The Annotated Shakespeare

Book excerpt: "In this authoritative three-volume annotated edition, A. L. Rowse, the noted Elizabethan scholar, sets forth his extraordinary knowledge of William Shakespeare and his time. All Shakespeare's plays and poems are included. His comedies (Volume I), histories, sonnets and other poems (Volume II), and tragedies and romances (Volume III) are photographically reproduced from the highly praised Globe edition of 1904. Dr. Rowse has written a biography of Shakespeare, introductionsto each volume and each play, as well as supervised the annotations and the selection of the 4,200 illustrations. The introductions to the volumes describe the evolution of Shakespeare's art, his approach to comedy and tragedy, his themes and poetic impulse. The introductions to the plays place each in the perspective of the entire range of his work and his milieu. The annotations elucidate not only Shakespeare's language, but the biographical, historical, topical, literary, and symbolic aspects of the plays and poems themselves. The great merit of the annotations is that they help the reader, the actor, the producer, the student to understand and appreciate better the plays of Shakespeare, and to get new meaning and insight from them. The 4,200 illustrations make this also an incomparable visual edition of Shakespeare. They show actual scenes of the plays in photographs as well as in paintings by Delacroix, Gainsborough, Blake, and others, and pictures of historic figures such as Henry VI, Henry IV, and famous Shakespearean performers from the earliest days to the present. In addition, these volumes include set and costume designs, prints, facsimiles of title pages of first editions, and many other pertinent reproductions." -Publisher.