition are actually for the RSC edition, NOT for this Wordsworth Edition.

This Wordsworth Edition is NOT single-column. It does NOT have introductory essays for any of the plays. It is NOT the edition commissioned by the RSC. It is 1263 pages, NOT 2,485 pages.

If you want what is described in the Houser review, look up 1) "The RSC Shakespeare : The Complete Works" and 2) "William Shakespeare Complete Works (Modern Library) by Shakespeare". the store offers this edition by two different publishers: 1) Palgrave; 2) Modern Library. At the time I write this review, the store offers these editions only through third parties, but that might change over time.

This is a beautiful set (13 volumes) of the complete works of William Shakespeare. The books themselves are in pristine condition and are illustrated with steel engravings. The text is very readable, although they look as though they have never been read. Color is a deep burgundy or maroon. They are contained in a matching box (9.5" wide, 5.5" high and 4.25" deep). The box is in good shape, yet shows some signs of wear at the corners due to age. The lid has become separated from the box, but it is a clean break and can be easily glued, taped, etc. All in all this is a rare and beautiful collector's set. I can't seem to find a publishing date, but I have owned them for 45 years and they were old and in the same condition they are now when I bought them in an antique book store.

All the reviews for many of these different e-editions and print editions of Complete Shakespeares are identical. There is no way of knowing which edition any of them refers to. It's as though the store just puts them all in one bin and scoops them up for every edition. So no review can be useful.

There is no way I can review Shakespeare's Complete Works any better than it has been already done many times by some very smart people -- but I want to comment on the physical quality of this edition.

Mind you, I already have an edition, printed in England about 50 years ago, that has sentimental value (a supportive English teacher half the world over gave it to me with a praising inscription) - so I wasn't looking for another copy. But then I came across this leather bound edition in a Barnes & Noble store, and I found this book so extraordinarily GORGEOUS that I would have been unable to leave the store without it. What a surprise for that kind of money (about $18). What a gem!

Everything about this book is just beautiful. The smooth and shiny bonded leather provides an elegant background for gold and red rich classic ornamentation in the front, on the spine, and on the back cover. The spine has four raised hubs, giving it a 3-dimensional look -- like on old classic leather-bound tomes. A handsome colorful portrait of Shakespeare (and another one, in black and white inside) completes the sophisticated look.

It is a hefty tome (2.6 inches thick), but very sturdy (pages are sewn-in). The sides of pages are perfectly gilded and smooth to the touch. Inside, the print face is nicely old-fashioned, stylistically appropriate to the book. Additionally, the very dark/black print provides great contrast with cream-colored acid-free paper. The book also has stunning, richly colored marbled end-papers, and a sewn-in golden silk ribbon book marker.

It is true that pages are slightly translucent, but I don't see it as a problem -- the print is black and sharp enough to stand out quite well, so the faint shadows from underneath don't interfere with reading. For anyone who uses reading glasses, the size of the font will be just fine. Young people with good eyes will have no problem, but some middle-age readers may have to admit to themselves it's time for reading glasses.

I only have one complaint: the margins on pages are too small/narrow. When the inner margin is thin, and the book is thick, it makes it harder to read -- you must keep the book as widely open as possible to see letters close to the seam (resting the book on a lap desk helps). But even with that issue, I think this edition still deserves 5 stars.

Kudos to the anonymous designer of this book (I have a hunch that small margins were the idea of bean counters, not the designer). You have created a splendid book that is a joy to hold and look at, and I am happy to display in a prominent place in my home.

We didn't actually read this book. It was a donation for a library. We were happy to help. We've read other Shakespeare compilations tho, and even tho they are hard to understand (given the Elizabethan English), once you start... you can't stop! Good soap opera!

I came upon this book by chance. I own several editions of Shakespeare's complete works (what can I say? I love his works.) but always love collecting various editions and on a recent roadtrip, happened to chance upon this wonderful old bookstore called Bluestem Books in Lincoln, Nebraska. I found this 1936 edition of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" by the Athenaeum Press, edited by George Lyman Kittredge. It is a handsome book and is in excellent condition, with a cloth and leather binding. It is not too large (although it is rather heavy) ,measuring around 8 by 6 by 2 inches. I can actually fit it in my purse and what I really love about this particular edition is the feel of an antiquarian book and the smell of leather. I look forward to many hours of enjoyment with this lovely edition of Shakespeare's works.

I have both the Kindle version and hardback for a class.. The Kindle does not include the introductory portion with the background to the theater and the time period. Nor does it contain footnotes or definitions to help a student. The hardback has no footnotes which is a great handicap to those not familiar with Shakespeare. I would NOT recommend for a beginner in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his 39 plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

I needed to get a book of complete works of Shakespeare, and portability was of key importance. So I went to a theater bookstore where I compared several different collections, including ones by Arden, Stratford, Pelican, and Gramercy. And this collection by Harper-Collins was hands-down the best in terms of readability and portability (and affordability).
The Arden and Pelican ones are the most comprehensive in terms of glossary, essays, and other scholarly stuff, but they also are the heaviest and the priciest. The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare is surprisingly light (especially for a hard cover), but presumably to save page space, it abbreviates the characters' names before their lines (which I hate), and its font is pretty horrible in legibility. Gramercy's "William Shakespeare - The Complete Works" is the worst, being quite heavy while being extremely hard to read (abbreviated names and no indentation).
Harper-Collins' "Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text" is one of the best in terms of readability, with its good paper, font choice, fully spelled character names, and appropriate indentations to help legibility. It also has a decent glossary in the back for hard-to-understand words. I would have loved to have footnotes at the bottom of each pages instead, but hey, you can't have everything, I suppose. In terms of portability, this one is the second lightest of the five books (Stratford is the lightest). And the price is certainly right.
If you need complete Shakespeare on the go, this is the one to pick.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his 39 plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

This is NOT the annotated Norton Critical Edition as stated in the title. It is also NOT the satirical play talked about in the description mashing together many of Shakespeare's works. What it IS is a Project Gutenberg version of the World Library's Complete Works of William Shakespeare. There is no table of contents and absolutely no way to navigate the thing, so not really worth money. If it had a table of contents, I would have considered keeping it, despite not being the version the title leads one to believe, but it is nothing but a pain, so we returned it.

This is a joke, right?

The "Look Inside" text is full of incoherence and bizarre (coding?) typos. So I got the sample -- more of the same. Even the book description on this page is barely readable.

Either this is a scan-to-text job no one bothered to correct, or... I don't even know. But to put this up here at two hundred bucks for a Kindle edition is pathetic.

Addendum: The only reason I even checked this edition out is because I've been searching for a Complete Works with helpful links within the text to not only the plays but to any notes that might accompany them. This one doesn't even link the plays in the contents: there's only a reproduction of the edition's original TofC.

The book description has such errors as "The Merry Wives op Windsor" and "Ab You Like It."

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (leather bound edition) by Barnes and Noble is a very nice tome which includes all of the Bard's works. This is a beautiful volume, leather bound, with gilded pages and a ribbon book mark. If you are looking for a commentary version of Shakespeare, this is not it.
If you need a copy of a play with good footnotes, I might suggest getting a Dover Thrift or No Fear Shakespeare Copy of said play. This is not a "study" version of the plays. My main issue with this collection of plays is that the print is extremely small and depending on the page the font can be hard to read. It is however a good deal for your money and the perfect gift for any fan of Shakespeare.

This is a very reputable one-volume Shakespeare book edited by the late professor Peter Alexander, chosen by the BBC as the basis for its major production of the complete Shakespearian plays. The book has an excellent introduction on William Shakespeare (who he was, his family, his writings & performance of his plays in his life time including the cast in some of his plays)! The book contains all his 36 Plays (catalogued) & 6 Poems (including all his Sonnets), appendix & glossary with 2 500 items (giving meaning to obsolete & difficult words and phrases). Footnote glossary would have been better than the glossary being at the back of the book! The book has been a "gold standard" since its first publication in 1951, a highly recommended reading.

David Bevington gives us a well-researched and useful edition of William Shakespeare's complete works. The bard's plays are, of course, indescribably good, and would be in any edition. Thus, an editor's job is to provide annotations to explain archaic vocabulary or 16th Century references which would otherwise escape us, to give the reader the best text available--since Shakespeare's plays were originally not written for publication but only for production on the stage, this is a recurring problem--to write short introductions to plays which guide a reader about certain themes recurring in the play, and to provide other helpful material in a general introduction and in end notes. Bevington succeeds at all these tasks. His annotations are, as a rule, helpful without being intrusive. Bevington seems instinctively to know when a word or phrase needs to be explained and when a description of a phrase not immediately obvious to modern readers would be more harmful than helpful by breaking up the flow of the text. His introductions to each play are insightful. A good example of this is Bevington's introduction to Much Ado About Nothing in which he explains that the Sixteenth Century pronunciation of "Nothing" was the same as the pronunciation of "Noting." Since the play involves numerous instances of people overhearing other character's conversations, the play's title has a double meaning--i.e., it is both Much Ado About Nothing and Much Ado About Noting. Finally, Bevington's introductory and concluding general remarks are also quite good. For example, Bevington gives brief descriptions of the Elizabethan stage and the history of Shakespearean productions over the last four hundred years in his introduction. He also gives his take on the controversy over whether Shakespeare wrote all his plays himself. After the plays, he gives the sources of the text for the various plays, including how the plays were first published.

This book does not contain long winded dissertations or explanations. We have no distracting, no annotations, and foot notes; in fact nothing to distract us from the pure Shakespeare experience. This book naturally has all the advantages of a physical book of which I will not go in to. Among other advantaged this volume makes a great reference. Although if find myself reading for the fun and not just a reference.

I do of course have individual copies of my favorites (some with pictures). I also have kindle versions for better or worse.

Yet you cannot have too many versions and this is a keeper.

Just a note each page has a vertical line down the center so it as like two pages. I am not sure the purpose or the advantage. And do not expect a lot of illustrations they are more like black and white pictured of old paintings.

Bevington's edition is by far the best Complete Works of Shakespeare available today. Why? First and most important, the footnotes give you just what you need to understand the play and no more. They're complete, concise, and accurate. The formatting of the footnotes also facilitates their accessibility. Second, the introductions to individual plays are marvelous--they get right to the most important critical issues that make reading the plays interesting, without being vague and out-of-date or pedantic, overly concerned with trivial minutiae. Third, the background essays are excellent and up-to-date. The essays on "The Drama Before Shakespeare," "London Theaters and Dramatic Companies," "Shakespeare's Life and Work," and "Shakespeare's Language" are among the best available anywhere, complete and concise, giving you exactly the information that is needed for studying and appreciating Shakespeare in the 21st century, without bogging down in unnecessary details. Consider also Bevington's The Necessary Shakespeare, which uses the same footnotes, introductions, and background essays, but includes fewer plays. It's possible to quibble with some of the editorial decisions, but unless you're writing a Ph.D. dissertation on Shakespeare, students and aficionados will want a good "reading edition" like the Bevington that includes the important variants. If you really want a completely "authentic" 17th century version, folio reproductions are now widely available.

I am reviewing the first edition of this work, which I have had for many years now. It is not your standard edition of the complete Shakespeare. Those coming to the plays for the first time should be warned off this version, since it does NOT present the plays complete. It presents them with passages cut, and the omitted passages included at the end of each play, with notes as to where the cuts were actually made. In other words, Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film of "Hamlet", which features the whole play, is actually more complete than the version included in this volume. These passages were supposedly cut with the approval of Shakespeare and his acting company, though how the editors arrived at that conclusion, it is difficult to know. Of course, the volume is beautifully printed. My copy is a huge hardcover edition, probably its first printing ever, and the binding does not appear to be weak, since it has held up for quite a while.

I have owned several editions of Shakespeare's complete works, and all of the others gave you each play complete, and with no lines published as an appendix as the Oxford Shakespeare does. (And these are not lines that nobody has ever read or heard, but standard lines that frequently are retained when the plays are produced onstage.) The editors have tried to make their edition unique and different by publishing it like this, but whether you prefer reading edited versions of the plays and then the omitted lines as appendices is strictly up to you. I am reluctant to criticize this book as it simply looks truly beautiful, but I prefer Shakespeare's plays complete. I leave edited versions of the plays to film directors such as Orson Welles or Franco Zeffirelli. It's one thing to watch a two hour Shakespeare film, but quite another to read an abridged version of a Shakespeare play.

Many reviews below fault this edition for its complete lack of footnotes, indications of what text was used, or any other background material of any kind. They have a point, but I still disagree with their criticism. The edition's lack of these materials does not render it useless. On the contrary. I own several Shakespeare editions (among them Bevington, Riverside, and most of the Ardens), and I have used them to study the works in depth. For me, this edition fills a real need: direct, unmediated access to the text analogous to hearing it read out loud. Having the Bard's complete output in one physically manageable volume (the Riverside is much too big - try putting it in your briefcase to read on the train!) unencumbered by any extraneous writing such as footnotes allows me to focus completely on the text and avoid getting distracted by the footnotes. Reading Shakespeare from this book has really changed my perspective on many of the plays because I can enjoy the uninterrupted flow of the narrative, similar to a reading out loud. One might object that I could simply skip the footnotes of the other editions. But it's not that simple. By their very presence, footnotes have, in my view at least, something disempowering. It's not me encountering the text; rather, it's me respectfully approaching something of which I'm not quite worthy. That's a fine attitude, and I'm all for it when you get to know the plays. But having dug through them, I find it a wonderful experience to encounter the "pure" text (I know that's ultimately an illusion) and enjoy it without someone trying to teach at the same time. If there's a textual crux or a term I can't understand or some historical background I want to brush up on, I can always look it up in one of my annotated editions. This edition, by its very simplicity, has really rekindled my enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Last but not least, having all of Shakespeare's texts in one small volume allows me to flip quickly to another play to look something up or spot cross-connections. That can be very interesting. In short, this admittedly simple and perhaps not completely reliable edition has truly enriched my reading of Shakespeare.

As of late I have seen some pretty strong arguments for reading Shakespeare (even if he really didn't write everything attributed to him). Most of my recent reasons have to do with my teaching high school English.
For my sophomores, it is Julius Caesar, and for my seniors, it is Hamlet. Having the need to read along with the students from a second text, I always reach for my Bevington Edition. I like having a second text available, but more importantly, I love having such a comprehensive discussion of Shakepeare at hand each time the moment arises(rare as they are) that a question comes up either during the reading or discussion. The Bevington edition serves me well whenever I teach Shakespeare because I can easily find important information quickly.
I also like the fact that the text is modernized in spelling, presented in a clean and legible font, while keeping an academic presentation in mind. For me this simply means I can read it for enjoyment as well as for teaching purposes easily and without any real problems.
I also like the way that the plays are organized. with many of the other complete editions I have owned throughout the years, chronological order gets to be a bother.
Now, I am no real scholar, but I have acted in several college level and other post-educational setting productions of Shakespeare, and from an actor's point of view the Bevington edition scores well again.
If you are deep into scholarly persuits I am certain you can find flaws within the Bevington edition, as could be found by any expert in any edited literary text. However, as far as an all-round, readable, and informative version of the complete works of Shakespeare (or whoever REALLY wrote all the plays etc.) the Bevington edition has my vote as the best one I have yet to see.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language.

And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his thirty-nine plays and his brilliant poetry. His stage work ranges wildly from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy which are even more moving when paired with the romantically intense, complicated sonnets and narrative poems. While it takes some work to fully understand some of his work, the powerful, complicated characters and vivid writing are timeless.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic. The comedies are of the classical variety -- not always funny (usually, but not always) but you know they will end semi-happily. And the histories... well, dramatizations of history, mostly about British kings and the Roman empire.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

The "complete works" also have his poetry, including his two narrative poems and his long string of romantic sonnets. The sonnets are best appreciated as a whole, since a lot of the message is lost if you don't read them sequentially. There are two substantial cycles here -- the cyle dedicated to a beautiful young man that Shakespeare seems to criticize and adore alternately (and no, Sonnet 116 is not a mindless, soppily-romantic ode, but a single piece of a larger argument with the "master-mistress") and a more explicitly sexual cycle for the Dark Lady.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. They were meant to be SEEN by the masses, not read. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, his poems sublimely clever and layered, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

There are many editions of The Bard on the market, some very expensive and others fairly cheap. Students of Shakespeare at the high school or early university level would be better getting the individual play or plays being studied, rather than the entire corpus of Shakespeare, which is very long (about 1500+ pages including the Sonnets), though for serious lovers of literature and English majors, a compilation such as this is pretty much essential.

The Oxford Shakespeare includes all of the main works, the sonnets, and also notes and introductions. If you need to study an individual play, I would recommend getting the Arden Shakespeare or the Oxford Shakespeare series, which have each individual play accompanied with excellent scholarly notes and decent introductions, but this edition is more useful for reading for pleasure (which is easy to do with Shakespeare) or for private study.

This version is fairly accessible and affordable, and worth adding to your collection if you are a fan of Shakespeare.

Other reviews have complained of the binding and the printing, but a much more major flaw infects the Oxford Shakespeare (from which the Norton Shakespeare is derived): the editing of Shakespeare's texts themselves. The editors seem to have been driven by a desire to make a splash, even if this meant questionable and arbitrary editing of the texts, and so the Oxford Shakespeare features such oddness as:

* Two versions of King Lear, 90% identical and each missing some familiar lines (the Norton has three versions)
* A Macbeth that has had non-Shakespearean material added in to it, allowing it to be co-credited to Thomas Middleton (one editor is a Middleton fan)
* A Hamlet that has lost some of its most significant passages to an appendix
* Significant, damaging cuts to many of the other plays
* A Pericles with huge chunks of non-Shakespearean material added in, all of it terrible.
* Falstaff renamed to "Oldcastle" in Henry IV Part 1, though not in Part 2
* Wholly new stage directions that have been added in without note
* A horribly inept poem, "Shall I die", near-universally agreed upon not to be by Shakespeare, yet claimed as such

So be aware that you will be reading versions of the plays that are substantially different than from what most people have read over the last century, or indeed, the last few centuries. And, usually, substantially worse versions. The changes tend to damage the plays, not improve them. The Norton Edition removes some of the most grotesque alterations (like Falstaff/Oldcastle), but hardly enough to undo the damage. It also raises the question of why Norton chose to use Oxford in the first place.

David Bevington's The Complete Works of Shakespeare (6th Edition) is an entirely more reasonable, thoughtful, and better-produced choice. Jonathan Bate's William Shakespeare Complete Works (Modern Library) is similarly sensible and somewhat cheaper.

For evidence on the specifics, I will turn matters over to expert Shakespeareans, who have complained loudly about this edition for the last 25 years:

David Bevington: "Hamlet is another matter, for here we deal primarily not with duplicatory passages but with whole speeches that the Oxford editors remove (or banish to an appendix) on the hypothesis that Shakespeare wished to excise them in his revised (Folio) version of the play. My problem with the adoption of this bold option is in being uncertain that Shakespeare made these particular cuts willingly. Many familiar passages from Richard III are missing from the text now given to us, having been relegated to a supplementary list of additional passages where they are out of context. A note at the head of these additional passages states that they were 'apparently omitted from performances,' but I question whether they were omitted from all performances, and, even if so, whether Shakespeare really preferred things that way. This edition cuts some Q materials from its text of Troilus and Cressida, along with Pandarus's epilogue. The text of Measure for Measure will surprise some of its readers by its omission of certain well-known passages."

Brian Vickers: "The editors' evidence (only published in 1993) for Middleton's hand in Measure for Measure mostly concerns Act One Scene Two, where several stylistic features, and some dramaturgical loose ends, suggest a revision by Middleton in about 1621. While accepting their attribution, I find it perverse that the Oxford-Norton editors should have printed Middleton's revised scene in their text, knowing that it was "made for Shakespeare's company after his death", and consequently relegating Shakespeare's briefer and wittier original to an appendix called "Additional Passages". But this textual waste bin should really be called "Passages Deducted by the Oxford Editors"."

Grace Ioppolo: "Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, William Montgomery and John Jowett, the editors of William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, constructed their edition from two unsustainable arguments about scribal copy. First, these editors argued that any manuscript copy that contained act notations could not be authorial but must be scribal prior to 1609, when they assume Shakespeare's company moved into the private Blackfriars theatre at which music was played between acts. Second, they argued that scribes routinely introduced `interference' into the manuscripts they were copying, either by extensively adding their own or cutting the author's material."

This version, like many cheaper versions, jumps right into the sonnets with no introduction nor table of contents. As best I can tell, it IS one of the cheaper versions, with no attempt at formatting and no real added value. Yet it's priced the same as the Oxford version which has a lengthy introduction (and introductions to each work), an active table of contents, and better formatting (about as good as you can find on the Kindle).

If you want to spend $28 for the complete Shakespeare, buy the Oxford. If you want a stripped-down, bare-bones Shakespeare, look at one of the $1.99 or $2.99 versions. Or maybe look for a free version on Guttenberg.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language.

And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his thirty-nine plays and his brilliant poetry. His stage work ranges wildly from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy which are even more moving when paired with the romantically intense, complicated sonnets and narrative poems. While it takes some work to fully understand some of his work, the powerful, complicated characters and vivid writing are timeless.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic. The comedies are of the classical variety -- not always funny (usually, but not always) but you know they will end semi-happily. And the histories... well, dramatizations of history, mostly about British kings and the Roman empire.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

The "complete works" also have his poetry, including his two narrative poems and his long string of romantic sonnets. The sonnets are best appreciated as a whole, since a lot of the message is lost if you don't read them sequentially. There are two substantial cycles here -- the cyle dedicated to a beautiful young man that Shakespeare seems to criticize and adore alternately (and no, Sonnet 116 is not a mindless, soppily-romantic ode, but a single piece of a larger argument with the "master-mistress") and a more explicitly sexual cycle for the Dark Lady.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. They were meant to be SEEN by the masses, not read. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, his poems sublimely clever and layered, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

The modernised one-volume Oxford Complete Works edited by Wells and Taylor has little of significance to offer that is not bettered by its competitors. Its general introduction is thin and bland, and the introductions to individual plays amount to little more than one-page notes. There are no explanatory notes of any kind to accompany the words on the page, and the glossary at the end of the book offers very little help indeed. Thus readers are largely left to flounder on their own. There are certainly, as much publicity has assured us, a number of new textual features, but these are often characterised by a craving for novelty rather than that they have proved convincing or useful to many readers: fewer and fewer readers today really want two texts of *King Lear*, and the number of people inclined to believe the editorial arguments in favour of the so-called "two-text theory" is decreasing rather than growing; similarly, there are no truly good reasons for calling Falstaff "Sir John Oldcastle", etc. As the scholars who have put the edition together are very reputable and their handling of the text does deserve the attention of academics, scholars like myself do, of course, want to own a copy. But I use it sporadically, and hardly feel like recommending it to the non-specialist, who will be much better served by buying, especially, David Bevington's edition, or else - though very much as a second choice - the Riverside, or, failing that - and very much as a third choice - the Norton. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University (South Australia)

The very idea of reviewing or giving stars to Shakespeare in this format is superfluous: he is the epitome of English literature. The source and inspiration for many subsequent classics, the well from which many popular expressions have sprung, the basis for many brilliant (and not-so-brilliant) stage and film renditions of these classics -- Shakespeare's literary greatness lies universally ackwnoledged and unquestioned. In reviewing any edition of the man's works, then, the reviewer's task is not to comment upon the work itself, but the presentation. This Gramercy edition of The Complete Works (yes, that's all 37 plays -- comedies, histories, and tragedies -- as well as all of the poems, sonnets included) is the most popular and widely-available -- and inexpensive -- version available. Is it the best? Well, no. Other reviews of this edition have commented upon its shortcomings -- extremely small print; very tight and hard-to-read layout; no margins for notes; no footnotes or annotations; no background information on the plays; errors, typos, and generally questionable editing. That said, this edition may have what you're looking for. It does indeed contain the complete works; it also has a few other small incentives: a hard cover that looks great on a bookshelf, a built-in bookmarker, and various illustrations. Clearly, this is not an omnibus for the Shakespeare scholar. If you want an edition of the bard for in-depth study or for academic use, you are better off buying more expansive editions of the individual plays themselves, with plenty of background info, notes, annotations, and space for your own writing; or else one of the more expensive editions of the Complete Works. That said, if you are just looking for a Shakespeare book that has all of his works in one place, that is convenient and, above all, inexpensive -- or you just want a Shakespeare tome sitting on your dust-ridden bookshelf to impress friends -- then you could do worse than picking up this.

To buy an unannotated Shakespeare volume like this, where even the quality of the text is in doubt, is a pure waste of money. Anyone who feels it is good enough to buy an unannotated text should at least make sure to get a good, well-edited one: for example, a second-hand copy of Peter Alexander's edition (the so-called "Tudor Edition", originally published by Collins in 1951). The text prepared by Alexander remains one of the very best.
It really does matter what text one buys, as various editions differ greatly in the quality of what they produce. It is by no means the case that all editions of Shakespeare offer the same text, as one would expect if one bought a work by a modern author. Furthermore, it is impossible to read Shakespeare - even if you are a specialist in Renaissance literature - without plenty of help, none of which is supplied in this edition. A good edition, like that produced by David Bevington, or the Riverside, will contain the following helpful components as a minimum: a comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare and his work generally; reasonably full analytical/interpretative introductions to individual works; lists of further reading (referring the reader to other helpful commentators); and above all - most essentially - useful explanatory notes on words, phrases, and sentences difficult to understand. Of these there are a great many. Anyone who approaches Shakespeare as a modern reader without knowledgde of the language of his period will soon find all sorts of words and grammatical usages that obviously are no longer current. But even more treacherous are those many instances of words that LOOK the same, but MEAN something very different, as a result of the fact that the meaning of words changes over time.
For all these reasons, then, readers should spend their money on a value-for-money buy, whether new or second-hand, and not waste it on a worthless volume of this nature. If you don't want to buy a well-annotated one-volume Shakespeare, buy well-annotated editions of individual works - e.g. those belonging to the Arden series, or the Oxford Shakespeare, or the New Cambridge.
These reflections are not, of course, criticisms of Shakespeare as an author, but purely of a useless edition like this. ...

Terrible formatting. It often has several characters lines smashed together in the same paragraph. Constantly have to work to figure out where one dialog stops and another starts. An unpleasant read.

