The Necessary Shakespeare (3rd Edition) - Softcover

Bevington, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0205652166 ISBN 13: 9780205652167

Publisher: Longman, 2008

Synopsis

A highly respected editor and Shakespearean scholar, David Bevington presents a brief version of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6/e wiih the new edition of The Necessary Shakespeare, 3/e.  The third edition addresses the two key issues confronted by students approaching Shakespeare today: a lack of knowledge about the historical period and difficulty with the language of Shakespeare's plays.  A richly illustrated general introduction offers insight into Shakespeare's England and background on the literary, social, and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote and produced plays. Each play is introduced by a descriptive essay designed to help students appreciate the historical contexts and interpretive issues raised by the play, without dictating students’ interpretations. Completely revised and updated notes and glosses support student readers line by line, paraphrasing Elizabethan expressions in clear and accessible contemporary language.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Necessary Shakespeare Third Edition David Bevington

“The Necessary Shakespeare distills the best, the most often read, and the most often produced of Shakespeare’s great plays. By publishing this selection in a compact paperback edition, my hope is to expose a new broader audience to the work of perhaps the greatest author in the history of the English language.”

–From the Preface, The Necessary Shakespeare, Third Edition

This remarkable volume comprises not only twenty-one of Shakespeare’s plays but also all of the sonnets, accompanied by a comprehensive General Introduction that addresses questions of context, language, and critical reception, and appendices that explore dates and alternate texts, sources, and Shakespeare in performance–an extraordinary and indeed necessary collection.

COMEDIES

The Taming of the Shrew
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Merchant of Venice
Much Ado About Nothing
As You Like It
Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will
Measure for Measure

HISTORIES

The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
The Life of King Henry the Fifth

TRAGEDIES

Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Othello, the Moor of Venice
King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra

ROMANCES

The Winter's Tale
The Tempest

POEMS

Sonnets

About the Author

David Bevington is an American literary scholar. He is Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. He taught drama at the University of Chicago, focusing on Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Jonson, Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, etc.), as well as medieval drama and then the entire sweep of Western drama from Aeschylus and Sophocles down to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard. In addition to courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, and medieval drama, he co-taught in Theater and Performance Studies ((variously with Heidi Coleman, Director of University Theater, John Muse, English  Department, and Drew Dir, resident dramaturg at Court Theatre) a two-quarter sequence called The History and Theory of Drama from the 5th century B.C. down to the present day. "One of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans," so called by Harold Bloom, he specializes in British drama of the Renaissance, and has edited and introduced the complete works of William Shakespeare in both the 29-volume, Bantam Classics paperback editions and the single-volume Longman edition. He also edits the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama and an important anthology of Medieval English Drama. Bevington's editorial scholarship is so extensive that Richard Strier, an early modern colleague at the University of Chicago, was moved to comment: "Every time I turn around, he has edited a new Renaissance text. Bevington has endless energy for editorial projects." In addition to his work as an editor, he has published studies of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the Stuart Court Masque, among others, though it is for his work as an editor that he is primarily known.

 

About this edition

• Publisher: Longman
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0205652166
• ISBN 13: 9780205652167
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 1152