Customer Reviews

Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Signet Classics)

5 star:		(8)
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Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are Shakespeare's greatest works. These fantastic stories, coupled with strong footnotes, make for superb reading material. I would recommend this book to beginning and master Shakespeare readers.

I ordered this book for my AP English class, and I love that it has all four of my favorite Shakespeares together. I like the typeface, the footnotes, everything. It's small enough to carry around in your purse. I recommend it for the pleasure-reader, student, or teacher. It's a great value, too.

Obviously, these are four of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies and well repay the time and efffort to become familiar with them. The volume itself is inexpensive, nicely sized, readable, reasonably durable, with more than ample footnotes (at the bottom of the page of text) to help the reader navigate some of the more obscure or difficult passages (though I found instances in which I thought the footnotes didn't do the text justice, and a better and less distracting format, albeit resulting in a larger text and more expensive edition, is to have the notes on the page facing the text). The introductory "essay" admittedly doesn't aim too high--what can you say in just a few pages? The bibliography is nicely organized and not bad as a starting point.
All in all, if you are looking for an edition to teach, or travel with, or read as a starting point, especially if you want something inexpensive that nonetheless gives you all you really need, this is a very nice edition. A reader who is already familiar with the plays and looking for a bit more by way of history, commentary, criticism, etc., would do better to seek out the Norton or Arden editions, or go to a collection like the Riverside Shakespeare, all of which offer a great deal more supplemental material.

This book of plays was perfect for my high school students and a great price. The text is a good font and the notes are very helpful.

My son needed this book for school. It was new as described. Thanks!

What else could you expect!

There isn't much to say...its exactly what you should expect when ordering Shakespeare...seriously.

Having a love of literature, and being an English Lit. major has given me the oportunity to read most of Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare's talent and genius has surely endured and his beautiful writings are essential to mankind not only in the classroom but throughout our lives. His tragedies speak the loudest to me, as they are charged with drama, emotion and memorable quotations. Having to choose a favorite book of all time I would say, "Othello." Yet Hamlet is my second favorite drama of Shakespeare's, and Macbeth also holds strong. I do not care for King Lear but having Shakespeare's 4 greatest and most popular tragedies in one book is a collection worth having.

4 of his best i strongly recomend this group of storys.