What is so great about this book is that the complete works of William Shakespeare are not only written, but also given extraordinary introductions to each play that are brilliantly written by Stanley Wells. The plays are presented in chronological order, and the introductions give newcomers to Shakespeare's work an understanding of what each play is all about, as well as the history behind it. "King Lear" is included both as it was originally written, as well as Shakespeare's revision of it years later.
There is an in-depth glossary at the back of the book that will help the new reader of this work understand many of the words that were written in the plays at that point of time. Another wonderful addition is an index to the first line of sonnets, and the page that sonnet can be found on.
This revised book will bring readers of Shakespeare's work closer to their original meaning thanks to the painstaking updating, while keeping the original titles in tact. I highly recommend this book for its wisdom, revisions, and the new understanding you will gain from the brilliance of centuries long gone, that have stood the test of time.
Barbara Rose, author of, `Individual Power' and `If God Was Like Man'

I have the same edition that the other reviewer "Owl" has. Can't really add anything better than that review. Bought this for $1 at library sale. Great condition and great book. It is like reading a family bible. Thin pages, beautiful artwork and great words. I have a few other Shakespeare books but this one is special.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language.

And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his thirty-nine plays and his brilliant poetry. His stage work ranges wildly from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy which are even more moving when paired with the romantically intense, complicated sonnets and narrative poems. While it takes some work to fully understand some of his work, the powerful, complicated characters and vivid writing are timeless.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic. The comedies are of the classical variety -- not always funny (usually, but not always) but you know they will end semi-happily. And the histories... well, dramatizations of history, mostly about British kings and the Roman empire.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

The "complete works" also have his poetry, including his two narrative poems and his long string of romantic sonnets. The sonnets are best appreciated as a whole, since a lot of the message is lost if you don't read them sequentially. There are two substantial cycles here -- the cyle dedicated to a beautiful young man that Shakespeare seems to criticize and adore alternately (and no, Sonnet 116 is not a mindless, soppily-romantic ode, but a single piece of a larger argument with the "master-mistress") and a more explicitly sexual cycle for the Dark Lady.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. They were meant to be SEEN by the masses, not read. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, his poems sublimely clever and layered, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

When searching for a complete edition of Shakespeare, it is easy to go wrong with a bad one. I went through two others before I found this one. I trust this edition to represent the best of up to date research, and it is the basis for any study I do.

Certainly one would need to supplement this work with other books of interpretation. I actually prefer it this way, as I find it unwieldy and distracting to have commentary taking up the pages of the actual edition I'm reading.

I find no fault with the binding of my copy.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language.

And "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his thirty-nine plays and his brilliant poetry. His stage work ranges wildly from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy which are even more moving when paired with the romantically intense, complicated sonnets and narrative poems. While it takes some work to fully understand some of his work, the powerful, complicated characters and vivid writing are timeless.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic. The comedies are of the classical variety -- not always funny (usually, but not always) but you know they will end semi-happily. And the histories... well, dramatizations of history, mostly about British kings and the Roman empire.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

The "complete works" also have his poetry, including his two narrative poems and his long string of romantic sonnets. The sonnets are best appreciated as a whole, since a lot of the message is lost if you don't read them sequentially. There are two substantial cycles here -- the cyle dedicated to a beautiful young man that Shakespeare seems to criticize and adore alternately (and no, Sonnet 116 is not a mindless, soppily-romantic ode, but a single piece of a larger argument with the "master-mistress") and a more explicitly sexual cycle for the Dark Lady.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. They were meant to be SEEN by the masses, not read. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, his poems sublimely clever and layered, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

Shakspeare fans will absolutely love this book. "The Complete works" has everything Shakespeare wrote from plays to poetry, and has a wonderful introduction. The print is small, but it is not too small.
How many of us have, throughout the years, bought the individual plays and poetry of Shakespeare? Contemplate the total cost. Now, consider that you get it all here in this book, for a reasonable price.
Apparently this book is out of print, for the time being. However, if you truly love shakespeare you can find it at auctions and shops for great bargains.
No lover of Shakespeare should be without this wonderful book.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare / 0-673-99996-3

Every play, every sonnet, every scribble is here - and much more. This volume includes useful background on the theater, politics, morality, and social mores of the day. The level of detail here is absolutely stunning; the footnotes are numerous and incredibly helpful, especially to 'translate' obscure sayings or particularly unusual English usage. Each play is prefaced with an introduction containing the complete 'cliffs notes' of the play, providing useful insight into character motivation and development. I highly recommend this volume, both for Shakespeare enthusiasts and for students just wishing for enough information that they can passably demonstrate familiarity with the Bard.

~ Ana Mardoll

This is _the_ edition of Shakespeare's works for serious readers. All other modern editions change Shakespeare's actual words (or as close as we can get to them) to make them easier for readers unwilling to familiarize themselves with Shakespeare's language. It's not the easiest edition of Shakespeare to read, but it is the best, edited carefully by some of the best scholars in the field. Readers acquainted with Middle English will probably be able to manage fairly easily, though occasional reference to an edition with annotations may be necessary.

It's a shame that this edition is no longer available, though it shows up used from time to time. If you're unable to obtain it, an edition of the First Folio is probably the best alternative, though its lack of editing and dramatis personæ will present some difficulty.

Too many people don't know anything about Shakespeare. That is such s shame. What he wrote about 4 centuries ago is just as meaningful today as then. I highly recommend this for 20-40 somethings to actually spend the time to read and ponder it. No tl;dr!

This is the Complete Works of Shakespeare, with a few illustrations, and nothing more. There are no annotations, and no modern introductions.
Some will fault this edition for its lack of annotations. I say that, although annotations are necessary for scholarly study of the Works, they can very much distract the reader who reads for pleasure. I find that half the fun of reading Shakespeare is trying to figure out what the meaning of the text is; annotations rob me of this.
I once had the misfortune of reading an annotated version of King Lear. At one point, King Lear makes an obscure, non sequitur remark (in Act 1, Scene 5). Was I given the opportunity to think about this remark, ponder it, decide for myself what this remark really meant? No: a footnote was there to do it for me. So I suggest you consider using a non-annotated edition for reading, and save the annotated versions for in-depth study.
Some might fault this edition for the quality of the binding. Although I am not an expert on bindings, I find the binding to be at least better than a typical paperback. Furthermore, the book is very lightweight; I would be surprised if it isn't the world's lightest Complete Works. For this reason, I find it surprisingly comfortable to hold as I read.
This edition comes with a ribbon sewn into the binding for use as a bookmark. Not only is the ribbon very useful, but it's also easy enough to cut off if it annoys you.
Some will fault this edition for the quality of the text. Indeed, the text has the character of an early twentieth century newspaper. I wouldn't be surprised if this edition was printed with plates from that time. Although not very clean, the text readable enough.
Probably the worst thing about this edition is the continuation lines--somtimes a long line will continue into empty space on the line above or below it. That takes some getting used to, especially since it's sometime ambiguous what line a continuation belongs to.
The best thing about this edition is the price, only about US$20.

Students and various e-mail correspondents often ask me which single-volume Shakespeare edition I would recommend, and I never hesitate in naming this one, as I think it has a long lead over its rivals. I have myself used the 1992 printing with amazing frequency both in research and in teaching, and always with advantage.
Why is this the best edition for a reader who wants as much as possible within the confines of a single book? First, it should be pointed out that unannotated editions such as the Oxford Complete Works are all in all of comparatively little use as even expert Renaissance scholars - leave alone inexpert readers - cannot read Shakespeare's language unaided; there are simply far too many words, features of grammar, etc., which a modern reader is certain to interpret inaccurately or not to understand at all. So it is essential to have intelligent and well-informed annotation that will help one to understand the text. Bevington's is extraordinarily good: knowledgeable, precise, and helpfully clear.
Second, an editor needs to be able to produce a responsible modernised text. Shakespeare cannot be understood by many unless he is read in modern spelling, and the punctuation of his period, too, often leads most modern readers astray. Bevington's modernisation of the text is exemplary. Furthermore, his handling of the many thorny textual problems is also outstanding for the knowledge and the judgement that he brings to bear. For example, the Oxford people unwisely and on poor grounds print two separate versions of *King Lear*, and Bevington has been exceptional in rejecting that approach and producing a persuasively and intelligibly "conflated" text (much better, by the way, than the conflated version in the Arden text edited in 1997 by R.A. Foakes).
Most readers of the plays who are not already quite familar with them will want good, perceptive and comprehensive introductions to them, and in this area, too, Bevington excels, demonstrating an awareness of modern approaches and interests without falling victim to trendiness. He offers introductions which are never dull but, however exciting and illuminating, always sensible.
The general introductory and accompanying material made available elsewhere in the book is equally useful, revealing, and accurate; and the book is well produced. It is amazingly cheap for the remarkable value it offers.
This, then, is not only the best single-volume Shakespeare available, but is by any standard as good an edition as anyone could possibly expect. I add that in my personal view Bevington is probably the only scholar at present alive who could have produced so excellent a single-volume edition. Unreservedly recommended. NOTE: this is a specific review of the FOURTH edition, which to my mind is by far the best, and the only one which I unhesitatingly recommend.

