The Norton Shakespeare [Hardcover]

It has that super thin, what I call "Bible paper" that adds to the atmosphere of the book. Helpful translations of words that are no longer in common use listed on the outside of the page, line numbers by the 5 on the inside. Footnotes are also provided about historical details. I purchased this as a required text for a university course. My prof has used the first edition, and now the second in teaching the course and believes this is the "ultimate" Shakespeare compilation. The intro essays before each play are also enlightening, although they can change your read of the play (for example, in Antony and Cleopatra, the author really turns up her riggish-ness, when in reality, Shakespeare turned it down). The picture of the product is a bit misleading, it does come with a dustcover that mirrors the hard outside sleeve.
This is one textbook I won't be re-selling!

I bought this for my boyfriend, who is a Shakespeare fan, as a part of his Christmas gift. It includes all of Shakespeare's plays and also gives you other interesting information. You will never need to buy another Shakespeare book again with this which is well worth the price. The only downside to this is that the pages are too thin which would require you to turn the pages with caution in case it rips.

I would in fact prefer to award this 3.5 stars, but the Amazon system seems to compel one to choose between 3 and 4, and I think 4 is too generous. To begin with the text, there is no doubt that this is not the best Shakespeare to buy. It is to a large extent based on the Oxford Shakespeare, which - quite rightly, in my view - has attracted a lot of criticism for some of its peculiarities. Thus, for example, Oxford prints TWO versions of *King Lear*, the quarto text and that of the folio. Norton rightly takes issue with this, and produces the kind of conflated text that most readers would want, but adds the other two AS WELL (so we are offered THREE versions!). This kind of thing is, in truth, academic self-indulgence - it shows an undue respect for academic concerns which to most readers are not of the slightest interest. There is a similar tendency to pay scant regard to what most readers really want and need in the Introduction: that tells us a good deal about Shakespeare's time, and the material is interesting, but it is not often shown to be relevant, or necessary, to an understanding of what Shakespeare writes. The explanatory annotation accompanying the texts is not bad, but often inferior to that of comparable editions, notably Bevington's. The introductions to individual plays are usually stimulating, but not necessarily convincing. Thus Greenblatt on the one hand says about Macbeth's murder of Duncan, "That he does so without adequate motivation, that he murders a man toward whom he should be grateful and protective, deepens the mystery ..." (p. 2558), yet adds a few lines later: "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth act on ambition ...". Precisely, that IS Macbeth's motivation for the murder, as Macbeth himself points out unequivocally in 1.7.25-7 - there is, therefore, absolutely nothing mysterious about his motivation. The edition does, however, offer a number of good references to other writings about Shakespeare. All in all, I do consider 3.5 stars is a fair "grade", in seeking to assess this for the benefit of the majority of readers looking for a complete Shakespeare to buy; but I consider David Bevington's by far the best edition of the complete works, then the Riverside, and only then this one - though, with its annotations, it is certainly more useful than the Oxford edition on which it is based. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia