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The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare…
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The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Illustrated) (1623)

by William Shakespeare (Author)

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31,62117082 (4.59)438
It's Shakespeare - what can I say?
I haven't read this volume all the way through, but have read many of the plays at one time or another.
Two-colums of text, no notes, illustrations look to be black-and-white copies of paintings from various artists.

Taped to the inside I put a Frank and Ernest cartoon: Nice speech, but you don't have that many friends -- you better add "Romans and Countrymen." ( )
  librisissimo | Dec 22, 2022 |
English (163)  Spanish (2)  Dutch (2)  Catalan (1)  Italian (1)  German (1)  All languages (170)
Showing 1-25 of 163 (next | show all)
I got this in a box of "junk" at a swap meet in San Diego around 1988. I had one of those readings done on objects...that reading indicated this book went from a book store in England to a wealthy home library, then across the pond to the USA, owned by an old maid in New England and somehow made it's way to San Diego. There is also a heavy indication of Ships and rough seas???

My copy is leather embossed, the cover is in tough shape, and not getting any better. I use this mostly as reference material as the copy is still perfect and easy to read.

Great Book 2 gazillion Stars ( )
  AlphaSierra1963 | Jan 6, 2024 |
A great volume to have all of Shakespeare's plays (or almost all) in one place on the bookshelf, I found that the older I got, the more I appreciated reading each play in its own volume, or in a volume of three or four plays. The print is tiny in two column format.
  MrsLee | Nov 26, 2023 |
Well, there’s no use—no good, I mean—trying to be like one of those awful people who read all the intentionally ruined books about Shakespeare, written out of a desire to hide in baroque manor houses and to neither be understood nor to understand: such being the calling of the intellectual, to be holy, to be set apart, and what better way than not to speak the speech of men. But the thing itself, aside from the uses the horse is put to, is rather good. And plenty of popular books do draw on Shakespeare and use his plots and other gifts—were I only to name one or two of the most obvious, bitches would moan with the dying, and bite their wrists, so that the red blood would flow. I don’t know. Obviously Shakespeare is the best-received and actually too I think the best and most free-thinking writer of his day, though of course sometimes there are the inevitable marks of, I hesitate to say inaccuracy, since I am no historicist, but there are the marks of popular delusion, ignorance, and viciousness: the vipers of the common brute and bully, that the old soul, if you like, the thrice-born—what’s the opposite of ‘once-born’?—must deal with. As grey as later more German centuries would be, sometimes things were not really a certain way because Shakespeare said so, and obviously before he got to have his say he had to look a certain way, you know. But I do look forward to polishing off the last seven plays and the poetry. When I read the Bard, the titles of books dance in my head, and the epigraph pages of books either wonderful, or fantastic, or impossible to write. Of course, there’s a reason why people use Hallmark or whatever instead of Shakespeare quotes when somebody gets married, because aside from the 5,000 pages or whatever of pre-modern English, there’s the issue that every line almost is beautiful in its sound, but every other line deals with battles or poison or planning suicide and such, so you know. “Why is uncle goosecap implying that I should kill myself on my birthday”?

But if you think you can, take a few years and read the whole thing; it’s worth doing it that’s your sort of thing.

…. As I write this, I’m finishing up the last tragedy, the Athens Tim one—a bad play, at least in so far as what people would make of it, you know, but a lot of things are like that; I guess I buy the character, but people would remember their own imagined passive-aggressive rants about friends and money and assume that two and two don’t need to make four in their own life because they readin’ da Bard, you know: people are so terrible because it’s like if you let the girl who was supposed to play Tiger Lilly but wasn’t white enough play an Athens Tim character, people would cry for blood and prison, and still believe in lack, naturally, but okay, break’s over—but yeah so then I’ve got about a thousand (few-words-each) pages, less than 20%, now, even, and just five more plays, the ‘romances’, and the ‘poetry’, right. And then I’ll have read Homer (in English, naturally), Jane Austen (minus ‘the teenage writings’), and Shakespeare—and then, you know, I’d still like the read Dickens and the Brontes, and read internationally more, and more like ordinary middlebrow lit, and a few more classics eventually, sure, and lots of common stuff: but I feel like I’ve read enough where I no longer have to prove myself by reading the biggest names anymore, since I’ve read a handful of big names extensively and others more occasionally, and like I knew I wasn’t planning on reading every Joseph Conrad, At All Costs, and then I read Heart of Darkness & Other Stories and it’s like, Wow, what a wordy dick, you know….

And even more, now: it’s a relief to get closer to a point where I could take a long break, even in principles, from a certain sort of thing, eventually, I mean.

…. Also: the really conformist critic tries to narrow it to the tragedies, although those are certainly worthy, containing both Romeo & Juliet, and Hamlet, and others: but the comedies are great, too; I feel like I’ve already forgotten what little I understood of Love’s Labour Lost, but it makes a beautiful duet with Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the classic mask thing in Measure for Measure was excellent; the common stuff movies that are made in similar comedic tones should have the guts to throw out Measure for Measure instead of pretending Hamlet, though they never do, you know—the narrowing critic is the key…. I wish I remember As You Like It and I think I’ll have to see a movie version; of course, the Venice Jew play is terribly racist, and they are in general rather elitist in the several ways, although rather less so, I think, than was common then, or indeed later.

…. And when I was reading the old tale of England’s King Henry VI, I was Henry VI; surely some charm crossed my path, before all that ended, in those days when I was that Good Man, so turned by harm’s negation, even to the exclusion.

…. Although it is true that I read it just as an overview, and indeed sometimes read and only got a vague sense of the plot—and sometimes didn’t care much about whoever it was.

…. I have to say in the light of history, (although lit isn’t the most unpopular subject, though men strive to make it such, who command it), that I find it strange that in most of our schools education is a service being provided to the students, one would think, though they have no control over what they study or how. It’s as though the students were there to serve—yes, to serve the dead!

That being said, there’s a wonderful subjectivity in Shakespeare—even more so than in Plato. One character speaks second, and people might walk away thinking that they’ve heard “Shakespeare”, but then before them there was another character, who also spoke, who believed another way. “They can’t both be right,” howls the theologian.

…. (The king guy is swearing he’ll kill everybody because he thinks his wife is cheating even though she’s not)
(Mabel from “Gravity Falls”) He talks with a crazy voice!

Lol.

…. “The art itself is Nature”
And surely Nature encompasses all the arts of men.

…. There are some fun Shakespeare comedies/romances like Midsummer’s Night and Tempest, but people tend to look to the high culture for serious shit, you know; from our perspective it’s kinda a mixed form, with the poetry purists neglecting it or at least not pushing it as hard, (and they do try to push, even as they push it far from the byways of ordinary men), whereas for entertainment in general, things turn over rather quicker than all that—Shakie, looming larger in isolation, is the biggest single author of the past these days, although he might not be bigger than Regency Jane and Victorian Charles put together, for what it’s worth…. For a magic-in-literature it can be great—‘High Magic’s Aid’, or, ‘The Tempest’, children?—but to a certain audience it doesn’t scream ‘fun’, you know. Which is obvs what it was written for, at the end of the day—that piece, especially.

…. This is a truism of the lit crits, but maybe it needs to be said again: the Victorians didn’t really love Shakespeare as much as they convinced themselves they did, you know.

…. Although in a lot of the poetry, the historical atmosphere becomes a lot more obvious— white/purity (and the slaves groan) vs ‘dark’ good-time-girl (and the slaves GROAN), you know.

O desire BLACK
All good you lack
The lips you smack
Thou shall I ne’er fack

You know; it’s like—I don’t know what it’s about rightly, but it isn’t about rape. It’s about drinking with your male friends in the back of the Poetry Club, snobbish even when you’re tipsy, you know.

(And what could be better than that!)

…. I mean, it is possible to desire sex in so disorderly a way that you forget all about the issue of the girl’s consent, but there’s a lot more to sex than that, and a lot more to the bad thing than just sex—but the Lucrece poem just thinks sex is the bad, bad thing. And there’s no sense in it of a violated Will—at all…. It’s very inbred: inbred aristocracy. I suppose if we can take them both as a piece, the plays are much better than the poetry.

…. It is curious to know, that these manor house men, with their self-praise and their expectations for others, did not always have good relationships with others or fine things—no, just servants, and twice-worn-out things. And, yes, dependents, and a tradition to which they themselves were dependent. Barren rhyme, and word’s annoy, and for the child no slight-weight assumption.

…. Bro: even ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ is better than the sonnets.

The sonnets are like, Billy’s gifts to parodists, you know.

…. But it is interesting, how even the critic, the critical man, has in his opinion drifted from seeing the sonnets/poetry as the best, towards the tragedies—the ‘better’ part of the scandalous trash, you know, the plays. The future critic will probably look with widest smiles on the middlebrow lit of today, you know. I mean, the only way to write something today and have it be immediately highbrow is to have it be ludicrously imitative, you know—the highbrow is for the dead. Really you have to be middlebrow to be creative, really. And the bottom feeders fill up, at least; puritans talk about Jane Austen mythologists as though they were mafiosi, you know.

…. If you read school-lit, take a few years and read the whole thing, but don’t believe that it didn’t happen during the Atlantic slave trade because of me, you know.

And don’t think that the only lit is pure-mental-lit: the only proper thing, sharpening the knives of the mind, the swords of the animating soul, because for this reason did man come forth—to fight wars for his mind’s sake, right….

And it’s certainly not that it wasn’t written by a white man, because certainly it was, but I think a lot of the youth’s Fee Fi Fo Fum I smell the blood of an Englishman thing often has to do with just not seeing the value or benefit in their own lives, when they don’t feel like it was written for them, and what was, is considered little fae crap, you know—and because it takes a lot of courage, more than the average person has, to stand up and say, I shouldn’t have to read crap I don’t like and pretend I talk about things I don’t like in a way I don’t talk—you know, the shame, the SHAME, that would be associated with that—they hide it behind fee fi fo fum, right. And, yeah, he also thought that Black girls were ugly because they looked like slaves. Well, Black girls, and possibly Italians, you know—it was a different world.

And I don’t know how you argue, ‘Don’t shame the children’, but maybe, ah, Don’t fucking do it. “Ah, my good man. But then shall we not be intellectuals. We shall go on shaming the children. It is our way.”

(end) But now I have an idea what Shakespeare I want to have another look at. Plays, more than three; wordings, two; and indeed for each trio, adaptions doubled perhaps more than once, as the decades speak more than once.

…. (end/final) Incidentally, I do think that more than 7% of a story is verbal; very little of it, it’s true, is that literal-verbal level, but suggestion and style that’s at least partially verbal says more than the literal meaning of the literal words say.

But aside from Poems for the Boys’ Club’s Backroom, you know—most of it was meant to be performed, and ultimately in life, physical and verbal intelligence are meant to cooperate. The tyranny of verbal intelligence of the critic is just…. Empire, you know. It’s the Atlantic slave trade, basically. The critic thinks that what separates him from the slave is his only true worth; the actor and the good poet, not so much.
  goosecap | Nov 13, 2023 |
What an exquisite edition of one of the greatest works in the Western canon. Armed with an authoritative editorial team, Professor Jonathan Bate has reworked all of Shakespeare's plays, as well as his poems. The footnotes are extensive and cover all meanings of words (including the more salacious ones that many school texts leave out), while also providing informative historical and contextual information.

This edition seeks to give us every word attributed to Shakespeare (although, as it points out at length, we can't really know what he wrote: all of our current versions come from a variety of sources typeset in his later years, and primarily from the First Folio printed after his death. Any work of the Bard's is distorted in some way). With appendices and footnotes, notable textual errors or areas of debate are highlighted.

There is so much to love here. Epic tragedies - Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear - joined by their lesser, but poetically affecting counterparts like Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare plays with and shuffles around comic tropes in his wide variety of comedies: peaks include The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.

In his more subdued romances, Shakespeare often seems reduced to more typical characters yet imbues than with layer upon layer of subtlety: Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale are particularly splendid examples. Some of the tragedies and comedies aren't as startling, and some are challenging - such as his part-satire Troilus and Cressida - but every work brims with characters whose opinions, beliefs and motives are individual, and not simply echoing those of an author. Beyond these plays lies a staggering cycle of love poems in The Sonnets, as well as his other various poetry which always makes fascinating, lyrical reading.

Capping all this is Shakespeare's incredible cycle of English history, which details the country's fate from 1199 to 1533, through the stories of the English monarchs: their battles, their loves, their lives and the effect their squabbles have over countless citizens. The cycle begins with the somewhat talky King John (far from my favourite work, but well presented in the BBC Complete Works cycle) and ends with the autumnal King Henry VIII. In between are eight plays (two tetraologies) which encompass the Wars of the Roses, and they are astonishing. From the private thoughts of the monarch to the most unimportant peasant, Shakespeare captures an age.

The introductions on each play detail cultural successes over the centuries, as well as basic historical information. I've seen people suggest other aspects that could improve this - such as a suggestion of ways to double parts (this is defined as the "actor's edition"). Certainly, I can accept that, but as it stands this is already beyond a 5-star piece of work. A place of honour on my shelf, that's for sure. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
A mediocre Shakespeare collection. Not comprehensively stuffed with annotations and commentary like the Arden series nor light and easy to transport like the Folger collection. Even compared to other Shakespeare 'complete works' volumes, its cover is cheaply made and the preliminary essay is saccharine and factually inaccurate. But, Shakespeare's writing can elevate even the most poorly made of publications ( )
  Liam223 | Aug 14, 2023 |
It's Shakespeare - what can I say?
I haven't read this volume all the way through, but have read many of the plays at one time or another.
Two-colums of text, no notes, illustrations look to be black-and-white copies of paintings from various artists.

Taped to the inside I put a Frank and Ernest cartoon: Nice speech, but you don't have that many friends -- you better add "Romans and Countrymen." ( )
  librisissimo | Dec 22, 2022 |
Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet. Henry V. Macbeth. A Midsummer Night's Dream. King Lear. Julius Caesar. Othello.

