Description
“The perfect companion to enjoy the most profound stories of the human condition that Shakespeare has given us and that I have had the privilege to perform, from Othello to King Lear.”—James Earl Jones
“Here is an elegant and clear text for either study or the rehearsal room.”—Sir Patrick Stewart
This major new complete edition of Shakespeare’s works combines accessibility with the latest scholarship and features a substantial introduction examining textual and literary-historical issues before each play and poem collection. The texts themselves have been scrupulously edited and are accompanied by same-page notes and glossaries. With The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, discover the works of William Shakespeare as never before in this beautiful, approachable collection of the Bard of Avon’s most famous works.
Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing 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 the Author
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he marriedAnne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of KingJames VI and Iof Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623,John HemingeandHenry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem byBen Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
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