Rating: 
Summary: Almost the best complete Shakespeare Collection
Review: If you can't afford the Oxford Edition of Shakespeare's complete works than this is the next best edition you can find.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fabulues Addition!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Bevington's edition of Shakespeare is the best
Review: Let me count the ways, in no particular order: I like the typeface and the typography; it's easy on the eye. I like the paper it's printed on. I like the way notes are incorporated on the page. I like the punctuation. I like the spelling ("murder" over "murther", etc.). I like the added lines in "Lear" within square brackets. (The Oxford edition printed the play twice, in its two versions. Bevington's way is better.) I like the front matter, and each play's introduction. I like the footnoted scene divisions. I like the inclusion of "The Two Noble Kinsmen." I have six complete works, and I rank Bevington's edition number 1.
Rating:
Summary: My "desert island" book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: If one line could summarize all tears ever shed
Review: One mans word is seen written in the pained faces of every man across the all, in the hands of the desperate at their acts of desperation, in the wiles of all lovers, whether tragic or fanciful, in the chucklings of saints, satyrs, and sinners. I could never be bombastic enough to voiciferate the magnificence of Shakespeare. Shakespeare perhaps isn't bombastic enough. He is the greatest writer ever to have lived. The race that he gathered in his multifarious tapestries of painful wonder should flood his grave with tears of gratitude. Weep,love,hate,laugh,progenate,and read Shakespeare. All else is an imitation thereof. my icq is 17149282,drop me a line
Rating:
Summary: The best and most helpful single-volume edition
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Are You Reading What Shakespeare Really Wrote?
Review: 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?"
Rating:
Summary: An excellent edition for the student and general reader.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent edition for the student and general reader.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Book
Review: 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.
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