Customer Reviews

Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Wordsworth Special Editions) (Wordsworth Royals Series)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

If you got a copy of Shakespeare's works, you might like to be able to rely on the text it presents. That would require knowing the credentials of the editor, the currency of the editing, etc...The price is excellent - what the reader receives, well... caveat emptor.

Value to beginners: none (no background on the plays, glosses of difficult words, etc.)
Value to adv. students: none .
Value to scholars: less than none.
Judge this book by its cover: not. Attractive cover hides printed pages that appear to be facsimiles of archaic, crammed-type pages from some bygone era.

Perhaps you think, 'Well, at least it's a cheap way to get a copy of the complete plays.' A few months of reading modern, respectable editions (e.g., from Routledge/Arden, Cambridge, or Oxford) for any popular Shakespeare play will help a newcomer realize that for almost all Shakespeare plays determining what is 'the text' is a vast conundrum; nay: an oxymoron. As with many aspects of Shakespeare study, 'tis not so easy: for most plays there are multiple alternative *original sources* - differing in important ways from each other. What sources did the editor of the Gramercy edition use? Well, if the publisher does not deem it necessary even to credit the editor's name in this volume or to acknowledge how outdated the editorial work is...

A better use of your money is to buy a modern edition of single plays. Even the inexpensive Folger Library paperbacks give beginners helpful definitions for difficult words. For those planning to dive deeply into the intricate weavings and unfathomed levels of meaning in these great works, save your money by shunning this bookcase-worthy-only printing, and seek out a complete edition such as the Arden(Routledge) with helpful annotation on difficult words or the respected Riverside edition, or (best for real literature students) David Bevington's excellently edited volume (extremely helpful overviews offered for each play). (A used copy of a Bevington edition from the 1980s is worth a truckload of these 1900ish Gramercy printings.)

I regret spending even these few minutes to review the most INadequate version of Shakespeare available, but am aggravated to it by the high Amazon sales ranking for this edition - which suggests that thousands of unsuspecting buyers are throwing money away. Worse yet, once they have their copies they will be discouraged from exploring the grandeur of the plays because of this archaic, alienating, barren reprint. Most will open the book a few times, quickly put it away, and stick to Hollywood productions.

Ignore the respected name 'Random House' on these books and attend to the qualifier 'Value Publication' and its alias 'Gramercy Books'. We are not amused. The buyer is abused.

Many reviews below fault this edition for its complete lack of footnotes, indications of what text was used, or any other background material of any kind. They have a point, but I still disagree with their criticism. The edition's lack of these materials does not render it useless. On the contrary. I own several Shakespeare editions (among them Bevington, Riverside, and most of the Ardens), and I have used them to study the works in depth. For me, this edition fills a real need: direct, unmediated access to the text analogous to hearing it read out loud. Having the Bard's complete output in one physically manageable volume (the Riverside is much too big - try putting it in your briefcase to read on the train!) unencumbered by any extraneous writing such as footnotes allows me to focus completely on the text and avoid getting distracted by the footnotes. Reading Shakespeare from this book has really changed my perspective on many of the plays because I can enjoy the uninterrupted flow of the narrative, similar to a reading out loud. One might object that I could simply skip the footnotes of the other editions. But it's not that simple. By their very presence, footnotes have, in my view at least, something disempowering. It's not me encountering the text; rather, it's me respectfully approaching something of which I'm not quite worthy. That's a fine attitude, and I'm all for it when you get to know the plays. But having dug through them, I find it a wonderful experience to encounter the "pure" text (I know that's ultimately an illusion) and enjoy it without someone trying to teach at the same time. If there's a textual crux or a term I can't understand or some historical background I want to brush up on, I can always look it up in one of my annotated editions. This edition, by its very simplicity, has really rekindled my enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Last but not least, having all of Shakespeare's texts in one small volume allows me to flip quickly to another play to look something up or spot cross-connections. That can be very interesting. In short, this admittedly simple and perhaps not completely reliable edition has truly enriched my reading of Shakespeare.

The very idea of reviewing or giving stars to Shakespeare in this format is superfluous: he is the epitome of English literature. The source and inspiration for many subsequent classics, the well from which many popular expressions have sprung, the basis for many brilliant (and not-so-brilliant) stage and film renditions of these classics -- Shakespeare's literary greatness lies universally ackwnoledged and unquestioned. In reviewing any edition of the man's works, then, the reviewer's task is not to comment upon the work itself, but the presentation. This Gramercy edition of The Complete Works (yes, that's all 37 plays -- comedies, histories, and tragedies -- as well as all of the poems, sonnets included) is the most popular and widely-available -- and inexpensive -- version available. Is it the best? Well, no. Other reviews of this edition have commented upon its shortcomings -- extremely small print; very tight and hard-to-read layout; no margins for notes; no footnotes or annotations; no background information on the plays; errors, typos, and generally questionable editing. That said, this edition may have what you're looking for. It does indeed contain the complete works; it also has a few other small incentives: a hard cover that looks great on a bookshelf, a built-in bookmarker, and various illustrations. Clearly, this is not an omnibus for the Shakespeare scholar. If you want an edition of the bard for in-depth study or for academic use, you are better off buying more expansive editions of the individual plays themselves, with plenty of background info, notes, annotations, and space for your own writing; or else one of the more expensive editions of the Complete Works. That said, if you are just looking for a Shakespeare book that has all of his works in one place, that is convenient and, above all, inexpensive -- or you just want a Shakespeare tome sitting on your dust-ridden bookshelf to impress friends -- then you could do worse than picking up this.

