Stanley Wells

William Montgomery

Gary Taylor

John Jowett

A comprehensive accompaniment and resource for students and educators.

A Textual Companion

William Shakespeare

The Oxford Shakespeare brings the modern reader closer to Shakespeare's plays as originally performed than has ever before been possible. Based on eight years of full-time research by a team of distinguished British and American scholars, this monumental volume offers many remarkable innovations, including a new chronological order, revised stage directions, two full versions of King Lear--as originally written and as revised later for performance--and the complete text of The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Compact Edition packs all these features into a portable and inexpensive single volume. In addition, a lucid General Introduction by Stanley Wells and brief introductions to each play provide a wealth of background information. Hailed by The Washington Post as a definitive synthesis of the best editions of recent decades and by The Times of London as a monument to Shakespearian scholarship, it is an ideal travel companion on vacations or trips and a perfect gift for literature lovers young and old.

The Complete Works

John Webster

Gordon McMullan

Suzanne Gossett

Benedict S. Robinson

White Devil

Deluxe leather-bound edition of Oxford's Complete Works of Shakespeare

The Oxford Shakespeare

OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Shakespeare and Text is an indispensable and unique guide to its topic. It takes Shakespeare readers to the very foundation of his work, explaining how his plays first took shape in the theatre where writing was part of a larger collective enterprise. As the resulting manuscripts are virtually all lost, the account then turns to the early modern printing industry that produced the earliest surviving texts of Shakespeare's plays. It describes the roles of publisher and printer, the controls exerted through the Stationers' Company, and the technology of printing. A chapter is devoted to the book that gathered Shakespeare's plays together for the first time, the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare and Text goes on to survey the major developments in textual studies over the past century. It builds on the recent upsurge of interest in textual theory, and deals with issues such as collaboration, the instability of the text, the relationship between theatre culture and print culture, and the book as a material object. Later chapters examine the current critical edition, explaining the procedures that transform early texts in to a very different cultural artefact, the edition in which we regularly encounter Shakespeare.

Shakespeare and Text

Shakespeare and Text is built on the research and experience of a leading expert on Shakespeare editing and textual studies. The first edition has proved its value as an indispensable and unique guide to its topic. It takes Shakespeare readers to the very foundation of his work, explaining how his plays first took shape in the theatre where writing was part of a larger collective enterprise. The account examines the early modern printing industry that produced the earliest surviving texts of Shakespeare's plays. It describes the roles of publisher and printer, the controls exerted through the Stationers' Company, and the technology of printing. A chapter is devoted to the book that gathered Shakespeare's plays together for the first time, the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare and Text goes on to survey the major developments in textual studies over the past century. It builds on the recent upsurge of interest in textual theory, and deals with issues such as collaboration, the instability of the text, the relationship between theatre culture and print culture, and the book as a material object. Later chapters examine the current critical edition, explaining the procedures that transform early texts in to a very different cultural artefact, the edition in which we regularly encounter Shakespeare. The new revised edition, which builds on Jowett's research for the New Oxford Shakespeare, engages with scholarship of the past decade, work that has transformed our understanding of textual versions, has opened up the taxonomy of Shakespeare's texts, and has significantly extended the picture of Shakespeare as a co-author. A new chapter describes digital text, digital editing, and their interface with the traditional media.

Revised Edition

The only currently available introductory survey of the foundations of the text of Shakespeare, this book examines Shakespeare's writing in the environment of the theatre, and the printing of the earliest surviving texts. It goes on to review the ways in which the origin and production of these texts have been understood by textual scholars, and how they have been used in the preparation of modern editions.

George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and Director of the Program in the History Text of Technologies Gary Taylor

Lecturer in English Literature John Jowett

This book explores the ways in which Shakespeare's texts were reshaped, in his lifetime and up till the publication of the First Folio, and the kinds of major outside interference to which they were subjected. It concentrates on the forms of interference - expurgation, Act division, interpolation - which can be examined across the whole canon.

Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606-1623

Anthony Munday

Henry Chettle

The first edition of Sir Thomas More to bring the play into the context of a major Shakespeare series and provide a substantial critical analysis.

John Jowett

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