William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Deluxe Edition

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but Shakespeare is so overrated
Review: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works is a good book, but excuse me for saying this, but Shakespeare is so overrated.

If he tried to publish today, I doubt he could get a company to publish his works.

The main question is: Do we like Shakespeare because he was talented, or is it too PC to say he is overrated?

Rating:
Summary: disgusting
Review: Shakespeare may be a genius, but cmon, this is the worst reading material i have ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: A bargain at twice the price!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The work is unquestioned; the edition, questionable.
Review: 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.