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The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works Synopsis
"The text of any Shakespeare play is a living negotiable entity: scholarship and theatre practice work together to keep the plays alive and vividly present." – Gregory Doran, RSC Artistic Director
Developed in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, this Complete Works of William Shakespeare combines exemplary textual scholarship with beautiful design. Curated by expert editors Sir Jonathan Bate and Professor Eric Rasmussen, the text in this collection is based on the iconic 1623 First Folio: the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled by Shakespeare’s fellow actors, and the version of Shakespeare’s text preferred by many actors and directors today.
This stunning revised edition goes further to present Shakespeare’s plays as they were originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed on stage. Along with new colour photographs from a vibrant range of RSC productions, a new Stage Notes feature documenting the staging choices in 100 RSC productions showcases the myriad ways in which Shakespeare’s plays can be brought to life.
Now featuring the entire range of Shakespeare’s plays, poems and sonnets, this edition is expanded to include both The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover’s Complaint. Along with Bate’s excellent general introduction and short essays, this collection includes a range of aids to the reader such as on-page notes explaining unfamiliar terms and key facts boxes providing plot summaries and additional helpful context. A Complete Works for the 21st century, this versatile and highly collectable edition will inspire students, theatre practitioners and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.
About This Edition
Press Reviews
William Shakespeare Press Reviews
There may never be an absolutely definitive collection of Shakespeare’s plays, but this may be as close as we ever come. Clear, user-friendly and meticulous, this is the edition we all need. - David Tennant
All of humanity in all of its complexity is contained within these plays, so much so that it’s hard to imagine that Shakespeare will ever be surpassed as the world’s greatest and most beloved playwright. It’s therefore fitting to have this edition that displays his continuing relevance and resonances to his ongoing audience. - David Oyelowo
This is a glorious edition of one of the world’s most important books. It’s the essential reference book for anyone who’s ever been in love, felt jealousy, fear, hatred or desire. All human life is here – and every home should have one. - Dame Judi Dench, in praise of the first edition
Timely, original, and beautifully conceived, the RSC edition makes Shakespeare’s extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever. - James Shapiro, Professor, Columbia University, in praise of the first edition
Author
About William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon in April, 1564. He was the third child, and eldest son, of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. Little is known of Shakespeare’s early life; but it is unlikely that a writer who dramatized such an incomparable range and variety of human kinds and experiences should have spent his early manhood entirely in placid pursuits in a country town. There is one tradition, not universally accepted, that he fled from Stratford because he was in trouble for deer stealing, and had fallen foul of Sir Thomas Lucy, the local magnate; another that he was for some time a schoolmaster.
When Shakespeare died fourteen of his plays had been separately published in Quarto booklets. In 1623 his surviving fellow actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, with the co-operation of a number of printers, published a collected edition of thirty-six plays in one Folio volume, with an engraved portrait, memorial verses by Ben Jonson and others, and an Epistle to the Reader in which Heming and Condell make the interesting note that Shakespeare’s ‘hand and mind went together, and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.’
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