Hamlet (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393929582 ISBN 13: 9780393929584

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

Hamlet, Shakespeare’s most famous play, is now available in an all-new, illustrated Norton Critical Edition.

This Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet features a newly edited text based on the Second Quarto (1604–05). It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and appendices providing important passages from both the First Quarto Hamlet (1603) and the Folio Hamlet (1623). Robert S. Miola’s thought-provoking introduction, “Imagining Hamlet,” considers this tragedy as it has taken shape in the theater, in criticism, and in various cultures.

“The Actors’ Gallery” presents famous actors and actresses―among them Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Kenneth Branagh, and Jude Law―reflecting on their roles in major productions of Hamlet for stage and screen. “Contexts” includes generous selections from the Bible, Greek (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) and Roman (Seneca) tragedies, Saxo Grammaticus, Dante, Thomas More, and Thomas Kyd.

“Criticism” reprints a wide range of historical and scholarly commentary including English critics (John Dryden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Johnson), European and Russian writers (Voltaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy), and Americans (John Quincy Adams, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln). Recent scholarly writing takes various approaches to Hamlet―mythic (Gilbert Murray), psychoanalytic (Ernest Jones), comparativist (Harry Levin), feminist (Elaine Showalter), and New Historicist (Stephen Greenblatt), among others.

An engaging selection of Hamlet’s “Afterlives” includes the seventeenth-century Der Bestrafte Brudermord; David Garrick’s altered stage version; comic reflections by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Tom Stoppard; and selections from Heinrich Muller’s postmodern nightmare (Hamletmachine), Jawad al Assadi’s cynical Arab adaptation (Forget Hamlet), and John Updike’s haunting novel (Gertrude and Claudius).

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

About this title

Book Description:

This edition tells the story of Hamlet in production, from Burbage at the Globe to Branagh on film, relating stage interpretations to developments in the theatre, in literary criticism and in society. The detailed stage history records an ongoing process of discovery, as successive performers have found what it is in the play that will speak most powerfully to the audiences of their own times. The introduction focuses not only on star Hamlets, but on whole productions of the play including supporting players and, in this century, direction and design.

From the Publisher:

This book is perfect for AP classes and is often selected for inclusion on the AP exam. The notes, reading pointers, and vocabulary in this addition will also help students at a lower reading level get the most out of these classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393929582
• ISBN 13: 9780393929584
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Miola Robert S.