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The New Cambridge Shakespeare presents critical editions
in modern-spelling of Shakespeare's individual plays, of his Sonnets,
and of his narrative poems.
The page layout is stylish and spacious with generous margins, and
the volumes are keenly priced and a pleasure to handle.
The series has won a high reputation for its lively new emphases,
which are consistently supported by the state-of-the art scholarship and judicious
critical insight displayed by its distinguished international cast
of editors.
The aim of the series is to provide lively instructive access to these
rich and complex works without over-simplifying them. For this task
editors are chosen to combine scholarship and critical intelligence
with proven communicative skills as expert teachers; their brief is
to write with clarity, and freedom from jargon, in all areas - even
the technical questions of textual editing, instead of being as usual
shrouded in obfuscation, are here introduced in plain terms so that
their interest and importance can be seen by the non-expert.
The chief innovative feature of this series is attention to the plays
as theatre-works, to their full theatrical language as it appeals
to the visual and aural senses of spectators, in addition to its appeal to the imagination
of readers. The Introductions give specific attention to stage history,
with lively photographs and line-drawings; and awareness of performance
values is an integral part of their approach.
Each page of play-text carries a commentary at its foot where significant
features are noted, not only to aid comprehension but also to quicken
awareness of staging and stage-action; and in the text itself stage
directions are given scrupulous attention, providing a practically
performable version of the text in Elizabethan stage conditions,
and identifying the essentials for anyone wishing to turn the text
into performance.
Brian Gibbons
General Series Editor
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