I found another Oxford edition for half the price in Kindle books. Only difference is it shows line numbers. For those who find these numbers at odd places on their screen, just adjust front size until they appear at the end of lines. Also for those who are disrturbed about words that had hyphenated endings but now don't, you will have to either accept it or pass on this edition. Finally, an accurate edition of these plays reflects much toil and editing with numerous versions.

In contrast to some of the other editions of the complete works of Shakespeare, this book really is value for money. All plays (and poems, etcetera) are printed in a lavishly, pleasing way, very easy to the eye (one of the biggest drawbacks of some editions is that they use a very small font to keep the number of pages to a minimum). As others have commented, not much can and should be commented on the works themselves, they have stood the test of time, and the (normal) spelling that is used in this edition makes each reading an enjoyable experience. All the plays are given a brief (and somewhat succinct) introduction, which is, at best, okay. The strange things, in this book, are, for example, the order of the plays, the way King Lear is printed in two versions (that differ only in small details), and the inclusion of fragments that are attributed to Shakespeare (a bit controversial to say the least). Still, if you want to buy a good, thorough, and well-researched edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, you will not go far wrong with this book.

This new edition of Oxford's standard anthology of Shakespeare's works has been expanded to include a new general introduction and introduction to each work, an essay on Shakespeare's language, and a new user's guide, among other original features. This favorably reviewed new edition of a classic is a superb way for libraries to provide attractive access to all of Shakespeare's works and introduce these classics to today's readers. (South Texas Library System summary)

For individuals, I'd recommend getting each work in a separate volume, preferably one with more notes on each play. When I studied Shakespeare in college, having an annotated edition really opened up the writing to me.

Several reviewers have criticized this version for its lack of commentary. This may be true. But for the reader who wants a complete collection in a beautifully bound copy, of Shakespeare's works this is an incredible bargain. You will learn much.

I feel that you will actually learn more by reading it *without* commentary first. In that way you will gain your own opinion of the works. Any other way would be like someone telling you what to think of a Van Gogh and then seeing it - you would be biased.

An interesting note for pop music fans - you may notice a certain 'similarity' between music by The Police and Sting and Shakespeare's sonnets.

Buy this book - you won't be disappointed.

It is very nice to have the complete works in one place. I do have to agree with another reviewer on the pages being so thin; my highlighter pen bled through to both sides and when I scibbled notes in the margins, it shows through on the opposite side making it difficult to read. But, even with that, the benefit of having a ready reference to so many cherished words is worth the inconvenience to me. I just decided to use light pencil marks to annotate my favorite passages and that alleviated that problem.

I wish I had read the reviews before purchasing, and I've definitely learned my lesson about sampling before rushing into a great-deal purchase.

This collection gets three stars for being a complete collection at a great price. It didn't get five because of a lack of line numbers and a limited table of contents. I would have liked links to each Act, at least, and line numbers are totally required for students.

Let me be clear: I am NOT marking this down for my own stupidity of not sampling. Rather, I'm marking it down for its limitations.

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. Updated Fourth Edition. Edited by David Bevington. 2000 pp. New York : Longman, 1997. ISBN 0-321-01254-2 (hbk.)
As complete Shakespeares go, the Bevington would seem have everything. Its book-length Introduction covers Life in Shakespeare's England; The Drama Before Shakespeare; London Theaters and Dramatic Companies; Shakespeare's Life and Work; Shakespeare's Language : His Development as Poet and Dramatist; Edition and Editors of Shakespeare; Shakespeare Criticism.
The texts follow in groups : Comedies; Histories; Tragedies; Romances (including 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'); Poems. Each play is given a separate Introduction adequate to the needs of a beginner, and the excellent and helpful brief notes at the bottom of each page, besides explaining individual words and lines, provide stage directions to help readers visualize the plays.
One extremely useful feature of the layout is that instead of being given the usual style of line numbering - 10, 20, 30, etc. - numbers occur _only_ at the end of lines which have been given footnotes - e.g., 9, 12, 16, 18, 32. Why no-one seems to have thought of doing this before I don't know, but it's a wonderful innovation that does away entirely with the tedious and time-wasting hassle of line counting, and the equally time-wasting frustration of searching through footnotes only to find that no note exists. If the line has a note you will know at once, and the notes are easy for the eye to locate as the keywords preceeding notes are in bold type.
The book - which is rounded out with three Appendices, a Royal Genealogy of England, Maps, Bibliography, Suggestions for Reading and Research, Textual Notes, Glossary of common words, and Index - also includes a 16-page section of striking color photographs.
The book is excellently printed in a semi-bold font that is exceptionally sharp, clear, and easy to read despite the show-through of its thin paper. It is a large heavy volume of full quarto size, stitched so that it opens flat, and bound, not with cloth, but with a soft decorative paper which wears out quickly at the edges and corners.
If it had been printed on a slightly better paper and bound in cloth, the Bevington would have been perfect. As it is, it's a fine piece of book-making nevertheless, and has been edited in such a way as to make the reading of Shakespeare as hassle-free and enjoyable an experience as possible. Strongly recommended for students and the general reader.

In one sense I think almost every person feels a special pleasure in having a complete edition of the world's greatest writer. The special experience of knowing that one can turn whenever one wants to such great works of literature, and explore them again is a very real one.

However my long experience with reading has taught me that reading the plays in smaller single - volume more heavily annotated works gives more.

I notice for instance that my own ' complete edition' goes largely unread, and that when I need to read Shakespeare I always go to the single- volume works.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" brings together every one of his plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history, which usually make a great deal more sense after some historical research.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed warriors, clever young ladies in drag, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

This Kindle book is not the $80 David Bevington edition. If in fact you want that edition (with unique notes and a full introduction) don't buy this Kindle edition (in fact one doesn't exist). The Bevington book is only for sale in hard copy.

Well, I have read Faulkner, Steinbeck, Camus, Merton, Joyce, Binchy, Walter Macken, Ionesco,Sartre, David Foster Wallace (go, Hal, go), but I have to say that this Englishman shows promise,,,,he is a tad prosey and waxes poetic,,,(perhaps a little too too much porter in the wee hours, yes?),,,,but his prose while flowery, IF GIVEN the TIME and PERSISTENCE,,,,I think most of you in the 21st century might very well benefit from spending sometime reading this kid's plays....sure some of them are about kings and Danes and forest creatures,,,but GIVE HIM A BREAK,,,,maybe he was raised near the woods,,,hmmmm? Sherwood Forest? but i digress...anyways,,,a lot to keep you busy on those cold lonely nights,,,and who knows,,,maybe some struggling actor group will put on a few of his plays LIVE: maybe on a nice summer night,,,a Midsummer's Dream,,,who knows,,,stay tuned.

I downloaded the sample chapter of this e-book, and immediately noticed two things. First, it's not properly using the Kindle "table of contents" feature. While there is a page near the front of the book that says "Table of Contents" on top and has links to the contents of the book, if you load up the Kindle's "Go to..." feature the "table of contents" button is grayed out, so they must not have tagged their table of contents page correctly.

Secondly, and much more importantly, there are no line breaks after the individual lines of dialogue in the play. Shakespeare's plays are mostly composed in iambic pentameter, and these iambic pentameter sections are almost always printed like poetry, with a line break after each "line" of five iambic feet, so that you can discern the meter more easily. In the sample chapter of this book, there are no such line breaks, and all the dialogue runs together into paragraphs. Having the line breaks in the right place is one of the baseline requirements for an edition of Shakespeare, so I give this one star.

If the publisher revises the book to correct these two features, then it'll be worth taking a second look at this edition. Otherwise, avoid it.

There are any number of versions of the Complete Works out there; this is a handsomely bound, nicely printed volume. The paper is thin but not bible-thin, the text is small but not unreadable, and the printing is sharp and clear. Very much a no-frills book, with no illustrations or other extras, but still nicely put up and worthwhile. The cover does not match the photograph shown here; it's the same color but the gold stamping is less ornate, and there's a portrait of Shakespeare in the center of the cover (also in gold, of course). The book measures 9-1/4" x 5-1/4" and is 2-1/2" thick, with guilt-edged pages. A better volume than you'd expect, based on the price.

I first encountered Shakespeare in the Charles and Mary Lamb adaptations for children. I was eight. Enthralled by Puck's magic, moved by Cymbeline's plight, and frightened by Caliban's perverse nature, I thirsted for the real thing. Wading into the lush depths of the plays themselves a few years later, I grappled with the unfamiliar prose. Guides, in the form of teachers and my drama teacher, parted the veils imposed by the passage of centuries -- and soon I was able to venture forth on my own, discovering the treasures that lay in scene after scene, act after act, play after play. When those strangers became friends, it was time to seek new acquaintances -- and thus did the sonnets enter my life. Page after page there are lessons in human nature. Heroes and villains alike teach us about ourselves and the hurly-burly of life itself. And the more one matures, the more one discovers. Like a fine wine, Shakespeare's works get better with age. Like a potent tonic, they nourish the soul. And like a mirror, they reflect to us the very mystery that lurks beneath our collective existence.