FROM BARNES & NOBLE: Lovers of literature will immediately recognize these as signature works of William Shakespeare, whose plays still rank as the greatest dramas ever produced in the English language, four centuries after they were written. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare collects all 37 of the immortal Bard's comedies, tragedies, and historical plays in a collectible edition. This volume also features Shakespeare's complete poetry, including the sonnets. With this beautiful edition, you can enjoy Shakespeare's enduring literary legacy again and again. ( )
  Gmomaj | Sep 4, 2022 |
UPDATE REVIEW!
I have just read every Shakespeare play from this edition and than some. This has been a goal of mine for some time. Some plays I've read previously for various classes in high school and college, but there was a bit of his stuff I never read before and some stuff I didn't even realize that existed until picking up this book for a second time. I got this book n college and this was a pain in the ass to carry around campus, but in the long run, this book was worth getting. This is something won't ever get rid of and will use constantly.

Some Rereading Thoughts:
1. I still don't think Shakespeare is the best writer of all time. I feel like too many of his plays were written for higher people rather than what he possibly wanted to write instead. He possibly didn't have an education and sometimes I question what plays he even wrote or if they were written by someone else. His history plays I really don't care for and sometimes felt like they were for propaganda reasons. HOWEVER, regardless of my opinions, I still think Shakespeare is very important to read at least once in your life. Nearly every writer after him has quoted him, referenced him, or was inspired by him in some way. To read Shakespeare is to fully understand literature in someway.

2. I noticed there is a difference in tone with the Elizabethan plays and the Jacobean plays. The plays during Elizabeth's time felt like he was still trying everything out for the first time. There are a few favorites I have during this time, but I admit I like his plays during James better. During James, we see more strangeness and magic. I remember being taught James liked this and asked Shakespeare for more ghost and magic in the plays.

3. Is it possible every Shakespeare play is connected and in the same universe? There are several characters that appear in other plays and mentions of previous characters. His universe isn't our own though. Unlike our's, his is filled with ghost, magic, and the gods. Some of the history has been changed, but maybe for his universe it was meant for that change. I noticed too most of his plays mention the word "tempest" and what happens to be his last play? Okay, maybe I'm sounding like a crazy person right now, but this is what happened when I entered Shakespeare's world again.

My Top Ten Favorites:*
1. The Tempest
2. A Midsummer Night's Dream
3. Othello
4. Titus Andronicus
5. Macbeth
6. Twelfth Night
7. As You Like It
8. King Lear
9. Cymbeline
10. The Winter's Tale

Final Thoughts:
I plan on coming back to these plays and rereading them again. Going to reread Tempest to finish off my Shakespeare with a cherry on top, but I'm taking a long break afterwords. I enjoyed this a lot more without having to study these plays and writing an essay after every read. I could read them for fun instead. I did skip the a lot of the intros and footnotes and other material in this edition, but I might read those another time too. I've read every play, but I'm not sure it's possible for anyone to be completely done with Shakespeare. It's like he's Prospero and has magic powers...whoops, sounding like a crazy person again.

*If you want to know why I like those plays, most of them I wrote reviews for, but none of them are as long as this review though. ( )
  Ghost_Boy | Aug 25, 2022 |
Amazing compendium
  ErichF | Aug 24, 2022 |
What can you say about this? I can say that, unlike the Norton Shakespeare which I owned at one point, this does not have THREE SEPARATE KING LEARs. And that's a good thing, I think.

Mind you, I love King Lear and think it's perhaps Shakespeare's greatest play (of those I have read, anyway -- I have friends who would be surprised, I think, to learn that I haven't read them all) but the editorial ... something that resulted in the Norton having THREE DAMNED KING LEARs is. Well. Something to behold, certainly.

Bevington's notes are quite good. Overall I'm quite pleased with this Complete Shakespeare -- I've owned a few, and this is to my mind the best. I'd love to own one that is easier to hold and read -- the Norton was that, but the paper was so thin that the print on the other side showed through, which was a real problem.

UPDATE: currently read The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was better than I expected (c'mon -- it's fun!) and am now in the middle of As You Like It, which I honestly never liked much -- it's better this time around. Overall I have always found WS's comedies a bit eye-roll-y, but now that I'm older they have more appeal. Not sure why that is.

