Performing Arts
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William Shakespeare Complete Works Second Edition
The newly revised, wonderfully authoritative First Folio of William Shakespeare's Complete Works, edited by acclaimed Shakespearean scholars and endorsed by the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company
Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare's fellow actors in 1623, the First Folio was the original Complete Works-arguably the most important literary work in the English language. But starting with Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day, Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, gradually corrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflated textual variations.
The second edition of the Complete Works features annotations and commentary from Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen-two of today's preeminent Shakespeare scholars-as well as cutting-edge textual design, on-page glossaries for contemporary readers, stage directions from RSC directors, a sixteen-page insert of photographs from RSC production shorts, a timeline of the plays and poems, and family trees for the Histories.
Combining innovative scholarship with brilliant commentary and textual analysis that emphasizes performance history and values, this landmark edition is indispensable to students, theater professionals, and general readers alike.
Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare's fellow actors in 1623, the First Folio was the original Complete Works-arguably the most important literary work in the English language. But starting with Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day, Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, gradually corrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflated textual variations.
The second edition of the Complete Works features annotations and commentary from Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen-two of today's preeminent Shakespeare scholars-as well as cutting-edge textual design, on-page glossaries for contemporary readers, stage directions from RSC directors, a sixteen-page insert of photographs from RSC production shorts, a timeline of the plays and poems, and family trees for the Histories.
Combining innovative scholarship with brilliant commentary and textual analysis that emphasizes performance history and values, this landmark edition is indispensable to students, theater professionals, and general readers alike.
Editorial Reviews
"There may never be an absolutely definitive collection of Shakespeare's plays, but this may be as close as we ever come. Clear, user-friendly, and meticulous, this is the edition we all need."-David Tennant
"All of humanity in all of its complexity is contained within these plays, so much so that it's hard to imagine that Shakespeare will ever be surpassed as the world's greatest and most beloved playwright. It's therefore fitting to have this edition that displays his work's continuing relevance and resonance to his ongoing audience."-David Oyelowo
"This is a glorious edition of one of the world's most important books. It's the essential reference book for anyone who's ever been in love, felt jealousy, fear, hatred, or desire. All human life is here-and every home should have one."-Dame Judi Dench, in praise of the first edition
"Timely, original, and beautifully conceived, the RSC edition makes Shakespeare's extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever."-Jamese Shapiro, professor, Columbia University,in praise of the first edition
"All of humanity in all of its complexity is contained within these plays, so much so that it's hard to imagine that Shakespeare will ever be surpassed as the world's greatest and most beloved playwright. It's therefore fitting to have this edition that displays his work's continuing relevance and resonance to his ongoing audience."-David Oyelowo
"This is a glorious edition of one of the world's most important books. It's the essential reference book for anyone who's ever been in love, felt jealousy, fear, hatred, or desire. All human life is here-and every home should have one."-Dame Judi Dench, in praise of the first edition
"Timely, original, and beautifully conceived, the RSC edition makes Shakespeare's extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever."-Jamese Shapiro, professor, Columbia University,in praise of the first edition
Short Excerpt Teaser
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Jonathan Bate
‘After God, Shakespeare has created most'
(Alexandre Dumas, French novelist whose works have been translated into nearly a hundred languages and adapted into over two hundred films, figures surpassed by Shakespeare alone)
‘Shakespeare was conscious of a double or treble reality fused together into one line or a single word'
(Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist)
‘Somehow Shakespeare always had something to say to us'
(Ahmed Kathrada, imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela)
Shakespeare our Perennial Contemporary
Hamlet is delighted when he hears the news that the players have returned to Elsinore. He greets them as personal friends. Some of the theatre enthusiasts among the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth and then King James, such as the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery, would have greeted Shakespeare and his fellow-actors in the same way. The circumstances of the fictional acting company at Elsinore reflect those of the real company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, that first put on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Their highest priority is to be available on demand for court performances, if necessary reshaping their repertoire in response to a particular demand, as when Hamlet asks for a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines to be inserted into their tragedy. While waiting to be summoned to the palace, they perform regularly in the city, trying out each new play in the court of public opinion. They are an all-male company, whose teenage apprentices play the female parts. Their business at the box office faces a range of challenges, from state censorship to closure because of plague to rival attractions and in particular a fashionable new company consisting entirely of highly trained schoolboys.
Given that the players in Hamlet are in part a witty self-representation of Shakespeare's own acting company, it is fair to assume that Shakespeare himself believed, as Hamlet does, that actors are ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time'. According to contemporaneous dictionaries, an ‘abstract' was ‘a little book or volume gathered out of a greater', ‘an abridgement, epitome, summary, compendium, short course, or discourse'. In an age of long sermons, interminable homilies and closely-printed treatises on ethics and politics, plays provided a crash course in the way of the world, an instantaneous mirror of manners and of life. The weighty folio volumes of The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland gathered by Raphael Holinshed and others were anything but ‘brief '. In a fraction of the time it would have taken to read them-and at a fraction of the cost of buying the book-Shakespeare's players, as they moved from the Rose to the Theatre to the Curtain to the Globe, offered the London public an abridgement and compendium of the nation's history.