First of all, the reviews for this book are a mess. Quite a number of them refer to the Kindle version, and quite a few of them refer to books that are NOT the OUP version of the collected works of Shakespeare. I wanted to assign this edition for my students, but amazingly, the plays are not annotated, so if you do not know what Hamlet means by a "bare bodkin," tough luck. Furthermore, the introduction to the plays themselves are shockingly short--really, ONE PAGE to introduce Henry V? OUP is usually a highly reliable press, but it has really let everyone down with this version. Rectify these two problems in the third edition, and this could be the best of the collected works of Shakespeare, but sadly, this edition is a major disappointment.

My pick for the best of the Collected Works, edging out the Riverside, and much better than the Oxford and Arden. (Although the Arden individual plays are essential.) Bevington's book has everything you'll need: concise, but informative introductions, emendation notes, and most importantly very good glosserial notes. The pages are not tissue-thin (good for taking notes in pencil, but not really for highlighting) and the type is a good size for my 37 year old eyes.
As for Shakespeare's works themselves, too many people don't know where to go after reading the biggies. Check out Cymbeline, Measure For Measure and Troilus and Cressida if you're looking for some vastly underrated plays that aren't performed nearly enough.

There's not much more I could ask for with this collection. I got my Kindle recently, after a long wait. And I've been waiting, impatiently, to load it up with a lot of the classic literature I love. This has been my first stop and I am very happy with this collection. Besides from the content and the plays, which are already amazing, I found the formatting of this Kindle edition to be real easy to read and move around in. As for the plays themselves, I am so glad I seem to have got more than I originally thought I would get, with these extra plays. Highly recommended.

I got this item as a gift and thought it was amazing. It has all the sonnets, plays, and all other works of him. It shines like a bible and it is a great looker for your own private library.

The only thing about is that the font is a bit small and it is one of those books that you cannot carry around for fun reading. The cover seems like it will hold up and last while also.

For people that enjoy reading Shakespeare like myself and would like a collection, this one is it.

Though I admire the aims of The Oxford Shakespeare's editors and enjoy their text thoroughly, I am sorely disappointed by the binding on the present edition. It is not thoroughly sewn, but rather glued. Leaving the book open for extended periods of time (as in reading) results in splitting. The cover is unusually light and generally flimsy, succumbing easily to nicks and dents. For newcomers to Shakespeare, it is wholly impractical, as the glossary of archaic words is so insufficient it would best be left out completely. For general reading, go with Norton or Riverside. For individual editions, the Signet editions are probably penultimate to Folger library, the latter being notable for detailed summaries, notes, and supplimentary materials.

"William Shakespeare: The Complete Works" is a complete, well-researched anthology of Shakespeare's writings. The plays are presented in nearly chronological order. Each has an article about the play's history and content. Each play appears in full as thought to be from Shakespeare, although spellings have been modernized. Page layouts are clean and lined out to preserve the poetic meter. General introductions to the anthology discuss the language of Shakespeare's day. I especially appreciated a discussion of his use of "you" and "thou." There's much more; this is a great anthology.

I have the earlier edition and unless they have greatly improved the printing and binding, I cannot recommend the second edition.

In the first edition, the text is tiny. My guess would be that it's 7 or 8 pt type and my weak, middle-aged eyes have a hard time reading it. Also, many times the printing is not complete and some of the words are impossible to read. The text is formatted in two columns and they push it so close to the gutter between pages that you have to grip the book tightly and pull it apart to see the text closest to the gutter. It can be quite tiring.

The book is also just too darn thick to read comfortably.

So far I've read only the three parts of Henry VI, which I enjoyed. I think I'll not read any more from this book. I've decided to buy each play individually instead.

I purchased this book as a birthday present for a graduating high school student who is a big fan of Shakespeare.

This volume has a lot to offer to both students and casual readers. In addition to very readable text of all the plays and sonnets, the fifth edition provides historical and literary context, including drawings and photos, as well as insightful essays on each of the plays. The essays include background, plot summaries and discussion of major themes and would be very useful to anyone seeing a play, especially for the first time. The helpful glossary is extensive, so the reader doesn't have to look up unfamiliar words or feel intimidated by the language. Professor Bevington's fifth edition of the Complete Works is a gem, authoritative and attractive. The birthday girl thinks so, too-- she gives it an A+.

I just bought the book yesterday. Very nice looking, and full of the text that I wanted to read. The content is great--Shakespeare, after all.

Dropped the book, and the leather cover of the book ripped itself from the spine of the pages.

Apparently, this book is put together rather cheaply. It's nice, though, if you let it just sit around and don't read it. But my guess is that this book would have torn up anyway after 50+ turns of opening it up.

There are, obviously, pros and cons to buying any book. This edition of the complete works of Shakespeare is no different. Of course, Shakespeare is great no matter what the binding of the book looks like, but I would really hesitate to purchase a single book containing the complete works, if you're buying for everyday reading. I find that such large volumes are awkward, hard to hold and really thick. My personal collection of Shakespeare's works consists of single-work paperback volumes, not lovely to look at, but functional. Someday I hope to buy a set of the complete works in hardcover, but when I do, I'll look for a set, not a single book. However, if you're looking for the complete works in a compact package, this book is for you.

You have to love the price, but it's frustrating not being able to go to a play or sonnet by title. I found the best workaround for the plays is to search on a character's name. That gets you to the play introduction. I was impressed though that you can get definitions for antiquated words - not sure if I should thank the book or the Kindle for that, but it's a great feature.

While the Harper-Collins edition is nicely laid out and a comfortable size, it is incorrectly called a "complete" collection. It is based on the 1951 Alexander text, which does not include either Edward III or The Two Noble Kinsmen. This edition contains the orthodox canon of yesteryear. With a limited selection of support material included, the reader will have to choose whether it's not worth spending the extra for a more comprehensive edition with expanded notes, glossary and supporting descriptions.

Quite simply the greatest writer of all time, Shakespeare belongs on every bookshelf. I have this, and it is a treasure. For those of you who sweated through Shakespeare in high school, give it a try. You might be surprised by some of the stories you never knew. I would gladly have paid fifty bucks for one of these, and was thrilled to get it for twenty in hardcover. If you have kids, this is a must-have. If you don't, get it anyway. Although there are no footnotes, or any attempt to 'translate' King's English into American, I think these things are basically unnecessary. The sonnets also deserve a perusal, but I like the tragedies the best, particularly Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus.

Bevington's The Complete Works of Shakespeare is an excellent place to start or continue one's study of Shakespeare and the Rennaissance Period. This is the book we used in my Shakespeare class in college and I found it extremly helpful in understanding not only Shakespeare, but also Elizabethan England. Bevington includes plenty of pictures to help one see what it looked like in the middle to late 16th Century and early 17th Century. Also, Bevington includes indepth introductions to each of the plays and explanatory notes on words Shakespeare used in a different context from what we use them today. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to start or continue to study the Bard.

I know-I have never read this particular edition of Shakespheare. But I got sick of reading "THIS IS THE WORST BOOK EVER...BORING."
I act Shakespheare. I memorize passages and I savor them. It's boring, huh? Pick it back up-Turn to The Tempest or The Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespheare even had the guts in Midsummer Night's Dream, the last scene, the "Play Scene" to make fun of himself-some say he may have been even making fun of Romeo and Juliet. The story of Pyramous and Thisbee is awfully similar. Read each speech as a poem. Emphasize stress. Read out loud. Why The Tempest? I picked that-not only because it is a great comedy, but to prove the depth of the characters. Calliban is a monster, a possessive evil, and yes drunken wise man. He shows more sense about his schemes than the two drunks, which fit in perfectly, proving Prospero's power.
Shakespheare made mistakes in his plays. Some of them are not good, but there are aprox. 40 of them, so try them. Nevertheless, each mistake has a jewel. I don't particularly think Romeo and Juliet matches the wonderful romance of Trolius and Cressida, but I can't help thinking about Mercutio, the wise man who makes up Queen Mab to mock Romeo, or the nurse who loves marriage so much that she becomes a poor advisor to Juliet. Look carefully-and you will love the characters that do sound clear after 400 years. If you don't beleive me, go out and buy the paperback edition of one of his plays or click to it. You can also view them all online. With that all said, The Riverside is great, and the individual Arden's and Oxford's are great. Get one with footnotes. You don't have to understand every line in order to enjoy the poetry. I don't neccessarily.

I own and have read thousands of books, and this Oxford edition of Shakespeare's complete works is by far the worst bound book I have ever come across. I had pages falling out of my copy within days of using it. Oxford University Press should be ashamed for binding this book so badly. If you want the text of the Oxford edition, then buy the hardcover Norton Shakespeare, which uses the text of the Oxford edition. Better yet, check out the RSC Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen and published by Modern Library.

The first edition was incomplete and the Wells/Taylor team made editorial "choices" based on disproven assumptions and information. Unfortunately, despite this and the continuing lack of a *decent* glossary, the second edition isn't any better. Well-known FACTUAL ERRORS are still not corrected and the editors seem to feel they can take just about whatever liberty they fancy with Shakespeare's words (especially with King Lear) and nobody will notice.

