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Product Description
Product Description
The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers - a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608 - on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much else - detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances and changing critical attitudes to the play - illustrated with production photographs and related art - includes 'The Ballad of King Lear' and related offshoots - full index to introduction and commentary - durable sewn binding for lasting use 'not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Stanley Wells ran the Oxford Shakespeare Dept. within OUP for the years in which the Complete Works were in preparation; and he is the general editor of The Oxford Shakespeare/Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare series in which the present volume appears. He is also co-general editor of the new Oxford Shakespeare Topics series. Formerly Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, he is now Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,
Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor Emeritus in the University of Birmingham.
Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor Emeritus in the University of Birmingham.
Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor were the general editors of the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare.
Gary Taylor [WHOSE TEXT WAS USED, WITH SOME MODIFICATIONS, FOR THE PRESENT EDITION] is co-general-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Thomas Middleton edition. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
ONCE upon a time, probably in 1605, a man called William Shakespeare, using a quill pen, wrote a play about the legendary British King Lear and his three daughters. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
ONCE upon a time, probably in 1605, a man called William Shakespeare, using a quill pen, wrote a play about the legendary British King Lear and his three daughters. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
We students of the 70s and 80s didn't realise how relatively simple things were back then (from a textual point of view, anyhow). Nowadays, when it comes to some of Shakespeare's seminal works, it isn't so much a question of which play we're studying as which version of the text. As Wells tells us in his introduction, the 'conflated' editorial tradition of combining the two early sources of 1608 (Quarto) and 1623 (Folio) was begun by Lewis Theobald in 1735 and followed right up until 1986. Wells himself was one of the series editors of the groundbreaking Oxford Collected Works of that year. This volume presented two different versions of King Lear, one based on the Quarto, the other on the Folio.
The thinking behind this illustrates changing attitudes. The Quarto is now seen as an early, working version of the play, not a 'corrupt' or 'unauthorised' one. The Folio meanwhile is viewed as a revised version, by Shakespeare or Shakespeare's company - the product of several years of performance, adaptation and rethinking. Wells bases this single-play Oxford Shakespeare on the Quarto, not because it is a superior text, but because his main rivals (ie Arden and New Cambridge) base their editions on the Folio. This fact alone makes Wells' version worth serious consideration.
Another advantage of this edition is that it includes The Ballad of King Lear. Although published in 1620 (ie some fifteen years or so after the play's composition) it might just cast light, Wells argues, upon some aspects of the play's early stage history. Moreover, here as elsewhere, The Oxford Shakespeare is alone in providing an index of unusual words and phrases used in the play. This excellent innovation helps the reader find the passage they're looking for without the need for a computer search.
Despite unpromising beginnings ('Once upon a time, probably in 1605, a man called William Shakespeare, using a quill pen, wrote a play about the legendary King Lear ...') there are, in fact, many reasons why students might want to opt for this particular Lear. Not least, because it skilfully introduces us to a wealth of critical ideas about the play. One of a modern editor's main tasks is to help us sort out the wheat from a mountain of chaff, and a selection of the more influential and important thinking on Lear is neatly summarised in the Introduction. Two bibliographies offer scope for further, independent analysis, while Wells himself is especially illuminating on the play's language and structure.
Excellent editions of King Lear are already out there, especially those by RA Foakes and Jay L Halio. But this one manages to offer something new and stimulating.
The thinking behind this illustrates changing attitudes. The Quarto is now seen as an early, working version of the play, not a 'corrupt' or 'unauthorised' one. The Folio meanwhile is viewed as a revised version, by Shakespeare or Shakespeare's company - the product of several years of performance, adaptation and rethinking. Wells bases this single-play Oxford Shakespeare on the Quarto, not because it is a superior text, but because his main rivals (ie Arden and New Cambridge) base their editions on the Folio. This fact alone makes Wells' version worth serious consideration.
Another advantage of this edition is that it includes The Ballad of King Lear. Although published in 1620 (ie some fifteen years or so after the play's composition) it might just cast light, Wells argues, upon some aspects of the play's early stage history. Moreover, here as elsewhere, The Oxford Shakespeare is alone in providing an index of unusual words and phrases used in the play. This excellent innovation helps the reader find the passage they're looking for without the need for a computer search.
Despite unpromising beginnings ('Once upon a time, probably in 1605, a man called William Shakespeare, using a quill pen, wrote a play about the legendary King Lear ...') there are, in fact, many reasons why students might want to opt for this particular Lear. Not least, because it skilfully introduces us to a wealth of critical ideas about the play. One of a modern editor's main tasks is to help us sort out the wheat from a mountain of chaff, and a selection of the more influential and important thinking on Lear is neatly summarised in the Introduction. Two bibliographies offer scope for further, independent analysis, while Wells himself is especially illuminating on the play's language and structure.
Excellent editions of King Lear are already out there, especially those by RA Foakes and Jay L Halio. But this one manages to offer something new and stimulating.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the best single-volume edition available of the most moving play ever written. Wells' introduction is wise, tactful, accessible and illuminating; the notes are helpful and unintrusive; and the text is well-presented and sensibly taken from the first, Quarto edition of the play. Certainly the edition to use if you're thinking about staging the play, as the Globe have already realized. A stunning feat of imaginative, empathetic scholarship.
Format:Paperback
This book arrived promptly and in perfect condition. It was offered at a reduced price and, in addition, there was no charge for the postage making it a very economical purchase.
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