Customer Reviews

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Anyone wanting to quickly and cheaply collect all 39 of Shakespeare's palys can rely on this edition, an inexpensive, barebones Shakespeare. Those seeking in-depth study should be forewarned, the texts are not annotated at all...even difficult words have to be looked up in the glossary in the back. The typical scholarly introductory materials found in the preface and apendices is largely absent. And to top it off, the type is printed in a dark gray ink, instead of black: not that easy to read. Scholars and students should look elsewhere.

Update: After using this text in the classroom, I would downgrade my rating to one star. The binding is hardcover, but the its quality is inferior. Out of ten students in the course, three had books that were falling apart after just two months.

This new edition of Oxford's standard anthology of Shakespeare's works has been expanded to include a new general introduction and introduction to each work, an essay on Shakespeare's language, and a new user's guide, among other original features. This favorably reviewed new edition of a classic is a superb way for libraries to provide attractive access to all of Shakespeare's works and introduce these classics to today's readers. (South Texas Library System summary)
For individuals, I'd recommend getting each work in a separate volume, preferably one with more notes on each play. When I studied Shakespeare in college, having an annotated edition really opened up the writing to me.

There are many editions of The Bard on the market, some very expensive and others fairly cheap. Students of Shakespeare at the high school or early university level would be better getting the individual play or plays being studied, rather than the entire corpus of Shakespeare, which is very long (about 1500+ pages including the Sonnets), though for serious lovers of literature and English majors, a compilation such as this is pretty much essential.

The Oxford Shakespeare includes all of the main works, the sonnets, and also notes and introductions. If you need to study an individual play, I would recommend getting the Arden Shakespeare or the Oxford Shakespeare series, which have each individual play accompanied with excellent scholarly notes and decent introductions, but this edition is more useful for reading for pleasure (which is easy to do with Shakespeare) or for private study.

This version is fairly accessible and affordable, and worth adding to your collection if you are a fan of Shakespeare.

The general editors, those being Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor and John Jowett, have become, thanks to this project, sort of superstars in the world of Shakespeare criticism, for better and worse. In this review I shall first take my stand against the discrepancies in the performance critical approach practiced by the editors, partly influenced by my reading of Lukas Erne's excellent Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, which I shall refer to and recommend to each reader who is serious about Shakespeare. Then I shall proceed to the edition itself, apart from its textual content, but rather give my evaluation of matters concerning printing, layout, et cetera.

Let me begin with what I think is wrong in the editors' motifs. My issues with the Oxford edition are several, most of which have been elegantly expressed in Lukas Erne's groundbreaking and paradigm-shattering Shakespeare As Literary Dramatist (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Firstly, they argue that they have "devoted [their] efforts to recovering and presenting texts of Shakespeare's plays as they were acted in the London playhouses" (General Introduction, xxxvii.) This requires a tremendous leap of faith from any reader, however blindly following the now-fashionable paths of performance criticism. The problem is, and this is one of the theses elaborately argued by Erne, that they fail to see Shakespeare as a literary dramatist, that Shakespeare only exists on and for the stage. Any reader of Shakespeare with any common sense should disagree, and I advice you see Erne's book on the subject of the length of Elizabethan plays, which convincingly argues that Shakespeare's plays were too long in their literary form (the 1605 Q2 Hamlet, for example) to be performed. I simply cannot embrace the idea that, firstly, they would ever be able to recover the texts to their "original" forms in the theater (abridged, as Erne argues and I believe, or not), and secondly, that these texts would be the texts that Shakespeare would have wanted us to read, that he did not intend them as literary artifacts. In the Textual Companion they admit that their editing policy, their "restoration", sometimes "requires the omission from the body of the text of lines that Shakespeare certainly wrote", yet then have the nerve to argue, of the lines omitted and removed to additional notes, that "[Shakespeare] and his company found that the play's overall structure and pace were better without them." (Textual Companion, 15) This is harmful, really, because I see no point in their grand endeavour, and what they do in the name of scholarship is disturbing - the question everyone should be asking is that "how could we ever know which parts were abridged for sure?", and "based on what evidence should we think that Shakespeare did not intend his plays to be exist both on stage and paper?"

