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Titles to Look Out For:
[in alphabetical order]
1994. Macbeth (Heinemann Shakespeare) edited by Frank Green
1980. Romeo and Juliet (The Arden Shakespeare) by Brian Gibbons (ed.)
1969. The Second Part of King Henry VI (The Arden Shakespeare) by Andrew S. Cairncross (ed.)
1981. The Taming of the Shrew (The Arden Shakespeare) by Brian Morris (ed.)
1969. The Third Part of King Henry VI (The Arden Shakespeare) by Andrew Cairncross (ed.)
1989. Twelfth Night (The Players' Shakespeare)

1994, Heinemann, hbk
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• Macbeth [top]
  Edited by Frank Green; with additional notes and activities by Rick Lee and Victor Juszkiewicz; Series Editor John Seely; In association with the RSA Shakespeare In Schools Project
  First published in 1994 in Great Britain by Heinemann in hardback (no dustjacket), 240pp, ISBN 0435192035

About this book/synopsis: What this book aims to do: This is more than just an edition of Macbeth with a few notes - it is a complete guide to studying and enjoying the play and as part of the Heinemann Shakespeare series, it is designed specially for 11 to 16 year old students, but all generations will benefit from its insights and thought-provoking questions and activities. It begins with an introduction to Shakespeare's theatre, and to the story and characters of the play.

At the end of the book, there is guidance on studying the play (see section giving more detail below):
1) How to keep track of things as you work
2) How to take part in a range of drama activities
3) Understanding Shakespeare's language
4) Exploring the main themes of the play
5) Studying the characters
6) How to write about the play.

There are also questions and a glossary of specialist words you need when working on the play. The central part of the book is, of course, the play itself and here you will find the complete text presented clearly on the right-hand pages with highlights, summaries, lively illustrations and clear explanations of words and phrases on the left-hand pages. Activities after all main scenes will help the reader understand the play.

Here there are several different kinds of help on offer:
A) Summary: at the top of each double page, there is a short summary of what happens on that page
B) Grading: alongside the text is a shaded band to help you when working on the play from a dark colour indicating text you probably should spend extra time on; to a lighter grey shade that indicates text you should read carefully. Where banding is absent, the text in that part is something you can spend less time on

Further information on what you will find in the back section of the book:

• A table clearly showing the plot at a glance in all five acts noting characters plot development and short synopsis
• Explorations: Keeping track; scene log; character log, with examples of how you might do this in table form
• Character activities: quotations; who's who? Secret files (i.e. key moments in characters' lives where we have to work out the rest)
• Character activities: Arrows of influence (between characters); chain of events diagram; innermost thoughts of characters
• Themes: Elements of the Supernatural; Evil; Nemesis; Ambition; Sleep and darkness/Night; Love; Loyalty; Courage; Order and Disorder
• Shakespeare's Language: Language change: grammar, words that have changed their meaning, words that have gone out of use; The language of the play: blank verse, rhymed verse, prose
• Drama Activities: hotseating (putting one of the characters under the microscope); variations on hotseating
• Freeze! - stopping the action and looking at a single moment in a play - how to do this (photographs, statues/paintings). Forum theatre
• Talking it over - ideas for discussion
• Writing activities - imaginative writing: e.g. writing letters, conversations, accounts of events; writing about the play and giving an opinion; writing about character - how to do this; short questions; glossary

Heinemann Shakespeare

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• The Second Part of King Henry VI (The Arden Shakespeare) [top]
  Andrew S. Cairncross, Editor
  The Arden Shakespeare general editors: Harold F. Brooks and Harold Jenkins
  First published in 1957 (with Andrew S. Cairncross as editor) in this revised and reset edition
  Reprinted with minor corrections in 1962
  Reprinted in 1965 and 1969, hardcover with dustjacket, 198pp, ISBN 0416472109

About the book: [from preface] 'The original Auden edition, by H. C. Hart, was based on premises so different from mine [Andrew Cairncross's], as to the authorship of the play, the sources, the relation of the texts, and their authority, that very little of his has remained [in this edition], even in the Notes. Collation has been automatically reduced, and a great deal of the Chronicle and other material more conveniently collected in the Appendices.
Hart worked on the fundamental assumptions of Edmond Malone's classic "Dissertation". No modern study of the play, however, can escape the influence of that other classic of the long drawn controversy, Professor Peter Alexander's "Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III". Without his work, the research involved in this edition could never have been undertaken. I [Andrew Cairncross] have had, in addition, the inestimable advantage of frequent discussions of the problem with him; and his pertinent questions have shaped even those modifications of his theory which I have felt impelled to adopt in its consolidation.
One such modificaition is the theory that the printers of the First Folio deliberately used one or more editions of the Bad Quarto, wherever feasible, as the "basis" for their text. This is essentially a new problem, and in this untrodden country, I must crave the indulgence due to the explorer, and suspension of judgement from those to whom the altered landscape of the play and its textual history may seem a little strange. No one can be more conscious than myself how provisional are my conclusions, and how much remains to be done.
The state of the text, often corrupt beyond recovery, may, I hope, excuse and justify the attempts I have made where possible to restore at least something of what it must have been. In the nature of the case, many of the textual decisions have had to be of a personal kind, but I have tried to restrain within due limits the liberty of emendations that the situation seems to demand'

