Rating: 
Summary: One bard, one book
Review: As a fervent admirer of Shakespeare, this complete collection, comprising excellent introductions to each play and helpful textual notes as well as informative writings on the history of both England and the art of acting that shaped Shakespeare's writing, was like a dream come true. While before I had to walk around trying to find a good edition of the play I wanted to read, now I can open the Norton Shakespeare and read without being afraid of not understanding words or missing the point of the play. This book's obvious drawbacks are its heft and, as mentioned, its delicate pages, but these are easily outweighed by the abovementioned advantages! Buy it and read!
Rating:
Summary: One bard, one book
Review: As a fervent admirer of Shakespeare, this complete collection, comprising excellent introductions to each play and helpful textual notes as well as informative writings on the history of both England and the art of acting that shaped Shakespeare's writing, was like a dream come true. While before I had to walk around trying to find a good edition of the play I wanted to read, now I can open the Norton Shakespeare and read without being afraid of not understanding words or missing the point of the play. This book's obvious drawbacks are its heft and, as mentioned, its delicate pages, but these are easily outweighed by the abovementioned advantages! Buy it and read!
Rating:
Summary: the best available complete edition
Review: I am currently using this edition for my University undergraduate course. It is simply the most comprehensive edition available in one volume. The introductions to each play offer stimulating views using modern, contemporary criticism and the 'scene-setting' introduction to the collection, by Greenblatt, is highly informative. The text is wonderfully readable and actually makes you want to pick it up (or lay it on a table given its size) and just read. I like the thin pages, although they are susceptible to creasing, as it makes it feel as though you're reading a Bible - a suitable analogy I think. Recommendable to anyone interested in Shakespeare - this is an edition which does justice to his greatness (anyway I'd better stop wasting time on the 'Net and get back to my essay on 'Othello'!).
Rating:
Summary: The Best Available
Review: I am new to Shakespeare and have started to read about him, his times, his works, and as a hobby try to become fairly knowledgeable about him and his place in our literary history. Starting from the basics I have reviewed a number of books and eventually I put together a "listmania" list of about 22-25 books. I am still not an expert nor do I claim such.Having said that, to get your feet wet there are a few good biographies and I like the Anthony Burgess book "Shakespeare" that is an easy read and just over 200 pages long. Also there are a few other books and tour guides such as the new DK guide with lots of maps and photos. Then there are books such as Boyce's book "Shakespeare A to Z". But I think the crown jewel of the books available is the present book almost 3500 pages long with CD which rises head and shoulders above anything else on the market. It is simply an excellent book by a group of highly qualified editors using the resources of Oxford. Obviously it can be improved but as of now it is the leader. Jack in Toronto
Rating:
Summary: The best of the lot.
Review: I confess that after examining 5-6 of the top-selling complete Shakespeares I tried not to like the Norton. There are less expensive editions, there are editions with glossy pages and colored photographs, there are editions that are half the weight and bulk of this leviathan, which is far more Shakespeare than the average reader--perhaps, even scholar, for that matter--would ever require. But despite its bulk and unwieldyness, its 3500 (!) thin, flimsy pages, its sheer excess, I couldn't ignore its advantages. The small print enables the publishers to squeeze in contextual materials--in the introduction and appendixes--that in themselves amount to an encyclopedic companion to Shakespeare's works; the introductions to the plays are written not in "textbook prose" but in an engaging style worthy of their subject; and perhaps, best of all, this is the only edition that places the glosses right alongside the "strange" Elizabethan word instead of in the footnotes. You can read the plays without experiencing vertigo of the eye. So this is the edition, though you may wish to go with the smaller, bound portions that Norton publishes of the same edition--especially if you can't afford the cost of a personal valet to carry this tome from home to office. On the other hand, the complete edition is excellent for doing crunches and other aerobic exercises--activities many of us who read the Bard are abt to ignore.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the lot.
Review: I confess that after examining 5-6 of the top-selling complete Shakespeares I tried not to like the Norton. There are less expensive editions, there are editions with glossy pages and colored photographs, there are editions that are half the weight and bulk of this leviathan, which is far more Shakespeare than the average reader--perhaps, even scholar, for that matter--would ever require. But despite its bulk and unwieldyness, its 3500 (!) thin, flimsy pages, its sheer excess, I couldn't ignore its advantages. The small print enables the publishers to squeeze in contextual materials--in the introduction and appendixes--that in themselves amount to an encyclopedic companion to Shakespeare's works; the introductions to the plays are written not in "textbook prose" but in an engaging style worthy of their subject; and perhaps, best of all, this is the only edition that places the glosses right alongside the "strange" Elizabethan word instead of in the footnotes. You can read the plays without experiencing vertigo of the eye. So this is the edition, though you may wish to go with the smaller, bound portions that Norton publishes of the same edition--especially if you can't afford the cost of a personal valet to carry this tome from home to office. On the other hand, the complete edition is excellent for doing crunches and other aerobic exercises--activities many of us who read the Bard are abt to ignore.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: I would in fact prefer to award this 3.5 stars, but the Amazon system seems to compel one to choose between 3 and 4, and I think 4 is too generous. To begin with the text, there is no doubt that this is not the best Shakespeare to buy. It is to a large extent based on the Oxford Shakespeare, which - quite rightly, in my view - has attracted a lot of criticism for some of its peculiarities. Thus, for example, Oxford prints TWO versions of *King Lear*, the quarto text and that of the folio. Norton rightly takes issue with this, and produces the kind of conflated text that most readers would want, but adds the other two AS WELL (so we are offered THREE versions!). This kind of thing is, in truth, academic self-indulgence - it shows an undue respect for academic concerns which to most readers are not of the slightest interest. There is a similar tendency to pay scant regard to what most readers really want and need in the Introduction: that tells us a good deal about Shakespeare's time, and the material is interesting, but it is not often shown to be relevant, or necessary, to an understanding of what Shakespeare writes. The explanatory annotation accompanying the texts is not bad, but often inferior to that of comparable editions, notably Bevington's. The introductions to individual plays are usually stimulating, but not necessarily convincing. Thus Greenblatt on the one hand says about Macbeth's murder of Duncan, "That he does so without adequate motivation, that he murders a man toward whom he should be grateful and protective, deepens the mystery ..." (p. 2558), yet adds a few lines later: "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth act on ambition ...". Precisely, that IS Macbeth's motivation for the murder, as Macbeth himself points out unequivocally in 1.7.25-7 - there is, therefore, absolutely nothing mysterious about his motivation. The edition does, however, offer a number of good references to other writings about Shakespeare. All in all, I do consider 3.5 stars is a fair "grade", in seeking to assess this for the benefit of the majority of readers looking for a complete Shakespeare to buy; but I consider David Bevington's by far the best edition of the complete works, then the Riverside, and only then this one - though, with its annotations, it is certainly more useful than the Oxford edition on which it is based. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia
Rating:
Summary: Best collection of Shakespeare's plays in print!
Review: I've read the Bard's plays in various editions (Arden's, Signet, Folger's, Riverside, etc.) and the Norton is BY FAR the most superior. It's very accessible to the modern reader and contains just about everything you wanted to know about Shakespeare, his life, his stage and his era.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful new presentation of the Bard's works
Review: The Norton Edition of Shakespeare's collected works is a wonderful and insightful tome of some of the greatest literature in the English language. Shakespeare's words are printed clearly and efficiently and effectively annotated in a versatile, readable format. This is an excellent, academic approach to Shakespeare and I would recommend it to anyone interested in becoming more familiar with his works.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but delicate edition
Review: This complete Shakespeare takes the important Oxford edition of the late 1980s and adds annotations and notes by American academics. Page layout is ideal and makes for a highly readable edition. The only problem is the extremely thin paper used to make this 3420-page tome handy. Printing on the other side of the page shows through, and the paper curls or crumples with the slightest trauma. The included slipcase helps, but I managed to crumple a page the first time I slipped the volume back in. Keep the kids away!
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