The second problem I have with the editors is that they indeed assume that the plays, even such behemoths in length as "Hamlet" and "Antony and Cleopatra" were played on-stage as they stand (Textual Companion, 276): the Hamlet Folio at 3,537 lines is, as pointed out by Erne (2003:176-78) and Vickers (1999:404), still too long to be performed on stage in two or even three hours. This is not to argue that some of the cuts were not of artistic integrity, but to argue that a shorter text would somehow improve a play is absurd; it does in many occasions improve the dramatic plot, yet they may also confuse and take away from the characters. This problem is closely connected to that of deciding which passages have been cut, and the sheer nerve to argue that Shakespeare felt this and that is stunning and not as academically sound as people would like it to be. I disagree with their decision to print "Edward III" and "Sir Thomas More" or to change "Oldcastle" to "Falstaff"; it is true that Falstaff was most certainly originally named Oldcastle, yet what is almost as certain is that it was Shakespeare who made the change. Curiously the editors abandon the change we know Shakespeare himself presumably approved of (I do acknowledge that in the end no one knows), something that is amongst the clearest of evidence the Shakespeare scholars keep throwing at us. This is, I suppose, a matter of religion, and your religion in the Shakespearean world determines if it bothers you or not.

This is the end of my tirade concerning the editorial principles of the Oxford team. If you are not bothered with the principles as much as I am, you might want to hear whether it is worth buying for what it is worth. I will give my impressions, and you can, as a reasonable human being, either adhere or reject the advice that I wish to give in a friendly spirit. I will touch upon the following matters that I find crucial in the definition of a so-called "Collected Works": firstly, I do not mind about the size nor weight of the volume, yet if economy has been a conscious effort and goal of the editors, it should at least be acknowledged even if with dissatisfaction; secondly, whether the print is in one column or two; thirdly, what kind of supplemental material there is to the plays and culture; fourthly, how the plays themselves are annotated and glossed, and fifthly, how the edition is bound and how it fits in your hand.

Firstly, this is not a huge volume. It is economical in its size, and if you purchase your edition of Shakespeare on such grounds, this is a possible option. The intention has been to print a clean and rather small, budget volume, and this shows especially in how the text has been laid on the page, and this brings us to the second point. The print is small and on two columns, which I find very distracting; the Arden, albeit giving us excellently edited texts, suffers from this similar problem, although here the text has been crammed very close not only to the edges but to the gutter; the two-column Bevington (I can only vouch for the fifth edition) has sufficient space, I might add, yet Norton and RSC offer one column perpage, which not only clarifies but increases my reading pleasure. This is, after all, 1,344 pages in length. Compare this to the 3,392 pages of the Norton or the 2,552 pages of the RSC. In the margins there is barely any space for personal annotation. Bevington gets the two-column layout right whilst providing ample space not only for your pen but for your eye. Reading this might be daunting even for those who have read the plays through and know them by heart. Thirdly, this is not an edition to buy for lengthy supplemental materials nor glosses. There is a glossary at the back which is neither exhaustive nor useful if you need an edition that glosses at the same page. The grandson of this edition, the Norton, does this the best by glossing at the same line (this is not as intrusive as it may sound, thanks to the single-column layout). This is more for reference than study.

The sixth point is the binding and overall reading experience considering how it fits in your hand. This is a rather small edition yet a hefty one, and as someone who has not spent time with this volume on the road, I cannot vouch for neither way. It is dreadful to read, I know that much, and not very comfortable in my hands because the text runs so close to the gutter; as has already been pointed out in one customer review, this makes it uncomfortable to either read without opening the spine and the pages up to 180 degrees or more, and my volume does not lie too comfortably on the table by itself being open.

The Collins Shakespeare might be the best portable Shakespeare I know of, and it gives you a wondrously edited text by Peter Alexander. But if you are looking for a Complete Works that you do not require to follow you whenever you go jogging, by all means acquire for example the RSC, the Bevington (now in its sixth edition as of autumn 2008) or the Riverside (in its second edition as of 1996). The Oxford Shakespeare, now in its second edition, I would give 2 1/2 stars if I were permitted. I believe three would be too generous of me and against my better judgment. Thus, I shall settle with two stars only.


