Rating: 
Summary: The authoritive Shakespeare resource
Review: As an actor, director, and scholar, I must say that The Riverside Shakespeare is the most complete Shakespeare collection on the market. It is an excellent buy for anyone who will be studying the plays in depth, since it gives background in the introduction as well as extensive notes to the text. This text clarifies some tricky questions about the Bard's works. Its value lies in the careful attention to detail, but this does mean that the reader looking for specific elements will have to sort through a wealth of information -- not necessarily a bad thing, yes? I highly recommend this to anyone serious about Shakespeare.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent content and presentation
Review: As an English student, I found this book invaluable when I took a course on Shakespeare. The plays and sonnets are given in complete, and there is an amazing amount of background information for each. Also, like others who have reviewed on this text, I didn't find the footnotes to get in the way while I was reading- although they were very useful when I actually needed them. It's a beautiful (albeit heavy) text, one that merits distinction in the litany of Shakespeare books that are available.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect gift for the linguist
Review: For anyone who, like me, has a love of language and a love of Shakespeare that has endured beyond school days, this is absolutely essential. Of the many editions there are of Shakespeare's complete canon, The Riverside Shakespeare has the most to offer readers of all backgrounds, be they students, hobbyists or scholars. Of the few editions that provide explanatory glossaries/footnotes along with the text, those of the Riverside Shakespeare are the most complete, making the Bard's sometimes impenetrable text much more accessible. In addition, there is a wealth of appendix and background reading material, providing information on the England of Shakespeare's time and also on the various interpretations of his work, all beautifully illustrated with colour photographs. The Riverside Shakespeare is worth shelling out a little extra money for, and will be cherished for a lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Good and Worthwhile Edition
Review: I am taking a Shakespeare class (or reading group, if you will) and this text was required. Since I already have two complete sets of Shakespeare's works, which I paid considerably less for, I didn't see a need for this text. Well, I was wrong! I decided to buy it since the reviews proved that this edition may be more informative then the less expensive editions I already own. That was very true to form! I found the introduction of the book, and of all of the works, very informative; and most of all, I found the glossary at the bottom of each page to be extremely valuable. These are features which my other volumes did not include and it was worth every extra penny for this volume. I would highly recommend it!
Tammie
Germantown, MD
Rating:
Summary: Much Better to Use Than Norton
Review: I bought this edition after using the Norton in my last semester Shakespeare class, and have found my reading of the plays for this semester's class much more enjoyable. The format is beautiful: the pages are thicker, lie flatter, and hold more content. Unlike the Norton, whose footnote numbers interrupt the reading of the text, forcing you to lose momemtum, the Riverside's are unobtrusive, available if you need them and when you want them. The introductions are prescient, interesting, and well-written. The text itself is more accurate, also. Harold Bloom, for example, in his introduction to The Invention of The Human, says he uses the Riverside and Arden, and that the Oxford (upon which the Norton is based) tries to publish the worst possible poetry. This I found amusing, if not also accurate.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent text, but bulky
Review: I have had my Riverside (1974 edn.) since college and still use it constantly. I can't break myself of it because the text is so good: the editor, G. B. Evans, is very cautious about changing the texts and even retains a few original spellings, so it feels very Elizabethan. Another good text is Pelican/Penguin, but it's expensive to buy all those individual volumes. Drawbacks: as another reviewer says, the notes are hard to keep track of, and the thing is so darned bulky! / I saw the new 2-volume edition in a bookstore recently and was disappointed. Most of the pages are photographically reproduced from the first edition, but they look like photocopies rather than the real thing. At least the smaller volumes might be easier to handle.
Rating: 
Summary: As stated earlier, notation format nearly ruins this edition
Review: I haven't read the other completed works extensively (although the Bevington and Norton editions seem to be the ones most highly praised), but the footnote format of the Riverside is so irritating that I'm selling the copy I bought last year for the first half of my 2nd-year Shakespeare survey course, and picking up either the Norton or the Bevington (although I have yet to personally see Bevington's footnote format). As was stated before, here are the problems with the annotation/footnotes:The lines are numbered in a standard "every-fifth-line" format. This would be fine if we as readers weren't required to know exactly what line we're on at all times, but the footnotes demand this. For example: "Therefore thy threat'ning colors now wind up" is King John, V.ii.73. Unless you are counting the actual number of each line in your head as you read (impossible, it seems) you will only know we're on line 73 when you look over to the right, see lines 70 and 75 marked, and then quickly estimate/count the lines in between. The problem is the note at the bottom, which simply says: 73. wind: furl. Like the earlier reviewer said, to figure out whether or not a footnote exists, you must read a line or two, determine what line number(s) you've just read through a line-counting process, and then go down to the footnotes to see if anything matches. Once you've matched the line number to the footnote, you have to go back to the line and find the word that's footnoted, because it's not marked in any way. The Norton method (while some find it intrusive) is certainly easier for students, and the Bevington method sounds interesting (giving the line numbers in the margin only where there is a footnote existsing). The Riverside is just too irritating for most students to use. Some say this method slows the reading process down, and forces one to go through the text more slowly, thus giving a closer reading. To this I'd say that the process of line-counting and stopping every 2-3 lines to "check" for footnotes that may not exist (besides the process of word-matching once a footnote is found) perverts the close reading just as much or moreso than any sort of footnotes condusive to easier, faster reading ever could.
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Summary: Able student approval
Review: I prescribed this edition for the Shakespeare course I taught in the University of the West Indies nearly 30 years ago. James Maxwell as editor guaranteed a reliable text, and I was astonished by the quantity of useful supporting material. One of my students - at that time very nationalistic and hostile to relics of colonialism - objected profoundly to a course concentrating on one author, and an English author at that. Also to the price and cumbersomeness of the prescribed text. As an able student she subsequently went on to complete her MA at Leeds and her Ph D at Yale. A couple of years back she was telephoning me in desperation to know where she could replace the book - now worn to pieces, and long one of her most prized possessions. She could not praise too highly the excellence of the Riverside as the most useful complete Shakespeare onthe market. Which was my own view, too.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Collection
Review: I was introduced to the Riverside Shakespeare for my undergraduate Shakespeare class and have used it in every semester since (both undergrad and grad). It provides a complete collection of the Bard's works with wonderfully enlightening notes and glosses. The essays that introduce each section provide readers with some of the historical and cultural influences on the plays and poems at hand. This work, as others have noted, is not portable so if you're looking to read Shakespeare on the beach you might want a different edition. However, you won't find an edition as well put together as this.
Rating:
Summary: A solid if limited edition
Review: I would not myself prescribe this edition if I needed to choose one for, say, a year-long course on Shakespeare, but it is respectable and valuable nonetheless, and I have never minded my students using it. In comparison to the Norton, it is far more sensible, level-headed, and sharper in its selection of what is relevant to the needs of most readers. It offers help in a way that for example the Oxford unannotated Complete Works does not. The level of scholarship is usually very sound, in all areas. However, the edition lacks the required intellectual life, to my mind, which it should have and which I find in David Bevington's edition (and, despite some perversities, in the Norton); it is in some ways a bit perfunctory, unenterprising, and not sufficiently incisive in its insights. This is also an edition which at times unduly tends to favour the interests of academics over those of ordinary readers. The text, notably, preserves a number of features which are quite unnecessarily archaic to a modern reader. Who benefits from being faced with such spellings as "bumbast" rather than "bombast"? The introductions are more often useful or predictable than truly engaging, and the explanatory notes are in several places not as informative as they should be. Even so, this is an edition of considerable merit, and one that those who for some mysterious reason do not wish to buy David Bevington's excellent edition would probably be best served by. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia
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