Paperback of the Week in The Observer
© Copyright 2008. The Observer. All rights reserved.
Like many very good ideas, a collected Shakespeare in paperback is
such a remarkably simple one it's surprising it has not been done more
often before. Indeed, almost everything about this edition is
outstanding. To begin with, it's an attractively produced volume of the
plays based on the 1623 First Folio, the landmark Shakespeare edition.
Second, it's the work of two fine scholars who have harvested the
labours of many experts to produce an edition that contains the fruit
of the best contemporary research. Third, this exemplary text has
greatly benefited from the active involvement of the RSC, a company
whose recent work, notably Henry VI, under the direction of Michael
Boyd, has exhibited an almost obsessional devotion to the meaning of
Shakespeare's words in performance. Most important, and for all its
academic credentials, this new edition has also been produced for the
general reader, with one eye firmly on the school and university market.
And why not? Shakespeare was always a writer who, as a shareholder in the Globe theatre, understood the need to put bums on seats. So, as part of the prefatory material to each play, the reader gets not only a useful plot summary, but also some vital (and strangely interesting) statistics about the texts. For example, in The Merchant of Venice , this edition tells you that
13 per cent of the lines go to Shylock,
7 per cent to Antonio (the Merchant) and 22 per cent to Portia. Again, in Julius Caesar , it's interesting to discover that it's Brutus who has the lion's share (28 per cent), while Mark Antony (whom everyone remembers) gets just 13 per cent. As well as the kind of information that would suit a pub quiz, there are also some excellent mini essays on the historical background to the works, some reliable source summaries and an authoritative body of footnotes. The chronology of the Bard's creative life will no doubt enrage the Oxfordians, but to sensible people will simply confirm the astonishing creativity of our greatest writer.
As a bonus, this chunky paperback also includes the Sonnets and the Long Poems ( The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis ).
All's well: the Bard has been reborn.
According to Amazon UK, there is a difference in the dimensions between the two editions of The RSC Complete Works: 24 x 18.6 x 8 cm (hardback) vs. 23.2 x 17.8 x 5.6 cm (paper). What was done to make the new paperbound edition slimmer than the hardbound?
Posted by: Paul Wagner | July 28, 2008 at 05:28 AM