Here too I'll insert a note that, though I do like this edition, it follows the Comedies - Histories - Tragedies - Romances layout that I've come to rather dislike. For those of us plodders who like to read a book straight through, that means a gob of comedies at the start, a gob of histories in the middle, a gob of tragedies, then a gob of Romances at the end. I'd prefer a chronological arrangement (of course any such involves some speculation), myself. ( )
  tungsten_peerts | Feb 25, 2022 |
Critically speaking, still the finest one-volume complete Shakespeare. Signet is refreshingly free of PC literary criticism. This edition is far superior to third-rate editions offered by Norton and other publishers that have been completely sold out to the dark side of academia. ( )
  wyclif | Sep 22, 2021 |
This would probably be my second choice for a complete Shakespeare edition. I much prefer the Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare because of the higher quality of the critical commentary. ( )
  wyclif | Sep 22, 2021 |
11 July 2016
Twelfth Night or, What You Will: 4 stars
  _Marcia_94_ | Sep 21, 2021 |
A shelf book I've had since the 1980s, that I turn to occasionally. My favorite in the book is Macbeth.

It seems this Cambridge University Press edition is no longer in print. The content can be seen in other publishings, but the physical book I have is cherished. ( )
  LGCullens | Jun 1, 2021 |
A classic. ( )
  quantum.alex | May 31, 2021 |
Edward III

For anyone saying, "Huh?" right now, let me say that EIII is one of the "Apocryphal Plays" that have been credited wholly or in part to Shakespeare at one time or another but that do not have conclusive proof of authorship by Big Bill Rattlepike. In the Second Edition of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, the whole text of all plays the editors are convinced Shakespeare had a hand in is printed. This means that they have made the brave decision to include Edward III, convinced as they are that Shakepeare wrote up to four scenes in the play. The text has undergone every stylistic and vocubulary test known to scholarship and there is a growing consensus that Shakespeare wrote some, at least, of this play. Now, I don't know anything about these tests, but if you'd asked me which scenes stood out as the best, I'd have picked the four that the present editors claim were by Big Bill the Bard.

The play is a straightforward history, showing Edward the III first having trouble with the Scots then invading France, where his son gets caught, massively outnumbered, in a valley surrounded by hills...Cue ridiculous triumph-against-the-odds...

Between the two are some scenes where the King meets an exceptionally attractive member of the Nobility and woos her, despite being already married himself. These scenes raise the bar in terms of the language used and feeling expressed and are reminiscent of numerous similar scenes by Shakespeare - I could easily believe he wrote them. Later, the Prince of Wales, pensive before apparently insurmountable odds of battle, finds courage whilst meditating on the inevitability of death. Once again these passages are reminiscent of other famous Shakespeare scenes.

The plot is reminiscent of Henry V and I can easily imagine that Shakespeare took this play and used it as the model for that later, greater and entirely solo effort.

What Edward III lacks are depth of characterisation, depth of feeling conveyed by the language (outside the four scenes mentioned above) and a unity in the whole. The early part with Edward's attempted adultery seems disconnected from the subsequent invasion of France.

Even taken alone, Henry V eliminates all these problems.

This play illustrates to me the genius of Shakespeare: he was able to take a populist form that demanded a continuous supply of fresh material that allowed little time for rehearsal and create work that showed such psychological and dramatic insight in such glorious language that it transcended his era to the extent of him being widely considered the best Britsh playwright ever to have lived, 400 years later.

The Merchant of Venice

Well that was - short! Also, fun. It's a mess of a play in some respects - the plotting and structure are a muddle. The dramatic crisis occurs in act 4, leaving the entire last act over to the kind of banter and romantical silliness typified by As You Like It's forest scenes, which could feel anti-climactic if not played up to the hilt in performance, because when it come down to it,this play is dominated by Shylock. So much so that it ended up also popularly known by the alternative title The Jew of Venice and, in an era when actors dominated performance decisions, frequently curtailed at the end of act 4 when Shylock's part is over and the dramatic crisis is resolved.

This seems typical of the comedies, where much of the plot is an excuse to get a bunch of people into romantic shenanigans and the women into disguise as men, with little of the concern for pace or structure that we tend to demand of an genre of film these days. It's not that he couldn't do it - Richard III and Hamlet, even if bloated in places, certainly show how to organise things and Henry V doesn't even have much excess verbiage. MacBeth (aided no doubt by Middleton's many interventions) is superbly constructed and never slow - hence I conclude that Shakespeare was all about the laughs in his early comedies and never mind the preposterousness or the plots that go away for three acts.

There is no escaping the fact that Shylock dominates this play; his character is the only one developed to any real depth and the fact that the debate rages to this day as to whether Shakespeare and his contemporary audiences would have seen him as sympathetic or merely a pantomime villain testifies to this. Because a case can be made either way, villain or victim it seems plain to me that what we have is a sympathetic antagonist - not a monster everybody loves to hate but a human whose flaws in the end bring his own downfall in the very definition of Shakespearean Tragedy. He's abused and railed against for doing what Christians won't whilst at the same time being patronised by the very same people because he is fulfilling an essential function in a market economy and earning a living from it. When the opportunity arises he must have revenge, not the moral high ground of magnanimity and mercy - there-in lies the seed of his destruction.