Bibliography*:

Erne, L. 2003. Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist. Cambridge University Press.
Vickers, B. 1999. (ed.) English Renaissance Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press.
Wells, S., G. Taylor, J. Jowett, W. Montgomery. 1988. William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press.

* I do not link these because I am not allowed to have more than ten links per review, leaving the Bibliography incomplete.

With best regards,
Antti

You will thoroughly enjoy this all-in-one beautiful volume which is meant to delight not study.

Almost two decades after the original "The Oxford Shakespeare:The Complete Works", this second edition is a much improved version compiled by world's leading authorities.

It comes with updated helpful and handy information which includes an essay on the language of Shakespeare, a User's Guide and suggested further readings plus an illuminating General Introduction and a brief introduction to each work, an index of Shakespearean characters, a glossary, a consolidated bibliography, index of first lines of the Sonnets and much more. The two plays "The Reign of Edward III "and "Sir Thomas More" which are officially recognised as authentic works by Shakespeare are also included in the volume for the first time. Highly recommended for home and library.

I own and have read thousands of books, and this Oxford edition of Shakespeare's complete works is by far the worst bound book I have ever come across. I had pages falling out of my copy within days of using it. Oxford University Press should be ashamed for binding this book so badly. If you want the text of the Oxford edition, then buy the hardcover Norton Shakespeare, which uses the text of the Oxford edition. Better yet, check out the RSC Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen and published by Modern Library.

The 1598 loss of their theater's lease should have been a major blow to the Lord Chamberlain's Men, one of Elizabethan England's premier acting troupes, who had gained even more popularity by teaming up with one Will Shakespeare, a Warwickshire glover's son come to London some six years earlier in pursuit of his Muse, leaving behind a wife and three children; daughter Susanna, born but seven months into his marriage, and twins Hamnet and Judith, who'd followed two years later. Yet, what to another company might have spelled "present death" only brought greater fame and fortune to the one boasting, in addition to Master Shakespeare's talents, those of Richard Burbage: not only a superb tragedian but also his troupe's financier and, together with brother Cuthbert, happily able to afford the construction of a new theater in Bankside, on the opposite side of the River Thames. Prophetically, the company named their new home "The Globe" and endowed it with a motto which, in approximate translation, audiences of one of the first plays produced there -- "As You Like It" -- would soon also hear pronounced from the stage, and which sums up the essence of the Bard's plays better than anything else: "Totus mundus agit histrionem" -- "All the world's a stage."

The new playhouse's name and motto were apposite not only because the era did indeed consider a stage a model of the world (the area above was referred to as heaven, the area below as hell, and characters would often appear accordingly: as such, Hamlet's father is heard crying "below [stage]" after his encounter with the Prince), but first and foremost because Shakespeare's plays themselves, individually as well as collectively, represent a microcosm of human relationships and behavior virtually unparalleled to this day: Laced with murderous schemes, revenge, and the search for justice, love, and peace of mind, but also comedy, all-too-human fallibility and great nobility of spirit, they delve into the human mind's darkest recesses and soar to its greatest heights; exploring greed, envy, ambition, guilt, remorse and pure evil, next to compassion, generosity, humility, innocence, fidelity, cleverness, boundless cheers and optimism; all interwoven in timeless plots unmatched in wit, variety, construction, and richness of characters.

Yet, for all this, the biggest difficulty remaining to modern editors and readers alike is that while Shakespeare himself didn't seek the publication of his plays, in the absence of anything approximating modern copyright laws, he was unable to prevent their publication by others, in so-called "quarto" editions, often based on unreliable transcripts made during or after a performance. Only after his death, in 1623, his former fellow-actors John Hemmings and Henry Condell published 37 of his plays "cured and perfect of their limbs" -- i.e., restored to their author's true intentions -- in a volume since referred to as the "First Folio."

