The Merry Wives of Windsor (The Pelican Shakespeare) - Softcover

William Shakespeare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140714642 ISBN 13: 9780140714647

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel
 
The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come.
 
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

Book Description:

Like every other play in the Cambridge School Shakespeare series, The Merry Wives of Windsor has been specially prepared to help all students in schools and colleges. This version aims to be different from other editions of the play. It invites you to bring the play to life in your classroom through enjoyable activities that will help increase your understanding. You are encourage to make up your own mind about the play, rather than have someone else's interpretation handed down to you. Whatever you do, remember that Shakespeare wrote his plays to be acted, watched and enjoyed.

From the Back Cover:

According to legend, Queen Elizabeth I was so delighted with the character of Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts I and II, that she commanded Shakespeare to create a romantic comedy depicting the jolly old rogue in love. The obedient playwright responded with The Merry Wives of Windsor, a lively and enduring farce that offers a humorous rebuff to lechery and hypocrisy.
Falstaff, whose greed and vanity overwhelm his good sense, determines to seduce a pair of well-to-do country housewives. The portly knight meets his match among the gentlewomen of Windsor, however, who counter his every stratagem with witty maneuvers of their own that expose Sir John's tomfoolery to public mirth. Familiar Shakespearean themes and devices—romance, jealousy, disguises, and mistaken identities—enrich the plot, along with a sparkling cast of supporting characters, including rival wooers, informers, and witty go-betweens.
Dover (2014) unabridged republication of a standard edition.
See every Dover book in print at
www.doverpublications.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0140714642
• ISBN 13: 9780140714647
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Editor: Russ McDonald