I am a professional actor and teacher of Shakespeare. This is a vastly inferior edition of Shakespeare's complete works. There is no room in the margins for making notes. There are no footnotes to aid the reader with antiquated language and references. The binding is insubstantial and the gilding sticks to other pages. I picked this book up at a bookstore once and thought I would enjoy such a pretty and portable copy of Shakespeare's works. As soon as I opened my copy of the book, I immediately returned the book to the bookstore. I found misspellings and errors and the type was so tight, I found the text difficult to read. Try to save your money for the Riverside Shakespeare (a book you and your family will enjoy for years, mine is 25 years old) and use the Folger if you need to by one play at at time, but go to the library for your Shakespeare before wasting your money on this piece of junk. The notes are helpful and aid in the enjoyment of the text. Avoid this book!

I originally bought this book used and later discovered that this was the ideal situation. It is handy to have all of Shakespeare's works (plays and sonnets) under one cover, but there are several drawbacks. Each page is split into two columns, causing the plays to be read like a newspaper. Since linebreaks are important in Shakespeare (remember the iambic pentameter), some lines are too long for the margins, causing the remaining words to hover like ghosts away from the sentence.

Also, this book contains no footnotes. This is mainly how buying the individual play is superior to the collected works. Olde English isn't always intuitive, and this particular book leaves you to find out a word's meaning for yourself.

But this book certainly looks pretty on your shelf. :)

There are, obviously, pros and cons to buying any book. This edition of the complete works of Shakespeare is no different. Of course, Shakespeare is great no matter what the binding of the book looks like, but I would really hesitate to purchase a single book containing the complete works, if you're buying for everyday reading. I find that such large volumes are awkward, hard to hold and really thick. My personal collection of Shakespeare's works consists of single-work paperback volumes, not lovely to look at, but functional. Someday I hope to buy a set of the complete works in hardcover, but when I do, I'll look for a set, not a single book. However, if you're looking for the complete works in a compact package, this book is for you.

To buy an unannotated Shakespeare volume like this, where even the quality of the text is in doubt, is a pure waste of money. Anyone who feels it is good enough to buy an unannotated text should at least make sure to get a good, well-edited one: for example, a second-hand copy of Peter Alexander's edition (the so-called "Tudor Edition", originally published by Collins in 1951). The text prepared by Alexander remains one of the very best.

It really does matter what text one buys, as various editions differ greatly in the quality of what they produce. It is by no means the case that all editions of Shakespeare offer the same text, as one would expect if one bought a work by a modern author. Furthermore, it is impossible to read Shakespeare - even if you are a specialist in Renaissance literature - without plenty of help, none of which is supplied in this edition. A good edition, like that produced by David Bevington, or the Riverside, will contain the following helpful components as a minimum: a comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare and his work generally; reasonably full analytical/interpretative introductions to individual works; lists of further reading (referring the reader to other helpful commentators); and above all - most essentially - useful explanatory notes on words, phrases, and sentences difficult to understand. Of these there are a great many. Anyone who approaches Shakespeare as a modern reader without knowledgde of the language of his period will soon find all sorts of words and grammatical usages that obviously are no longer current. But even more treacherous are those many instances of words that LOOK the same, but MEAN something very different, as a result of the fact that the meaning of words changes over time.

For all these reasons, then, readers should spend their money on a value-for-money buy, whether new or second-hand, and not waste it on a worthless volume of this nature. If you don't want to buy a well-annotated one-volume Shakespeare, buy well-annotated editions of individual works - e.g. those belonging to the Arden series, or the Oxford Shakespeare, or the New Cambridge.

These reflections are not, of course, criticisms of Shakespeare as an author, but purely of a useless edition like this. ...

To the person who said Shakespeare is over-rated, I don't think the person knows how to read it while understanding his work. Shakespeare's plays are beautifully written and are pure classics. I am a younger person, but definitely know how to appreciate his work.

The Peter Alexander Text of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare is a great addition to any personaly library of the student of Shakespeare. However, the format is not satisfactory, with very limited margins and the typesetting is a bit small. This edition would be a great one if the format is improved.

Brian Kendig's previous review says it all, but I wanted to add a caveat to a still-potential buyer: the text is so incredibly condensed that the endings of some of the longer lines are scrunched up in awkward brackets in the white space above, making for a disjointed reading of an already unapproachable edition. (Please read the previous review--it's quite helpful.)