If you want a quality edition, spend more and get the Riverside or Arden due to their accurate and intelligent decisions over text discrepancies, insightful commentary and extensive glossary.

A nice collection of all of Shakespeare's works, including three versions of Lear, but this book is unwieldy and impractical. My biggest gripe is with the paper - it's so thin that you are generally reading two pages at a time.

Aside from that, it is a good way to have a complete Shakespeare at a decent price, but you won't find it very readable.

I was given this edition of Shakespeare for a Christmas one year when I was young. Once I began to appreciate Shakespeare, I did some readings in this work. It was okay.

Then it became painfully obvious: with no line numbers, no margin space for notes, abridged names, no footnotes nor any research, it became rather difficult to closely study Shakespeare with this edition.

That is when I purchased the Norton edition of Shakespeare. Although there are still abridged names, it has a very clear layout, notes, and enough margin to make anybody happy.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his 39 plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

This was the text for my college Shakespeare classes over 20 years ago (different edition of course) I still have it and still use it. A wonderful book for students and those who want not only the complete works but some well written and authoritative information about Shakespeare and the world in which he lived and wrote.

The texts of the plays are well foot-noted and the type is easy on the eyes. Well worth the investment.

I purchased this thinking it would be great for my Shakespeare class. It isn't. The editors have made decision about the text that do not match with what seems to have been (right or wrong) standard. Too difficult to follow along. Has a pretty good introduction, but you can get this online and elsewhere. Use Arden or Folger.

The title is terribly misleading. This is not the "complete works." It only includes the sonnets and longer poems. My daughter got it for school ans it definitely doesn't have what she needs for her class.

I originally bought this book used and later discovered that this was the ideal situation. It is handy to have all of Shakespeare's works (plays and sonnets) under one cover, but there are several drawbacks. Each page is split into two columns, causing the plays to be read like a newspaper. Since linebreaks are important in Shakespeare (remember the iambic pentameter), some lines are too long for the margins, causing the remaining words to hover like ghosts away from the sentence.
Also, this book contains no footnotes. This is mainly how buying the individual play is superior to the collected works. Olde English isn't always intuitive, and this particular book leaves you to find out a word's meaning for yourself.
But this book certainly looks pretty on your shelf. :)

I am a BIG fan already of Shakespeare and I was really looking for a Kindle book as an added extra for my hard cover library. But I didn't expect to find this collection, with all these added things in it! So I must admit that the first things I went to look at were the extras, the commentaries and biographies. And I must admit I am really enjoying them!! So with the plays, poems , the extra plays and all the other stuff, I don't think I could have asked for anything more! Excellent collection!

This volume is wonderfully arranged and researched. Personally, I very much appreciate its chronological order and top-notch scholarship. I've seen a number of reviews rating it fairly lowly because it isn't for "first time" readers of Shakespeare. I would hope that a volume compiled by Oxford scholars would be a bit over the heads of Shakespeare initiates. This book delivers what it ought to deliver: the Bard, beautifully published.

I have struggled with reading my whole life. I liked movies like 10 things i hate about you, the lion King and other spin offs of shakespeare plays. Before i began reading this collection, i read at about a 3rd grade level. Now that i have just finished this collection, i can truly say that i can read at the collegiate level. The only thing that's bad about reading shakespeare when trying to read is that your vernacular changes and now everyone hates me because i speak only in iambic pentameter. DO NOT TRY TO LEARN TO READ FROM THIS BOOK. YOU WILL BE SHUNNED AT WORK AND OTHER PLACES FOR BEING A WEIRDO.

*****
This is the an excellent reference. For actual scholarship, you may want a different volume, but only because it's annoying to have to flip back to the end of the book for commentary and explanation on, well, pretty much everything. Nonetheless, the volume is affordable and good. I highly recommend it!

On a coffee scale, I'd rate it a standard cup o' joe. It's just good to have on hand.
*****

The indispensible edition. Others have longer prefaces; play-by-play editions even have erudite ones; and a handful have larger typeface. But this is the full body of work in one readable, reliable and reputable volume. If one were stranded on a desert island, this volume (and a suitable feminine companion) would suffice.

I have always wanted to read William Shakespeare but several of my friends who were English majors in college told me I was crazy. They even had trouble with it. I love it. I cant get enough. I read Hamlet first thing after I opened the package. I recommend it for anyone who wants to deversify and defy the tight boundry that people try to fit us all into. Buy...Its a "must have."

It is always my hope that more people will fall in love with Shakespeare and enjoy his work as much as I do. That is why I am so glad I found this collection. I must admit to being fascinated by these unusual extra plays. I want all of Shakespeare's work and I am happy that I am not missing out of anything. Of course, I have all the other usual suspects of plays and from what I've seen, the Table of Contents is very easy to navigate and the plays and poems are easy on my eye. So I am very glad about having found it.

Dust cover was intact, print is small but that's because this is the compact version. You can still read it just fine, probably my favorite novel I own. has all the sonnets, a wonderful introduction, and some not very well known poems such as the phoenix and the turtle and a song. Introduction is about his life and the time period.

I really like this collection. Its everything I was looking for and a bit more. I wanted a complete Shakespeare collection, with all his plays and poetry, so it was great to find this one that had these extra plays as well to make it the most complete collection. Its also easy to read and I found I could read it both holding my Kindle vertical or horizontal. Its also simple to navigate. So nothing more I could ask for :) Really nice collection.

Bevington's Complete Works of Shakespeare is a priceless source for the writings of history's greatest author. All of the plays, sonnets and poems are contained, plus extensive commentary. An invaluable treasure for actors, producers, students, scholars, writers, and anyone else interested in Shakespeare. The Bard's canon is presented in an easily read format. Highly recommeded.

This is a must have book for any book lover. I have the suede edition and it is just beautiful. The stories of Shakespeare still speak today. We just need to open our ears and our hearts so we can listen.

I think I can say that the name Shakespeare is the most recognizable in the English language and his works definitely justify his fame. They have stood the test of time and will continue to do so. That's why it is so great to get a Kindle book like this one. Instead of spending time trying to get everything individually and then paying for everything individually, I have everything that I could want from Shakespeare in one file. And not only the plays and poetry, but the biographies and the commentaries! I think they are the best part because I feel like I'm having a literature conversation with all these great literary minds!

All in all, a great ebook and I hope everybody who reads this gets as much out of it as I have!

There is nothing that can be said about William Shakespeare that has not been said already; and very few of them are disputable. It feels good having all his works: those Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, and Poetries in one convenient volume. This 'Complete Works' is for sure a complete literary classic.

While Shakespeare was producing much of his work hundreds of years ago, he belongs to the Early Modern era of the English Language. This particular period started approximately 60 years before he was born.
Many of the comments seem to think that the stilted grammar and flow (that only occur to current speakers of the language)determine whether a work is written in Old English. Some have mentioned Beowulf, which very few have likely read untranslated. If you can't understand a translated work, blame the person who authored IT and not the original work.
Old English approximates a German sound. If one were to hear something read in OE, they may guess the language was an older form of German. Middle English, the sort you'll come across reading UNTRANSLATED Chaucer, is much closer to what many would recognize as an English sounding language. It was highly ornate and approximated and Irish sound.
Early Modern English is basically what we are provided with when encountering Shakespeare. The language isn't as difficult to navigate as the references, especially in Shakespeare, which are historical as well as contemporary.
When considering the importance of Shakespeare or works that came before him, it is useful to consider the endeavor as trying to find one's cultural heritage. Many of today's popular literature is founded, deeply, in what has come before us. Irreverance and often the backdrops surrounding our most beloved characters have references much older than many can imagine. Even Harry Potter closely resembles elements of Beowulf, Chaucer, and Shakespeare to name the 3 of the more recognizeable.
Literature that has come before our time does tend to get treated with a little too much reverance, but the reasons people consider these classics to be important can't be denied.
This volume, lacking footnotes and perverting line structure, is still nifty in it's economical purpose, and is worth owning if you can make use of it.
LL.

When I was a first year in college I took a Greek Thought and Literature class with David Bevington. His lectures are very much like the introductions in this edition. It was one of the most rewarding experiences in reading literature that I have ever had and I am an avid reader. Recently I had been looking for the definitive Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and bought Mr. Bevington's edition immediately. I was not disappointed. This is the way Shakespeare should be read by modern audiences. His introductions offer many insights and are a joy to read. No library is complete without Shakespeare, this anthology of the Bard is surely one of the best one out there.

Last year for Christmas I asked my parents for some William Shakespeare's plays.Boy was I suprised!Not only does it have all of the plays,but also his Sonats,poems,and illistrations.Despite the fact that it's a large valuem and will need quite a bit off book space from you're self.You wont regret getting it.You will never need to get another book on William Shakespeare's plays and everything else ever again.It also has a list of dictonary for understanding the words better.

I got this collection to use for school, and was very happy with it. It made it easy to go to class without taking having to buy a bunch of individual plays, and also without having to lug a huge book around. They are organized by type of play, and the size of the books themselves and the printing makes them easy to read. It is an attractive collection, and looks very nice on display on a bookshelf as well.

