Customer Reviews

World of Shakespeare: The Complete Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (38 Volume Library)

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As someone who reads Shakespeare compulsively (2-3 plays per month on a rotating basis clear through the 37 extant works), I have been in the market for some time for an easily-manipulated and easy-to-read edition of Complete Works that can be taken in a backpack to work or to the beach. In this 38-Volume work I have found it!

Previously I was forced to lug around one of the complete editions (my favorite being the well-anotated one-volume Pelican), which meant carrying a bulky, expensive, and weighty 7 pound book with me. With this very handy, beautiful, and well-constructed Pelican edition I am able to carry one or two plays along with me on vacation and still have plenty of room to pack other books or items.

The Pelican apparatus is great (introductions and footnotes)--editors Orgel and Braunmuller have a fine eye for problems modern readers may encounter with 400 year old texts. However, the exclusion of "Venus and Adonis" and "Rape of the Lucrece" in a separate (39th) tome is odd and inexplicable. These poems, after all, are the only works that Shakespeare himself seems to have expressly authorized for publication.

This caveat aside: rush don't walk to get these books into your library. Then, like me, you'll be ready to settle down some lazy summer afternoon (or rainy October evening) to many "sweet sessions of silent thought" while reading through the greatest canon of dramatic and poetic writing in all of human history!

After reading previous reviews of this magnificent set here at Amazon, I was in one sense `sold' but with some remaining concerns. Now that I have received the set I see that it is all that others have said and more, and so I will address my previous worries here in the event that there may be some with similar questions. In short, let not your heart be troubled.

Although the astonishingly low price of $94.99 made the set a deal that I simply couldn't refuse, I have always been one to believe that you generally get what you pay for, and so this low price also caused me some concern. Having seen the publishing world being inundated with cheap Chinese printings of Western canon classics over the past few years, often stacked high at the `big box' stores and varying wildly in physical quality, I was of course worried that this would be of a similar caliber. I was delighted to find that the set is printed in the United States and the quality of the books is beyond reproach. The paper is bright and the text is crisp and clear, set in an easily legible and pleasing Garamond font at what appears to be approximately 12 point. Each volume has a bookmark ribbon bound into the spine and extending approximately three inches below the bottom of the book.

Each volume measures 8 ½ inches high and 5 5/8 inches deep. You will need a minimum of 26 ½ inches of linear shelf space for them all and UPS states the shipping weight as being 29 pounds.

Even at what must be an overwhelming time for Amazon's shipping and packing departments, the set arrived in three days despite my opting for the free `super saver' shipping (Ordered late December 26, arrived December 29). The books are first packed in the publisher's heavyweight original carton which is customized to the dimensions of the set and so it fits perfectly with the books in two rows separated by a corrugated cardboard divider. This carton was in turn placed in a much larger box by Amazon, with the voids well-filled with bubble wrap. If the outer box had been severely damaged in transit (which it wasn't) the inner box would still have had more than a fighting chance to retain its full protective integrity. My set arrived in perfect condition and I have nothing but compliments to Amazon for their fine efforts in this matter.

Thank you for giving your time to my thoughts, and I hope that these as well as the comments from others here might sway you toward bringing this marvelous collection into your home.

You won't be disappointed.

January 31, 2007 Update

To all readers,

I see that Amazon has raised the price of this set back up to $200.00, and I'm terribly sorry if my review, which was based in large measure upon the previous price of $94.99, has seemed confusing to you as a result. If the raised price is of a concern to you (which it would certainly be to me!) may I suggest that you bookmark this page and check back regularly? Prior to the $94.99 price the set was also in the neighborhood of $200. if my memory serves, and Amazon lowered the price sometime around December. This may be something that they do as a matter of marketing / policy and so it MAY be that if you are careful to check back regularly you may find that they have lowered the price again to coincide with a Holiday. I have no way of knowing this as a certainty of course, and so you must use your own judgement in this matter.

Best wishes and good luck to all value-minded Shakespeare fans,

Tony

The individual paperbacks are priced at $5.00 and $6.00 each. The full set (in hardbound) averages $3.94 a book. The text appears to be identical to the revised paperback edition. Having the plays in single volumes makes it easier to read them (see Al Pacino discussing this issue in Looking for Richard). This is a great deal for a great set.