It's hard not to compare this with Jonson, given that they were contemporaries and I recently finished a five play volume by one of the men said to have drunk Shakespeare into the fever that killed him. The contrasts are in fact stronger - Jonson being more prosaic, less witty in banter and more prone to showing off his learning, especially by quoting Latin and more concerned with "ordinary" folk than the rich and powerful. Shakespeare here also shows his mastery of character (if only in the form of Shylock) whilst the best of Jonson is much more in the way of caricature.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

This play doesn't seem to have enjoyed much popularity in my (adult) lifetime - I can't remember hearing about, let alone actually seeing, any film or stage production of it - and I can't understand why. It's ripe with opportunities for visual humour, has everybody's favourite character from Henry IV, much wit and punning, a more coherent plot than many another Shakespeare comedy and even offers wide scope to set and costume designers. I'd love to see this, filmed, or, even better, live on stage.

For those not in the know, the play revolves around an episode from John Falstaff's life prior to his association with Prince Hal, in which he attempts to cuckold his neighbours. There is a subplot regarding who will marry one Anne Page, from three suitors, leading to a typically Shakespearean ending with (implied) happy marriage.

In one sense this is a-typical Shakespeare - despite ostensibly being historical - set in the reign of Henry IV - it could, if you changed the characters' names, not be identified as anything other than contemporary with the author. It also deals not with the high-born and rich but with professionals and labourers - and rogues and thieves - making it very Jonsonian.

Julius Caesar

My first exposure to Shakespeare was this play, read in English class, when I was 13. Apparently it is a very popular choice in schools because it has no "bawdy." This wasn't any concern of my teacher, though, as he had us reading MacBeth later the same year.

Julius Caesar didn't go down very well; it was terribly confusing. Caesar dies half way through having done and said very little. What was that all about? The only bit that I remember liking was Antony's great rhetorical swaying of the plebians. The way he achieved that was fascinating.

My second encounter with the play was an outdoor performance in the courtyard of Conwy Castle, my main memory of which was having a sore bum because of inadequate cushioning from the courtyard floor (sat as I was on a couple of camping mats placed directly on the flagstones). So not much joy there either. And the whole structure was still confusing - it isn't about Julius! This fact was never explained by my teacher. But there is an explanation: the play is based on Classical dramatic models where-in this type of thing happens quite often. The central figure of the title is an enigma around which the real action revolves - the motive force for chaos and tragedy more by other people's responses to him than by his direct actions. And that's what we have here. Shakespeare writing a play after the fashion of the Latin dramatists he was familiar with from school, who in turn were following the fashion and subject matter of the Greek plays of antiquity.

Now, having learned this and also having come into contact with some of that ancient drama, I re-read Julius Caesar and find that it does in fact make sense, structurally if looked at this way. There is no central character except Caesar, despite him being conspicuous by his absence. There have been attempts to re-cast (and re-name) it as the Tragedy of Brutus but these are distortions or adaptations. The fact is that Cassius, Antony and Brutus are all compared and contrasted with each other and with Caesar and this is a necessary thing for understanding the character of each. Cassius's worldly motivations and ready perception of character are the opposite of Brutus's lofty ideals and inability to recognise that he is being used. Antony is motivated as much by will to power as by revenge; Cassius is aware of this. Brutus is a fool politically but is the superior general it turns out; they ould have won if Cassius had been more careful on the battlefield and Caesar - he's a greater figure than all of them put together, though he's just a man, with human frailties as Cassius points out, remembering how he saved Caesar from drowning in the Tiber. Greater - but for reasons not clear, not ever expressed - and the eye of the storm.

It's a fascinating mess and everybody ends up dead except Antony who walks off with the power and all the best lines in the play, back in that crucial "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." scene that forms the bulk of Act 3. The bit I liked even when I didn't have a clue about the rest - still the best part, even with the rest suddenly making sense.

Troilus and Cressida

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare mentions that early 19th Century critics were "baffled" by this play. I have some sympathy with them; I don't really know what Bill was trying to do with this one. No contemporary writer worth the name would plot the final two acts this way, for a start. Now plotting was never Bill's strongest suit but we aren't talking about one of his daft comedies where you can ignore plot development in exchange for extreme verbal and physical comedy down in the woods tonight and go home chuckling at what you've seen and heard and not really caring about the absurdity of it all. Nor is this Romeo and Juliet 2.0, despite the set up in the first three acts where we start with a lot of wit and word play and silliness but get progressively more serious as time goes on, ending up with a full-on Tragic denouement and a bold statement about the destructive nature of feuding and partisan violence within respectable society that is alarmingly relevant 400 years later. Here, if there is a Tragic figure at all it is Hector, sadly too naively trusting in others' honour because his own is impeccable, rather than Troilus or Cressida, let alone both. And the play, despite having two endings, never really resolves the issue of the Troilus-Cressida-Diomedes love triangle at all. It's a mess.