There are very few books that are essential for one's personal library, but this book qualifies. One can argue the point, but you are pretty safe in saying that Shakespeare is the great writer of all-time. This collection of his works is magnificently edited by David Bevington. If you've never read anything by Shakespeare or read and re-read him a million times, you shouldn't be without this anthology.

Anyone wanting to quickly and cheaply collect all 39 of Shakespeare's palys can rely on this edition, an inexpensive, barebones Shakespeare. Those seeking in-depth study should be forewarned, the texts are not annotated at all...even difficult words have to be looked up in the glossary in the back. The typical scholarly introductory materials found in the preface and apendices is largely absent. And to top it off, the type is printed in a dark gray ink, instead of black: not that easy to read. Scholars and students should look elsewhere.

Update: After using this text in the classroom, I would downgrade my rating to one star. The binding is hardcover, but the its quality is inferior. Out of ten students in the course, three had books that were falling apart after just two months.

I don't have much to write, but I was so thrilled when I got this that I just felt I must say that I think this collection is for every Shakespeare fan out there! As one myself, I will tell you it has all the plays and poems I already know, these extra ones that I am excited to read, and its got all this great analysis and essays and commentaries. Plus biographies! What more can you ask for!!

Readers may be interested to learn that State Street Press in Ann Arbor MI, owned by Borders, has a Complete Works out for $19 New which is printed on nice paper (which does not bleed through under hiliters) and weighs less than 2 lbs. Sounds impossible, but true. The page edges are even gilded and the binding is leatherette. Recommend it heartily to all readers, with 5stars.

Don't question it. As a complete Shakeperean collection, this book is, by far, the best one of its kind. If you love sonnets, plays, or crave the rush of owning a complet book such as this one, you will undoubtedly enjoy receiving its weighty wisdom in the mail. Whether a curious browser or an avid Shakesperean, you'll find it a literary treasure.

On a recent trip to England, I saw Twelfth Night at the RSC Theatre. Of course, being a TEENAGER who LOVES SHAKESPEARE, I had to stop by the Shakespheare Birth Trust Company and visit the house he lived in. That is where I picked up this wonderful book, along wih a few extras. I feel in love almost instantly with the cover art and the way it was printed. Including all his plays, sonnents and poems, it's a great collector item for Shakespeare fanatics.

Upon opening this book I immediately turned to my favourite play, Romeo and Juliet. My favourite scene is the opening battle between the Montagues and the Capulets. But what have we here? Suddenly the families are reversed. Sampson and Gregory are servants to Montague, not Capulet, and Abraham has apparently switched teams as well. Gregory says that one of his kinsmen is coming, and then Benvolio enters. Benvolio is a montague, which just goes to prove that they are montagues, and not servants of capulet. I don't know the rest of the plays as well, but for all I know there could be many more easily missed mistakes in the text.

Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his 39 plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

Well, it's not the best and definitely not the worst, but what you buy is what you get. This book of course comes in the play version form, you know, with the Act I, Scene II kind of thing. And I know it's not in story book form but what'd you expect? It's the complete works and probably how he wrote it in the first place. It has all the plays(by SHAKESPEARE) that you could ask for, including poetry and sonnets. I think that so far it has been a thrill and an interesting read.

Brian Kendig's previous review says it all, but I wanted to add a caveat to a still-potential buyer: the text is so incredibly condensed that the endings of some of the longer lines are scrunched up in awkward brackets in the white space above, making for a disjointed reading of an already unapproachable edition. (Please read the previous review--it's quite helpful.)

Shakespeare must be one of the most recognizable names in the world and I think it is wonderful that we have collections like this that allow us to preserve his immortal words for the next generation and the next. I am a techie girl, but I love classic literature too and the combination of Shakespeare on Kindle is just a great thing. That said, I think this a great collection and I only wish Shakespeare had written more! Anyway, I look forward to reading the words of one of my favorite writer on a digital screen!

Few writers in history have been able to come close to matching Shakespeare's astounding flair for writing, and this volume is the perfect compliment to his talent. The engravings inside are beautiful, and the plays, even without their numbers and their footnotes, are still as incredible as they ever were. To those of you who say that Shakespeare is boring, you're not really understanding his work, or you are simply unable to appreciate anything this old. I highly recommend this particular edition

3rd Anniversay is leather? So, how do you get creative? Leatherbound books will do the trick, and what better for your Shakespeare-loving spouse? This was the perfect gift. And it is beatifully bound.

This is the whole works of Shakespeare for one dollar, and there is a table of contents. Just press "previous page" when the book first comes up on your kindle. My only complaint is that the history plays are not sequential in the TOC. Still, a great deal by any reasonable standard.

The workmanship in this 6th Edition is less than satisfactory. Several of my fellow seminar students had their books split upon opening the front cover of the hardback. Apparently, the inside of the cover and first page are defective, either in material or application. My copy has not split yet. However, it is obvious that there is stress and it is just a matter of time. I hope the appropriate person at the store reads this.

I'm relatively new to the world of Kindle, and the thought of keeping all of Shakespeare in my purse seemed really, really cool! All the reviews keep mentioning the awesome table of contents... but I can't find it!! Could someone please help me with this?
As far as I can tell, this really is an awesome collection, but I'm deducting a couple of stars because I find it impossible to navigate!!

(This review is of course not on the plays and works themselves which are beyond praise, but on this particular edition).
All pieces are packed in two columns, without separating pages, a few ugly frontispices, no table of content. Typography is old, greasy. Looks like the fac-simile of a cheap 19th century edition. No notes, no variants, no references, unpractical to read or to use in study, no added value. I do not recommend this at all for any purpose.

I can not own enough copies of Shakespeare's complete and individual works. This edition is well done. I agree the pages are tissue thin, which is fine if you are not reading your Shakespeare to and sharing it with younger children. If you are, go for an earlier version with the thick stock paper. As for me, this book is a magnet. I can spend hours pouring over the beautiful lyrical phrases. I don't know if Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare, for some the jury is still out. I do know I dearly love the works attributed to him and will forever enjoy them. I believe every family should own a copy (and read) Shakespeare's complete works.

William Shakespeare-the greatest dramatist the world has ever known. With a very impressive output (37 plays, 4 poems and 154 sonnets, all of them beautifully written), he has rightly been called "Not of an age, but for all time." This, coming from a rival poet (Ben Jonson) is high praise indeed. The plays, poems and sonnets are very difficult to review individually, as they are well written. Shakespeare brilliantly captured the essence of human behaviour in his works. Of course, Shakespeare is not for everyone. Regarding film versions of his plays, I strongly recommend Sir Laurence Olivier's three self-directed Shakespeare films ("Henry V," "Hamlet," "Richard III"), Kenneth Branagh's growing output of Shakespeare ("Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Hamlet," "Love's Labour's Lost") and faithful stage versions of Shakespeare (The Merchant Of Venice [an out-of-print film starring Laurence Olivier and directed by Jonathan Miller], "King Lear" [starring Laurence Olivier and filmed as a movie in 1984], "Othello" [starring Laurence Olivier and filmed as a movie in 1965]). I also recommend Oliver Parker's 1995 version of
"Othello," starring Kenneth Branagh as the villainous Iago and Franco Zefferelli's 1968 version of "Romeo & Juliet," as well as West Side Story," a classic musical featuring music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (in his debut; he would eventually write "Sweeny Todd") and masterful choreography by Jerome Robbins (he choreographed the dance sequences in "The King & I," "Fiddler On The Roof") which uses the tragic storyline of the play in a modern setting without the dialogue (unlike that idiot Luhrman, who had the c----es to COMPLETELY MODERNIZE the play; "West Side Story" and "Love's Labour's Lost" is as far as you can get to modernizing Shakespeare, the God of playwrights).

His plays, poems and sonnets are rated PG for some violence ("Titus Andronicus," "Macbeth," "Hamlet") and mild vulgarity (sexual references gracefully obscured in Elizabethan English; "Much Ado About Nothing," "Othello," "King Lear," "Venus & Adonis," "The Rape Of Lucrece," etc; though the language of his time was bawdy, Shakespeare DID NOT condone sexual licence). Profanity was also non-existent at the time. He used the words ("Damn," "Hell," "A--," and "B----" [once; in "King Lear"]) in their original definitions. Hell, as a place of torment, damn as in eternal banishment from God, a-- as in the animal also called a donkey and b---- as a female dog. Used improperly, these words immediately become insults of the most vulgar kind.

This by far is one of the best books I bought. It has most of Shakespears works printed in a split page bible style. I recommend this book highly and I also recommed A Shakespear Glossary to go with it.

Shakespear was a brilliant playwrite. This perticular book's only flaw is the format in which it is written. But don't let that stop you! It is a wonderful book, but I would expect nothing less from a book with William Shakespear in it~

This is truly a great book. Not only does it contain all of Shakespeare's works but it also has an enormous amount of information. There's a little bit on his life and a bit more about the theater during his time. There are also some great drawings in the beginning of the book.