1965, Methuen
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• The Third Part of King Henry VI (The Arden Shakespeare) [top]
  Andrew Cairncross, Editor
  First published in 1965 in Great Britain by Methuen, in a fully revised and reset edition, hardcover, 188pp, with dustjacket
  The Arden Shakespeare general editors: Harold F. Brooks and Harold Jenkins

About the book: [from dj flap] Dr Cairncross has re-edited the original Arden edition of King Henry VI part iii to bring it into line with modern Shakespearian scholarship. On the basis of the now generally accepted theory that the quarto (The True Tragedy) is a reported version of the Folio text of the Shakespeare play, he attempts to reconcile the two main theories-revision and mutilation-presented in turn by Edmond Malone, and separately by his various successors. This reconciliation is made possible by bringing into focus several new factors: minor adaptations and corrections by Shakespeare; the discovery that the Folio text was no entirely independent, but was in part printed from a corrected copy of the quarto; a study of the scribe's habits; printing-house "sophistication", here treated systematically for the first time.

These new factors lead to a simpler and more comprehensive view of the text, and facilitate some advance in its emendation. They further allow time and space, previously occupied by arguments about composite authorship, to be devoted to the study of the play as an independent and integral work of Shakespeare. This makes possible a fuller appreciation of its originality and design, its underlying themes, its ideas and imagery. Shakespeare's treatment of his historical material in the Chronicles emerges, when considered in relation to the other plays of this tetralogy, as a much more carefully planned and plotted work than has been realized-a view confirmed by recent performances of these plays as a series.

Contents:

Frontispiece: The England of Henry VI

PREFACE; ABBREVIATIONS

Introduction
1. Textual
The texts
The bad quarto
Pembroke's Men
The Folio Text
Quarto copy for Folio
The scribe
'Sophistication'
Emendation and editorial policy

2. Authenticity, Date, Company, Sources

3. Critical
Popularity
General Plan
Unity (a) external and (b) internal
Order and disorder
Imagery
Style

THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH

APPENDICES:
1. Source-material from (a) Hall's Chronicle, 1548 and (b) Brooke's Romeus and Iuliet, 1562
2. Genealogical Tables: (a) York, Lancaster, and Woodvile and (b) Montague, Neville, etc
3. Alternative Q passage to II. III. 15-22: The True Tragedy, 599
4. Recollections (a) from other plays in The True Tragedy and (b) common to the 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III quartos
5. Parallels, sources and derivatives: (a) Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy and (b) Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene; and the Metrical Psalms; and (c) The Troublesome Raigne of King Iohn, 1591

Other King Henvy VI Arden Shakespeare Volumes:

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• Romeo and Juliet (The Arden Shakespeare) [top]
  Edited by Brian Gibbons; general series editors: Harold F. Brooks and Harold Jenkins
  First published in 1980 in Great Britain and published by Methuen & Co. Ltd, 280pp, light blue cloth hardcover with dustjacket, ISBN 0416178502

About the book: [from preface] This edition of Romeo and Juliet was begun from scratch in 1973, and is based on the first 'good' Quarto of 1599; the 'bad' Quarto of 1597 has been fully taken into account, a number of its readings have been adopted, and its readings have been recorded wherever possible. Only a few notes towards his projected edition were made by John Crow before his much regretted death, and collected by Professor M. M. Mahood. However, Crow's views on a number of editorial problems in the play were expressed in an article , 'Editing and Emending', and Brian Gibbons has taken these into account both in letter and in spirit.

Contents:

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION: 1) The text; 2) The Date; 3) Sources and 4) The Play

ROMEO AND JULIET

APPENDIX 1: The Queen Mab speech in Q1
APPENDIX 2: Brooke's Romeus and Juliet

1981, Methuen
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• The Taming of the Shrew (The Arden Shakespeare) [top]
  Edited by Brian Morris; general series editors: Harold F. Brooks and Harold Jenkins
  First published in 1981 in Great Britain by Methuen in hardcover, 316pp with dustjacket, ISBN 0416475809
  First published in the US by Methuen

About the book: [from dj flap]: The 1981 hardcover edition is published by Methuen, 316pp. Contents: The only authoritative text of The Taming of the Shrew is in the First Folio (1623), and upon this the present edition is based, taking into account the emendations proposed by later editors from Rowe to the present day. The vexed question of the relationship between The Taming of the Shrew and The Taming of a Shrew (1594) is discussed at length, and this gives rise to consideration of the dates at which each was written, issuing in an earlier dating for The Shrew than has hitherto been proposed. Shakespeare's authorship of the play is established, and new suggestions are made about its probable sources of folklore and Italian comedy. The commentary seeks to elucidate the various problems, lexical, interpretative, theatrical and literary, which the play presents, and the critical introduction, beginning with an account of the text's history at the hands of the eighteenth-century 'adaptors', offers an account of the play's structures, themes and styles which releases it from the category of farce and establishes it as a brilliantly-wrought comedy on the age-old theme of the battle between the sexes.