This has got to be the bargain of the decade. Individually hard bound volumes in a 38-volume set of the Pelican Shakespeare for only $89.70, with free shipping to boot from Amazon. The set normally retails for $299, and having purchased the set myself, I can truly say I would not have felt cheated had I paid full price. The set is called World of Shakespeare: The Complete Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (38 Volume Library) (Hardcover).
World of Shakespeare: The Complete Plays and Sonnets of William Shakespeare (38 Volume Library)
The set contains all the plays, excluding Two Noble Kinsmen--wherein they agree with the single-volume Pelican Shakespeare second edition--and the Sonnets, but not the other non-dramatic poetry, which the single volume does contain. Why the editors chose to exclude the other non-dramatic poetry is not clear, unless it was simply volume-size considerations. Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint would perhaps have been too thin to place in their own volume, and added to the Sonnets would have made that volume too thick. Surely they could have been accommodated somewhere, however. This is the only complaint I have about this outstanding edition.

Each of the volumes are individually bound in navy cloth covers with silver stamped titles on front covers and spines. From the outside they are not things of great beauty, but serviceable and pleasant. They feel good in the hand, their covers giving them the substantiality the Pelican (and most other paperbacks) lack. They are tightly and attractively bound, with head ribbons, decorative endpapers (pale blue leaves on cream-colored paper) and long navy-blue ribbon place markers. The pages are attractive, with ample margins for note-taking (something I feel is essential in a Shakespeare) without binding the text too close to the gutter (a second essential). The paper is thick, off-white, and the type Adobe Garamond, the same as in the single volume Pelican Works, but larger and consequently more clear. Most single volume editions--and the Pelican is no exception--are printed on paper so thin that the image of the text bleeds through from the back of the page. Not so with these volumes where the paper is noticeably thicker. The real advantage of these volumes, however, is a single column layout. I dislike the two column layout of single-volume collected editions, and much prefer the single column layout followed by individually bound plays. Physically, then, these volumes are winners.

Each volume is printed with the same front matter: a illustrated front page (sometimes different than the one you will get in the single-volume Pelican); a "Publisher's Note" explaining the layout of the work and its apparatus; an article on Shakespeare's "Theatrical World"; a brief statement on "The Question of Authorship"; and an explanatory note on "The Texts of Shakespeare". These materials are valuable, and the same as you receive in the single-volume Pelican (which is in its second edition). I question the need to print this material in each volume, but of course since the volumes might be sold individually rather than in a set it must be so. It is too bad, though, that when purchased as a set a single volume could have been provided with these introductory materials in it once only, perhaps filled with the non-dramatic poetry I remarked on above. The only difference between the single volume edition and these is that in the single volume work there are some facsimile pages from the First Folio, and a couple of charts not present in the individually bound volumes.

The physical layout of the page I like very much. every tenth line is numbered, whether it has a gloss or not (and placed in italics when it does not have a gloss), but lines containing glosses are also numbered in the right margin. This is a great solution to the problem of adding numbered footnotes or symbols within lines. Rather than lines bristling with superscripted daggers, stars or other wingdings we get in these volumes a clean, undistracted line with an indicator to our eye when it reaches the end of the line about whether a gloss exists or not. The glosses are mostly straightforward, rarely extensive, and mostly used to define obscure terms with a minimum of editorializing. Location indicators have also been removed from the heads of scenes, but, for those who want them, are moved to the first annotation in each scene. Speech prefixes are fully spelled out (a blessing to new students and a luxury for old). They are placed above each line of speech unless the line is a continuation of the one above, in which case they are placed on the same line as the continued speech.

The article on "The Theatrical World" is practical and straightforward, placing Shakespeare's works in the economic system professional theatres between 1590 and 1620. A brief glance is taken back at the development of the professional companies, and then the conditions of acting and play writing for the professional companies is addressed. London, we are told, had a population of between 150,000 and 200,000 during Shakespeare's career, and when the theatres were permitted to play (which was always except for notable gaps for plague and Lent) approximately 10% of the city's population would attend a play each week. It's a good guess, but only a guess. Not much attention is paid to touring. The use of properties and effects within the theatre are covered (visual effects, sound effects, scenery, props, music); the role of women--or rather boys playing women is discussed; and a longish section on the children's companies is also provided. It is brief, but to the point, concluding by recommending more thoroughgoing studies by Bentley, Chambers, and, of course, Andrew Gurr.

The article on "William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentlemen" is commendably brief and clear. It takes the tack that "...we know more about Shakespeare's life than we do about almost any other English writer's of his era," which is true and often forgotten in our lust to know ever more. The article reviews the bare, documented facts of births, baptisms, marriages, occupations, children and grandchildren, on through the direct documents dealing with Shakespeare's career: the Greene-Chettle episode, the payments to Shakespeare as a chief sharer in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men, the coat-of-arms, property purchased (New Place, the Blackfriar's Gatehouse, Stratford fields and tithes), Palladis Tamia, the Mountjoy testimony, Rutland's impresa, finally death and the will: Clear, concise, compelling.

