AN INNOVATIVE DIGITAL-PRINT PARTNERSHIP IS CONVENIENT FOR STUDENTS—AND GIVES INSTRUCTORS AN EVEN BETTER TEACHING EDITION

Debuting both as an enhanced digital edition—the first edited specifically for undergraduates—and as a handsome print volume, The Norton Shakespeare makes it possible for students to have a deeply rewarding reading experience on screen or on the page, all at a great value. Instructors can use the features that enhance both the print and digital editions to convey a rich sense of the texts by Shakespeare as written, revised and performed.

THE NEWLY EDITED TEXT

The Norton Shakespeare brings to readers a meticulously edited new text that reflects current textual-editing scholarship and introduces innovative pedagogic features. Created by an expert international team of textual editors, the digital edition offers early authoritative texts for each of Shakespeare’s works in editions free from excessive emendation and intervention. The digital edition makes available 17 additional fully glossed and annotated versions of the plays. The print edition includes one text of every play and poem, but continues the Norton Shakespeare signature of including multiple texts of King Lear and, now, Hamlet.

ACCLAIMED APPARATUS—REVISED AND EXPANDED

Every play introduction and all notes, glosses, and bibliographies in this edition have been reconsidered to incorporate reviewers’ detailed suggestions, and new textual introductions and performance notes preceding each play reflect new scholarship in these fields. Stephen Greenblatt’s widely praised General Introduction draws students into life in Early Modern England, introduces them to Shakespeare’s family background and professional life, and shows how Shakespeare’s experiences, imagination and immense rhetorical gifts are evident throughout his writing. The third edition also features two new opening essays:

• A lively and accessible new General Textual Introduction by Gordon McMullan (King’s College London) and Suzanne Gossett (Loyola University Chicago) explores the central question “How authentic is the text I am reading?” and looks at how theatrical play-scripts moved through the burgeoning book trade to become printed texts.

• “The Theater of Shakespeare’s Time,” a new essay by Holger Schott Syme (University of Toronto), paints a colourful picture of the city “where theater was everywhere” and of the playwrights, players, investors, government censors, spectators and playhouses that comprised the flourishing theatre business.

DIGITAL EDITION FEATURES ENCOURAGE ACTIVE READING AND LIVELY CLASSROOM DISCUSSION

The digital edition features all of the texts, introductions, glosses and notes in the print book, plus additional versions of many texts for comparison. Students are able to compare the Folio and Quarto texts of King Lear and scenes from other plays using an innovative side-by-side scrolling view option. Students can also compare the text to corresponding facsimile pages from the Hinman First Folio and from the quartos. Performance Comments highlight how a director or actor’s choices in performance affect meaning, while Textual Comments focus on the impact of textual-editing decisions. Students can also listen to recordings of all of the songs in the plays and over 8 hours of specially recorded spoken-word audio by the highly regarded Actors from the London Stage. The digital edition also includes an appendix of documents, maps, genealogies, bibliographies and a timeline.