Contents:

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
1. The text
2. The Shrew and A Shrew
3. The date
4. Authorship and sources
5. The play

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

• The Tragedy of Coriolanus [top]
  Prepared & Annotated by Neil Freeman
  Published in 2001 by Folio Scripts, Vancouver, Canada in paperback, 145pp, ISBN 1557834342 in the Applause First Folio Editions series

About this book/synopsis:
The Applause First Folio Editions compare the differences between the first printings and the best modern texts of Shakespeare's works, with special emphasis on issues relevant to each particular play. -Footnotes discuss many of the Quarto and modern text variations. Glosses highlight scholarship of the last four centuries. -New easy coding system guides readers directly to single topics far more swiftly and efficiently than comparable attempts in modern editions. -New visual clues allow readers to explore First Folio line structures as well as the modern text alterations. -Opposite each page of text is a blank page for reader notes and comments. -Over 100 professional and conservatory productions have already used Neil Freeman's scripts in early manuscript proof editions. Now for the first time, APPLAUSE makes these invaluable texts available to actors, readers and scholars around the world

Contents:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Definitions of and Guide to Photographic Copies of the Early Texts
Welcome to These Scripts

Making Full Use of These Texts
- What modern changes will be shown
-- Words and phrases
-- line structure changes related to problems of 'casting-off'
-- Line structure changes not related to problems of 'casting-off'
-- the special problems affecting what are known as 'shared' or 'split' verse lines
--the unusual single split line
-Sentence and Punctuation Structures
--Dropping a line to illustrate F1's sentence structure
--The highlighting of the major punctuation in these texts

Practical On-Page Help for the Reader
-The visual symbols highlighting modern alterations
-The visual symbols highlighting key items wihtin the first folio
-Act, scene, and line numbering specific to this text

Common Typesetting Peculiarities of the Folio and Quarto Texts
Footnote Code
-Alphabetical Footnote Coding
-Footnote Coding by Topic
One Modern Change Frequently Noted in These Texts
A Brief Word about the Compositors

THE PLAY
Introduction to 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus'
Dramatis Personae
The Text

APPENDICES
The Uneasy Relationship of Folio, Quarto and Modern Texts

• Twelfth Night: The Players Shakespeare [top]
  Edited by J. H. Walter
  First published in 1959 and reprinted in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986
  Reprinted in 1989 in Great Britain by Heinemann Educational Books in hardback (no dustjacket), 194pp, ISBN 0435190008

About this book/synopsis: Includes chart of Shakespeare's life and a list of Shakespeare's works. Includes 2 page preface about the book & 13-page introduction to Shakespeare's works.

Contents: The aim of this edition is to encourage pupils to study the play as a play, to see it not so much as a novel or an historical narrative, but as a pattern of speech and movement creating an artistic whole. While it has been generally accepted that this approach stimulates and enlivens classroom work, it has more recently become clear that it is a most fruitful way of preparing for examinations. The interleaved notes, therefore, contain, in addition to a gloss, interpretations of character, dialogue and imagery, considered particularly from the point of view of a play. There are some suggestions for acting, for the most part simple pointers to avoid rigidity of interpretation and drawn up with an apron stage in mind. Some questions are interposed to provide topics for discussion or to assist in discrimination. It is suggested that the play should be read through rapidly with as little comment as possible. On a second reading the notes should be used in detail, and appropriate sections of the Introduction might be read at the teacher's discretion. It is hoped that this edition will enable the teacher to take his class more deeply into the play than the usual meagre allowance of time permits him or her to do; it is not an attempt to usurp his or her function. The text is based on that of the First Folio, but the writings and editions of modern scholars and editors such as C. J. Sisson, J. Dover Wilson, and P. Alexander have been freely consulted and used. The text is complete, but the heavy punctuation characteristic of the Cambridge or Globe texts has been lightened.

The stage directions also mainly follow those of the First Folio and the location of scenes which are usually added by editors are for reasons mentioned in the Introduction (p.8), transferred to the notes.

Chapters:
Preface; Introduction

Twelfth Night

Appendices
i. The Date of Twelfth Night
ii. Shakespeare's Theatre
iii. Music in Twelfth Night
iv. Malvolio and Maria