Apparently more recent criticism has focused on Shakespeare's treatment of sexuality in the play but I don't really find the idea that people can be fickle and inconstant and driven by other people's looks all that profound or interesting, though I find it believable that Bill might have been aiming at a discussion of it.

So what I'm left with is a play that starts humourous then becomes amusingly chaotic and diverting in the final act (alarums and excursions abound) but stops rather than really concludes and suffers horribly in comparison with the Iliad's treatment of all the characters they have in common - a comparison that, at least while reading off the page, is unavoidable to anyone who has previously encountered Achilles' rage as described by Homer.

And on we go to Sir Thomas More, a play for which Shakespeare wrote probably only one or two scenes.

The Book of Sir Thomas More

The editors believe Shakespeare wrote a three page passage in the extant "book" of this play, which was originally composed by Munday. Those pages were included in the 1st Ed. of this volume but, as with Edward III, here in the 2nd Ed. they print the full text of the play. The parts attributed to Shakespeare are higher quality than the rest but some of the material by Munday is almost as good. However, for me the real interests of this play, which overall is disjointed, unbalanced and a second rate work of the period, are twofold and not really related to Shakespeare directly, namely, the portrayal of More and the insight into the politics, censorship and mode of operation of playwrights of the period.

What we have is a playbook originally written by Munday dealing with the rise and fall of Thomas More, which was heavily criticised by the Master of the Revels who read all plays before performance and had the power to demand any alterations he deemed fit or suppress the play entirely. More was a controvercial figure in Elizabethan politics still, being considered a Catholic martyr by many and a champion of the working people to boot. Catholicism vs. Protestantism was inextricably mixed up with the right to the throne and international power politics. Nevertheless, the Master of the Revels didn't ban the play out-right but instead gave copious instructions for deletions and modifications that were written directly on the play-book.

Subsequently various authors, including Chettle, Heywood and Dekker as well as Shakespeare, revised the play, replacing passages and altering existing ones - it's a professional critic's wet dream. The demand for original material for the stage was difficult to keep up with and collaborations between playwrights were commonplace, as were revisions of extant plays. (Middleton appears to have revised two of Shakespeare's plays, for example.) Here we get a good look at an extreme example of attempting to rescue a play because writing a new one from scratch was too long a process, as well as an insight into the role and attitudes of the Master of the Revels, which clearly was considered politically important and taken seriously. Despite all of the effort by nearly everyone, it seems the play was never performed on the contemporary stage.

Which brings me to the character of More himself. Here he comes over as a trickster and humourist who uses pranks to teach more pompous folks and genuine fools various lessons but also a champion of mercy and restraint in keeping the peace between the lower classes and the aristocracy. He goes in humble and brave fashion to his martyrdom, refusing to break with his Catholic principles regarding Henry VIII's divorce.

In [b:A Man for All Seasons|403098|A Man for All Seasons|Robert Bolt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403168082s/403098.jpg|1358325] More is presented as a much more serious but still saintly martyr who dies for his principles. A biography of William Tyndale that I once read, gives a different picture, by illustrating what some of those principles were: More had a network of agents who spied and informed on anybody connected with translating the Bible from Latin to English or printing or distributing such. Anybody found guilty of said "crimes" were burned alive at the stake - no mercy whatsoever.

All of these authors had a partisan agenda regarding More: Catholic martyr, champion of the unprivileged, murderer of anybody who opposed the Church's control of Christian thought. Could he have been all of these things?

Measure for Measure

The editors believe that this play was adapted somewhat by another writer and additionally that it was Thomas Middleton. The same view is widely held regarding MacBeth, which to my mind loses it's unity of view and expression in the scenes of the witches spell casting and giving cauldrons a bad reputation forever after. Here, though, any adaptation is more subtle and doesn't impair the play at all.

This is also the earliest of what are known as the "problem plays" so called, as far as I can tell, because they do not fit neatly into any of the three conventional genres of the time, namely, comedy, tragedy or history. Earliest problem play does not mean early play, however - we are in the second half of Shakespeare's career by now. This leads me to propose a simple solution to the "problem": By this time Shakespeare was successful and confident enough to dispense with convention and write whatever kind of play he wanted and it seems to me that this is a morality play.

This play attacks everything that was appalling about the status of and attitudes towards women of the period, making it a stark contrast with The Taming of the Shrew. The law that the plot hinges upon is an ass, along with the prevailing obsession with virginity prior to marriage and as some kind of morally pure state that gets you extra bonus points from the Heavenly authorities. The convention of dowries and concomitant "wife as chattel" is also attacked.

