The Riverside Shakespeare (2 vol) [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

G. Blakemore Evans (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0395858224 | ISBN-13: 978-0395858226 | Publication Date: April 15, 1997 | Edition: 109

After more than a generation and despite its many imitators, The Riverside Shakespeare remains the Shakespeare of choice for scholars and general readers alike. Recently revised to reflect the last quarter century of literary scholarship, it is now available in a deluxe edition - two volumes, bound in full cloth, in a handsome, four-color slipcase. The new, revised version of The Riverside Shakespeare retains all the features that made the first edition so popular - the invaluable notes, the wide-ranging introduction, and the brilliant critical prefaces to the individual works. Additions include the history play Edward IIIand the poem "A Funeral Elegy," both recently claimed for Shakespeare by computer-aided textual analysis. The original appendices have been updated and expanded and are joined by two new essays, "Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Criticism" and "Shakespeare's Plays in Performance: From 1970," the latter accompanied by eight pages of full-color photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This gorgeous, boxed, two-volume set includes the bard's full canon of plays supplemented with 50 illustrations as well as 40 pages of color and black-and-white plates, critical prefaces to each work, detailed notes on the texts, and many other goodies. This second edition also includes Edward III and "A Funeral Elegy," which scholars now believe to be written by old Will, as well as new essays on stage history and criticism. The appendixes, chronologies, and bibliographies have also been updated. Simply superb.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Evans currently resides in Cambrige, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 2096 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 109 edition (April 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395858224
• ISBN-13: 978-0395858226
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 3.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,051,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Edition, June 21, 2000

By 

Kerry Reilly - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)

While I sympathize somewhat with the review below -- the introductions do quibble a bit over the differences between Folio and Quarto versions, the exact source material etc. -- I found this to be an excellent version of the complete works. The essay before each play is very helpful toward understanding the literary context of the play--they _do_ talk about the characters and the action of the play, in a way that nicely complements the text. The illustrations (some black and white, some color) are also interesting and helpful. The book contains both a general introduction, which is accessible, if slightly daunting, to a reader who might not be intimately familiar with all of the plays, serving to excite interest at least. It also contains an essay on 20th century Shakespeare criticism, which introduces many of the newer movements in Shakespeare criticism that are not included in the general introduction (which focuses more on the Elizabethan historical period, and more immediate reactions to the plays). The footnotes, while they are not indicated on the line itself, are located on the same page. In looking at several other editions, I found that footnotes were sometimes actually endnotes--i.e. located in one section at the end of the play, which would be very disruptive to reading. Happily, this is not the case in this edition.

The book, as the title claims, includes all of Shakespeare's plays, Sonnets, and poems. The appendices include many other interesting tidbits that help shine some light on old Billy's life, including his will, in which he enigmatically bequeathed a "second-best bed" to his wife. Other documents are included, often with explanations to help the reader to understand (as the documents are printed verbatim, the Elizabethan spelling and punctuation is a slight impediment).

Overall, I found this to be the best of the paperback and hardcover editions I examined.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most complete edition of the Bard and a superb companion, September 25, 2000

By 

an Italian customer (Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)

This one-volume edition of Shakespeare's works is the most complete I found on the market: it includes "The Two Noble Kinsmen", Shakespeare's addition to "Sir Thomas More" (with photographical reproduction of the pages believed to be in his handwrite), the currently hot debated poem "A Funeral Elegy by W. S." and, above all, "The Reign of King Edward III", a new play recently accepted in the canon by many authoritative editors (Arden, Cambridge, Oxford). The text of each work is carefully edited and accompanied by helpful glossarial notes, a textual discussion with short bibliography, and an impressive collation which allows the reader to find variant readings and emendations. An exhaustive critical introduction precedes each play and poem, dealing with authorship, date, sources, textual differences between quarto and folio texts, and of course the principal thematic issues. What makes this a superb edition - and indeed a real "companion" to Shakespeare studies! - is the great amount of subsidiary material, including a general introduction - focusing on Shakespeare's life, art, language, style, and on the Elizabethan historical and theatrical background - and a series of useful essays on various themes: critical approaches to the plays and poems, philological issues, history of the plays on the stage, television and cinema. There are also many interesting documents, synoptic tables, glossaries, indexes, illustrated tables (both coloured and b&w) , the reproduction of the introductory pages of the First Folio of 1623, and a rich bibliography. I personally consider this book a must have for every teacher, scholar, or simply amateur of the greatest of all poets. Buy it!

115 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid if limited edition, September 11, 2001

By 

Joost Daalder "Joost Daalder" (South Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Riverside Shakespeare (2 vol) (Hardcover)

I would not myself prescribe this edition if I needed to choose one for, say, a year-long course on Shakespeare, but it is respectable and valuable nonetheless, and I have never minded my students using it. In comparison to the Norton, it is far more sensible, level-headed, and sharper in its selection of what is relevant to the needs of most readers. It offers help in a way that for example the Oxford unannotated Complete Works does not. The level of scholarship is usually very sound, in all areas. However, the edition lacks the required intellectual life, to my mind, which it should have and which I find in David Bevington's edition (and, despite some perversities, in the Norton); it is in some ways a bit perfunctory, unenterprising, and not sufficiently incisive in its insights. This is also an edition which at times unduly tends to favour the interests of academics over those of ordinary readers. The text, notably, preserves a number of features which are quite unnecessarily archaic to a modern reader. Who benefits from being faced with such spellings as "bumbast" rather than "bombast"? The introductions are more often useful or predictable than truly engaging, and the explanatory notes are in several places not as informative as they should be. Even so, this is an edition of considerable merit, and one that those who for some mysterious reason do not wish to buy David Bevington's excellent edition would probably be best served by. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia