Collins Complete Works of Shakespeare - Hardcover

William Shakespeare

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007208308 ISBN 13: 9780007208302

Publisher: HARPER COLLINS 0 PUB, 2006

Synopsis

This single-volume edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare includes commissioned introductions to each of the plays and poems by a team of academics, including John Jowett and Philip Hobsbaum, with a textual introduction by the Shakespearean scholar Alec Yearling explaining the significance of the Alexander edition. This volume also includes a biography of Shakespeare by Germaine Greer and an introduction to Shakespeare's theatre by Anthony Burgess.

About this title

About the Author:

The mystery of Shakespeare's rise to literary eminence is demonstrated by the fact that his suspected parents were illiterate. He was born on April 23rd 1564, and of the years that intervened between his christening and his appearance on the London stage, nothing is known. He must have gone at least to dame school, and from the age of six or seven to the King's New Grammar School. In the lower school he would have studied Latin. In the upper school he would have studied rhetoric and logic, Cicero, Quintilian, Ovid, Virgil and Horace and have begun the study of Greek. These studies were all the literary training that any Elizabethan poet received. In the 1590s there was no profession of letters. Poetry was practised as an accomplished pastime by gentlemen and scholars. It is therefore impossible to document with certainty Shakespeare's development from his birth to the publication of his poem Venus and Adonis in 1593. The only documented event in these years is the rather unconventional marriage of William Shakespeare, aged eighteen with Anne Hathaway, an heiress, six or seven years older and pregnant. The only other documentation we have before 1592 relates to the children Anne bore William; Susanna in May 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585. William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen, and produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. On April 23rd 1616, aged 52 years to the day, Shakespeare died and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

Review:

'A symbol in the history of our national culture' - The Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: HARPER COLLINS 0 PUB
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0007208308
• ISBN 13: 9780007208302
• Binding: Hardcover