Alas, authoritative weight though it has, even the latter doesn't conclusively answer what the Bard intended as the final version of these 37 plays. For one thing, research shows that even some of the Folio texts were edited by others; most prominently so "Macbeth," where Thomas Middleton inserted, inter alia, the witch queen Hecate as an additional character. Secondly, quarto editions of several plays published prior to the "First Folio" (especially of "Henry IV Part 2," "Hamlet," "Troilus and Cressida," "Othello," and "King Lear") are widely believed to represent earlier (or rival) drafts written by Shakespeare himself, and thus accorded considerable authoritative weight of their own. Often, these plays are therefore presented (both in print and on stage) by "conflating" both versions' texts. In the interest of purity, the editors of this particular volume have eschewed that approach, choosing instead to reproduce the Folio text throughout (with gently modernized spelling), because this was probably the text originally used on stage, and appending the passages most frequently added from the rivaling quartos at the end of the respective plays. Thus, this edition's reader will find Hamlet musing in "To be, or not to be" about "enterprises of great pith and moment" whose currents "turn awry and lose the name of action" (not "of great pitch and moment," as in the 1604 "Second Quarto"); he will, however, have to consult the appendix to find the Prince's reflections on that "stamp of one defect" so prominently featuring in Sir Laurence Olivier's movie, or his vows of "bloody thoughts" after encountering Fortinbras. Only in the case of "Lear," the editors chose to fully include both rivaling versions -- that of the First Folio and that of the 1608 quarto -- because here, the omission of entire scenes and reassignment of numerous pieces of dialogue essentially transforms the Folio text into a new play vis-a-vis the 1608 quarto.

Painstakingly researched and an obvious labor of love, this volume moreover restores the plays' original titles ("All Is True" instead of "Henry VIII," etc.), and also contains Shakespeare's long poems and sonnets, brief accounts on the lost plays ("Cardenio," "Love's Labour's Won"), and -- with appropriate caveats -- the texts of works of only partial/uncertain attribution, such as "The Two Noble Kinsmen," sundry poetry, and (for the first time) "Edward III," as well as the editorially and topically so problematic "Sir Thomas More." Background and supplemental materials include introductions to Shakespeare's life, career and language and on the Elizabethan theater, a user's guide, a list of contemporary references to the Bard, commendatory poems and prefaces of his works (including those of the "First Folio"), a glossary, an ample reading list, as well as a short introduction to each work. At well over 1000 pages a brick even in paperback format, this isn't the place to turn for a complete scholarly review of any given play -- for that, the reader is well-advised to consult this volume's "Textual Companion" or one of the many excellent editions of the individual plays -- but a marvelously-presented one-volume resource on the legacy of the playwright whose works, as already friendly rival Ben Jonson rightly prophesied, would last "for all time."

Also recommended:
William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford Shakespeare)
Shakespeare & Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story (Vintage)
Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare)
The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare: 38 Fully-Dramatized Plays
BBC Shakespeare Tragedies DVD Giftbox
Olivier's Shakespeare - Criterion Collection (Hamlet / Henry V / Richard III)
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Henry V
Richard III
Peter Brook's King Lear

Lack of glossary or footnotes, as well as scant (one-page) introduction to each play make this compilation more suited to the Shakespeare veteran than to the casual or even novice reader. I regret not checking out The Pelican Complete Shakespeare before buying this.

Though I admire the aims of The Oxford Shakespeare's editors and enjoy their text thoroughly, I am sorely disappointed by the binding on the present edition. It is not thoroughly sewn, but rather glued. Leaving the book open for extended periods of time (as in reading) results in splitting. The cover is unusually light and generally flimsy, succumbing easily to nicks and dents. For newcomers to Shakespeare, it is wholly impractical, as the glossary of archaic words is so insufficient it would best be left out completely. For general reading, go with Norton or Riverside. For individual editions, the Signet editions are probably penultimate to Folger library, the latter being notable for detailed summaries, notes, and supplimentary materials.

I have the earlier edition and unless they have greatly improved the printing and binding, I cannot recommend the second edition.

In the first edition, the text is tiny. My guess would be that it's 7 or 8 pt type and my weak, middle-aged eyes have a hard time reading it. Also, many times the printing is not complete and some of the words are impossible to read. The text is formatted in two columns and they push it so close to the gutter between pages that you have to grip the book tightly and pull it apart to see the text closest to the gutter. It can be quite tiring.

The book is also just too darn thick to read comfortably.

So far I've read only the three parts of Henry VI, which I enjoyed. I think I'll not read any more from this book. I've decided to buy each play individually instead.