A note is provided on "The Question of Authorship", and few saner notes will be found anywhere. It reviews the history of some of the more prominent hair brained attributions--those of Delia Bacon and J. Thomas Looney (Baconian and Oxfordian, respectively)--and notes that authorship attributions tend to gain momentum "among people whose conviction was the greater in proportion to their ignorance of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, history, and society." It is hard to say it better. The article goes on, "The Baconians, the Oxfordians, and supporters of other candidates have one trait in common--thy are snobs. Every pro-Bacon or pro-Oxford tract sooner or later claims that the historical William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon could not have written the plays because he could not have had the training, the university education, the experience, and indeed the imagination or background their author supposedly possessed." The arguments are all too familiar and all to fallacious. The editors put end to the article with this: "Besides snobbery, one other quality characterizes the authorship controversy: lack of evidence. A great deal of testimony from Shakespeare's time shows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays and that his contemporaries recognized them as distinctive and distinctly superior." QED.

The article on "The Texts of Shakespeare" reviews the history of various printed works attributed to Shakespeare, the quartos and then the Folio of 1623. The issues of the famous variants are discussed, particularly Lear, Hamlet, Othello and Troilus and Cressida. The article points out that Shakespeare, because of his popularity and the unique nature of his contribution, was far more popular than his peers: "...most of the playwrights of Shakespeare's time were as anonymous as most screenwriters are today." And really, it was because of his poetry--primarily the two long narrative poems--that he was so well known, that and his smash, irresistible box office hits like Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. In our own day we might remember that William Faulkner was one of the screenwriters of the 1946 The Big Chill, but we would be hard pressed to identify the other two. Shakespeare was unique in his own day because he was so well known (publishers often attached his name to works not his own hoping to take advantage of the sales power of the name, or the bare initials); he was among the leading sharers of his company ("literally his own boss"); and he was, in his acting days, a well known actor also. The article on the texts ends with an eye opening comparison of the quartos of Romeo and Juliet, concluding "There is in fact no early text that reads as our modern text does...The transcendently beautiful passage [the rose by any other name speech] in modern editions is an editorial invention..."

The general editors of the Pelican Shakespeare are Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller. The contributing editors are among the best and brightest, including John Hollander, Russ McDonald and Frances Dolan. The introductions to each play (and the sonnets) in these collected, individually bound volumes are the same as in the single-volume Pelican edition. I must confess a soft spot for the first single-bound Pelican edition, under the general editorship of the great Alfred Harbage. It does my heart good to read, in this second edition, "New introductions and notes have been provided in all the volumes. But the new Shakespeare is also designed as a successor to the original series; the previous editions have been taken into account, and the advice of the previous editors has been solicited where it was feasible to do so." That is a remarkable statement, one that should inspire confidence in the healthy conservatism and scholarly foundation of these editions. The previous editors include such greats as Cyrus Hoy, Fredson Bowers, R. C. Bald, David Bevington, G. Blakemore Evans, G. E. Bentley, Charlton Hinman, Maynard Mack, Harry Levin, Robert Heilman, Northrup Frye (!), and even Richard Wilbur. Those are stars among stars, amounting to quite a lineup. The new edition has much to live up to. From what I've seen so far, it has.

One last point. I can't quite get over it: for price and value this edition is phenomenal. The thirty-eight hard bound volumes of this quality edition are being offered for a total of $89.70. That's $2.36 per volume. When was the last time you were able to acquire a new, quality hardback--in this case an exceptional scholarly investment as well--at such a price? Even the individually bound Pelican paperbacks are priced at $5 or $6 each, themselves being a special value in the paperback market. The trade Folger editions go for $7.95, the Arden second and third series paperbacks for $13.99 and the New Cambridge paperbacks for $15.99. You could buy the single-volume Pelican collected works in hardback discounted at Amazon to $40.95, but how much more convenient to have the same editions with the same editors and notes, in individually hardbound books for $2.36 apiece. It is an extraordinary value. I highly recommend it.

This is the best available edition of Shakespeare's work.

+It's hard bound in good plain cloth, not snobby leather;
+the text is handsomely layed out and easy to read;
+the footnotes are informative without getting in the way of the text;
+at $3.95 per volume, the collection is a bargain;
+the covers and end pages are blue, my favourite colour;
+sturdy construction ensures the collection will last a few decades (but at this price, I doubt it's printed on acid free paper)*;
+individual volumes for each play are easier to carry around than a single volume "Complete Works".