There are no really memorable speeches but the play gets its points across successfully and doesn't outstay its welcome.

Henry V
Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be reading King Lear, but the BBC broadcast Brannagh's Henry V film and I thought I'd catch it on iPlayer before it disappears. Go here for the review because there isn't room left here for it all:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1607567661

King Lear (Quarto)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1611844950

The Tragedy of Richard III
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1645516749?book_show_action=false

Timon of Athens
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1658506897

MacBeth
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1861681303?book_show_action=false&from...

All's Well that Ends Well
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1913011208

Pericles
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1957354103?book_show_action=false

Coriolanus
Fierce warrior, great general, total prat.

The Winter's Tale
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2098317566?book_show_action=false

Cymbeline
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2174784590

The Two Noble Kinsmen
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279366447 ( )
  Arbieroo | Jul 17, 2020 |
Ex-lib. Early Modern English Dictionary (EMED) ( )
  ME_Dictionary | Mar 20, 2020 |
Ex-lib. James P. Magill (1906) ( )
  ME_Dictionary | Mar 19, 2020 |
Needed the extensive footnotes to derive meanings from cultural period references. Began this as text for a class on the plays and kept reading. Wow. Love the cadence and poetry of his work. ( )
  JoniMFisher | Sep 19, 2019 |
I’m not sure what I could do to summarize so many different works of several different kinds, so let me say this: Shakespeare is like the beginning of a great conversation. It lets you participate in something. People tend to have the impulse either to ignore or reject it, shutting down the conversation, or else to seize on it and take it away like a car or some expensive status symbol—something that you have and they don’t. “The closer to the light, the deeper the shadow.” (Jung). But it’s a poor life that avoids the light. It is a conversation, one that began before we were born and will continue after we are dead. And it is part of our true life, not something that has to do with who has got and who has not. ( )
1 vote smallself | Aug 20, 2019 |
I've read all but some of the histories and two of the tragedies. Imma just gonna say all of them because, yeah, Billy is my boy. ( )
  rabbit-stew | Mar 29, 2019 |
Obviously, Shakespeare should get 5 stars, but what you really want is nice, manageable single-work volumes, such as those from the Folger Library. This is a massive book, very well done, but not especially usable as a primary reading source. ( )
  datrappert | Oct 22, 2016 |
Holy fucknuts, you guys. I can't write a straight ahead review of this. I mean for fuck's sake, I've read Shakespeare. This is the man who has a richer body of work than The Bible, okay? And The Bible is by a multitude of authors. Shakespeare is one. What the fuck do you say to this? I've read not only all the plays in this volume (except Edward III which is almost certainly not by the Bard barring some revisions) but the poems as well (barring Passionate Pilgrim and Funeral Elegy because again they're not Shakespeare, just read them and you'll see).

Shakespeare wrote like no other writer be they contemporaries of him or otherwise. I mean seriously his style is so indelible, it can only be described as Shakespearean. It was in everything he did, whether it be complex out-of-order line structures, brilliant and original imagery, English-only wordplay, or anything you can think of, even layering of differently phrased same things said (line memes).

And the importance of his work is not best exemplified in any single expression so much as an intake of the complete and whole because everything interconnected. Everything built on everything else. Everything was an expansion, not just an extension. There are people who wrote singular works better than probably anything individual by Shakespeare (The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Moby Dick, War And Peace, Ulysses) but nothing compares to the richness of his ouvre, and I would even include Joyce in there IN SPITE of Shakespeare's recidivism of sources (particularly Holinshed for his history plays, the history "ghostwriter"). Nobody turned of phrase like Shakespeare, nobody set up a metaphor like Shakespeare, nobody even wrote a GASTON like Shakespeare (Falstaff, people, the ultimate human).

Now, I can include Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare here. That he didn't relate to those of all walks of life. I think that means Tolstoy lived as a peasant and wrote many things for peasants and the peasant lifestyle. That's probably an unfair potshot because I can easily imagine Shakespeare was held to standards by his often very royal audience. This makes it so his peasants aren't always the most brilliant while the royals are almost always praised as though recognized without clothes (often incognito). Shakespeare could very well have been a heavy royalist and monarchist, but he could as easily be at least a thousand other things. Say what you want but the man hid himself better than anybody this side of Homer. I can't personally strike him for that. ( )
  Salmondaze | Sep 4, 2016 |
Leer esta edición es casi como leer un diccionario o el equivalente a la Biblia de Shakespeare, por el tamaño de letra y el tipo de papel.
Después de años leyendo a Shakespeare, y haber representado alguna de sus obras con la compañía de teatro del colegio, cuando visité la casa-museo en Stratford-upon-Avon, no podía irme sin este libro. ( )
  Minimissplaced | Jul 21, 2016 |
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