Monday, February 25, 2013

Finding the “Right” Edition

So, as you may imagine, there are quite a few editions of the Shakespeare plays to choose from, so I’m going to have to make a decision, first off, on which edition(s) to read. After a bit of research, I’m going to use The Riverside Edition as a primary source. It seems to be very well regarded and is amply footnoted and annotated…which I will definitely need. That being said, I did check out from my local library a different version of The Taming of the Shrew, just for kicks: the Yale University Press’ Annotated Shakespeare, which in addition to having all the required annotations, comes in a miniaturized, lightweight form, a nice feature when compared to the gigantic Riverside tome. Portability is good, so I’ll probably use these as well (added bonus: the library seemed to have most of the plays from the Yale Press so I’m good).

Oh yeah, one final note on order: I’m going to read these by genre (Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, then the Romances), more or less chronologically. Seems like the right call (and that's how Riverside has them organized).

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