Caveats

-The collection is so pretty you won't want to write in the margins (doesn't everyone take notes?);
-the collection takes up much more shelf space than a single volume edition;
-individual volumes for each play means that the collection will be dismembered by friends and family borrowing their favourite plays. (But be selfish, don't lend these!)


It's also worth getting a single volume edition of the works. It will be useful as a reference and that way you can be sure to have a copy available if one of your plays goes missing.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

*I was wrong! It _is_ printed on acid free paper. Wow! Thanks to James Smith for pointing out that fact as stated in the editorial review.

VP, Tokyo, 30 April 2009

These books are of much higher quality than you might expect from the price: good, sewn bindings; good, if not quite excellent quality paper; nice decorative end-papers; sewn in ribbon for marking your place. They open nicely and just feel good in your hands. On top of that, these are, as described, the most recent Pelican Shakespeare editions, which is to say that they are well edited, with good introductions and helpful, though not cumbersome or intrusive notes. The paperback edition of these works are listed on Amazon (search for 'pelican shakespeare') and allow you to see what the pages look like. I appreciate, for instance, that character names are fully spelled out, unlike some editions. I read the reviews here, placed my order, and I'm delighted with the books and quite frankly amazed at the value.

I had been trying to find a way to really enjoy and learn from Shakespeare who is without a doubt the world's greatest writer in what is my second perusal of Shakespeare since my days as an English major in college.
I have tried the Oxford world classics which in some cases are too big and very hard to underline and make notes.
The Everyman's series is separated into volumes of plays which average 600 pages and are easy to read in the middle but difficult to read the first and last plays due to the layout of the volumes.
I really like this series and it is the best layout for actually reading for enjoyment and for underlining and making notes. Perfect for students and general readers.
The ONLY drawback is that it does not contain the narrative poems other than the sonnets nor The two noble kinsmen which Shakespeare cowrote and is usually included in his cannon.

These are quite simply beautiful books. There is little I can add to previous reviews regarding the price, &c., but a few words of praise are in order for the texts themselves. The editors have prepared superb notes: never intrusive, condescending, or pedantic (ala Christopher Ricks), the footnotes concisely address only the more unusual syntactic constructions, topical allusions, and cultural references. In other words, the reader need not waste time looking up every note unless he feels so inclined, in the which case he will most likely be well-served.

The introductions to each edition are slightly variable. Each volume includes the same very concise, very cursory overview of Elizabethan theater and Shakespeare's background. Textual variants are also briefly acknowledged. Some editors, particularly Peter Holland, deserve credit for then writing introductions that remain not only informative but also entertaining in their own right. Other scholars, of course, are a bit more prosaic and perhaps not the best writers themselves. Yet even these remain accessible, and a fine introduction need not always be especially well-written. I suppose the breadth of professional Shakespearean scholarship must also be daunting for anything but a general orientation to each work.

These volumes do not rank beside scholarly editions (Norton, &c) in terms of critical apparatus or analysis. That said, they are perfect for simply reading as well as being very beautifully, very gracefully presented. The series cannot be praised enough for accomplishing what it sets out to do.

I was hesitant to place my order, despite my interest in acquiring a readable set of Shakespeare's plays in individual volumes, because of concerns about the quality of such a low-priced set. Having just received the set, I am delighted that I took the leap.

The set is remarkable in quality, particularly given the price paid. The linen bindings are spartan but solid-feeling, the paper is a high-quality heavy stock, and the generous page formatting resembles a large trade paperback format. The volumes include introductory notes and typical vocabulary footnotes. As some have indicated, the set is not truly complete, but this was a very minor concern to me.

Overall, this was been the most satisfying book purchase I have made in a very, very long time. If you are having any doubts about the set's contents or formatting, I would encourage you to go for it. I have been looking for a set like this for years, and while you could find editions with more luxurious bindings, more scholarly notes, etc, this set presents the texts in an attractive, portable, and seemingly durable format that I expect will serve you well if your interest is in a high-quality reading copy.

You will simply not find a better value, and for my needs, there is no better set at any price.

The reviews encouraged me to buy this series, and I'm very glad I did. I've read a number of different Shakespeare editions; my favorite had been the Folger. But these books are luxurious, and comparing one to a Folger proves the quality of the paper and the clear, easy-to-read text. At the $89 price - and even higher - these volumes are a rare bargain.