Their dramatized ‘chronicles' of times past-whether British, European, ancient Greek or Roman-were also mirrors of the present. All productions were ‘modern dress', with just the occasional period detail such as emblematic togas to represent classical Rome. More money was spent on the purchase of costumes than the commissioning of scripts. The kings, dukes and ladies in the plays would have looked impressively courtly not least because their wardrobe consisted in part of the second-hand clothes of courtiers: often when aristocrats died, they would bequeath items of clothing to their servants, who would sell them to the players. From his reading and his first-hand experience of submitting his work for the approval of the Master of the Revels, then of performing at court, Shakespeare learned the language and manners of courtiership. So his characters came to speak and to gesture, as well as to be dressed, in the manner of monarchs and their entourage. A Duke of Buckingham or Earl of Pembroke in the audience might have seen himself mirrored in one of his ancestors in the chronicle plays. King James, who claimed descent from Banquo, would have watched ‘the Scottish play' with close attention. And the followers of the Earl of Essex, who liked to consider him the modern Achilles, would have found rich food for thought in Shakespeare's deconstruction of the Achillean code of chivalry in his Troilus and Cressida, written soon after Essex's dramatic fall from Quee...
Jonathan Bate
‘After God, Shakespeare has created most'
(Alexandre Dumas, French novelist whose works have been translated into nearly a hundred languages and adapted into over two hundred films, figures surpassed by Shakespeare alone)
‘Shakespeare was conscious of a double or treble reality fused together into one line or a single word'
(Cesare Pavese, Italian poet and novelist)
‘Somehow Shakespeare always had something to say to us'
(Ahmed Kathrada, imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela)
Shakespeare our Perennial Contemporary
Hamlet is delighted when he hears the news that the players have returned to Elsinore. He greets them as personal friends. Some of the theatre enthusiasts among the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth and then King James, such as the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery, would have greeted Shakespeare and his fellow-actors in the same way. The circumstances of the fictional acting company at Elsinore reflect those of the real company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, that first put on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Their highest priority is to be available on demand for court performances, if necessary reshaping their repertoire in response to a particular demand, as when Hamlet asks for a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines to be inserted into their tragedy. While waiting to be summoned to the palace, they perform regularly in the city, trying out each new play in the court of public opinion. They are an all-male company, whose teenage apprentices play the female parts. Their business at the box office faces a range of challenges, from state censorship to closure because of plague to rival attractions and in particular a fashionable new company consisting entirely of highly trained schoolboys.
Given that the players in Hamlet are in part a witty self-representation of Shakespeare's own acting company, it is fair to assume that Shakespeare himself believed, as Hamlet does, that actors are ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time'. According to contemporaneous dictionaries, an ‘abstract' was ‘a little book or volume gathered out of a greater', ‘an abridgement, epitome, summary, compendium, short course, or discourse'. In an age of long sermons, interminable homilies and closely-printed treatises on ethics and politics, plays provided a crash course in the way of the world, an instantaneous mirror of manners and of life. The weighty folio volumes of The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland gathered by Raphael Holinshed and others were anything but ‘brief '. In a fraction of the time it would have taken to read them-and at a fraction of the cost of buying the book-Shakespeare's players, as they moved from the Rose to the Theatre to the Curtain to the Globe, offered the London public an abridgement and compendium of the nation's history.
Their dramatized ‘chronicles' of times past-whether British, European, ancient Greek or Roman-were also mirrors of the present. All productions were ‘modern dress', with just the occasional period detail such as emblematic togas to represent classical Rome. More money was spent on the purchase of costumes than the commissioning of scripts. The kings, dukes and ladies in the plays would have looked impressively courtly not least because their wardrobe consisted in part of the second-hand clothes of courtiers: often when aristocrats died, they would bequeath items of clothing to their servants, who would sell them to the players. From his reading and his first-hand experience of submitting his work for the approval of the Master of the Revels, then of performing at court, Shakespeare learned the language and manners of courtiership. So his characters came to speak and to gesture, as well as to be dressed, in the manner of monarchs and their entourage. A Duke of Buckingham or Earl of Pembroke in the audience might have seen himself mirrored in one of his ancestors in the chronicle plays. King James, who claimed descent from Banquo, would have watched ‘the Scottish play' with close attention. And the followers of the Earl of Essex, who liked to consider him the modern Achilles, would have found rich food for thought in Shakespeare's deconstruction of the Achillean code of chivalry in his Troilus and Cressida, written soon after Essex's dramatic fall from Quee...
