I was in a used bookstore and happened across a copy of "The Tempest" in the Folger edition. I like having the text and annotations on opposite sides which was not something I was used to. I don't think I would choose the Folger for the "heavier" plays though, the Tragedies for example. I haven't heard you mention Yale University Press, but I have a "Hamlet" from them that strikes the right balance between text layout, introduction (two actually) and even a short essay by Harold Bloom! Can't beat that! All this in around 250 pages. Highly recommended!
I love the Arden series, but I also seek out (in used bookshops) the Bantam Classic series edited by Joseph Bevington. They're very pocketable, with good footnotes and extras, and what's really cool is that each play has the source material at the back of the book. So you get Richard II, but you also get hearty chunks of Holinshed; you get Othello, but you also get a bespoke translation of the story from the Hecatommothi. Also, one of the introductory sections discusses the play in performance, both on-stage and on-screen. For me, it's the ideal combination of price, annotations, source material, performance notes, readable print, and portability. I'm slowly replacing my Pelican and even Folger editions with Ardens and Bantams, although the less-loved editions still live in my car.
Great video! One of my favourite editions is actually the Penguin Shakespeare as I prefer having the commentary at the back rather than footnotes on individual pages. That way I get a straight read through of the play itself, where I can flip to the notes at the back if necessary, which I find the most useful. Though I have to agree the Arden shakepeares are the absolute powerhouse of Shakespeare editions! I have King Lear and Henry V in the Arden, and it's hard to find the play among all the other information!! I really enjoyed this video, thank you for sharing!! :)
I found some of the Oxford editions a bit eccentrically edited for a beginner. Their King Lear only has the Quarto edition; the Folio passages aren't even in an appendix. I didn't realise anything was missing until I tried to check some lines I saw quoted elsewhere. The New Cambridge & Arden are more traditionally edited. Thanks for the video, though!
This is fascinating! My guess would be that this is a really special edition Quarto Lear, and that they have other more normal Lears as well, (also probably a Folio Lear if they have the Quarto?) The Norton complete works has all three, the Q, the F and the conflation.
Individual Folgers are very good but if you're looking for a Complete Works book I'd go for the Complete Pelican Shakespeare. It has very useful notes and the characters' names are in full while in dialogue like Folger (but unlike Riverside a.k.a. Wadsworth, where the notes are scarce and the names are abbreviated). It's also smaller in size and lighter in weight. Plus it's harcover and has a nice ribbon and you can get it for like 40 bucks on Amazon. The RCS one is also good.
I love this video -- and I really couldn't have said it better myself. I couldn't live without my Ardens, they are hands down the BEST editions on the market. My advisor in grad school is actually the general editor for Arden, so if I didn't already love them enough -- I am pretty much obliged to love them as much as I do now! ;) I'm also really partial to my Norton. Riverside is great, but it is NOT travel-friendly! Looks gorgeous on a shelf, absolute hell to bring it place to place. Thanks for such a lovely, thoughtful video!! REALLY enjoyed this!
I agree with Krystal! As someone who only read a few plays as a teen and who has been wanting to try it again, this was a great video! I can't remember what versions we used except they were paperbacks with blue covers and yellow and red borders. They were nice because in the margins there were "translations" of certain lines to give you an idea of what was happening. Wanted to ask you both about what were your thoughts on plays being performed in the Shakespearean accent or rather the historically accurate accent for his time? Apparently this reveals puns and jokes in the plays that are dependent on pronunciation?
I LOVE when plays are performed in original pronunciation -- it's rare nowadays, but an absolute delight. It's extraordinary to hear how the plays just come together when the accent changes. I think, weirdly, that our modern accent kind of contributes to this elitist persona Shakespeare has in our culture -- because our accents aren't as earthy or guttural, we speak roundly and with a higher pitch, which dramatically changes how some moments play. For example -- in "As You Like It," Jaques says: "And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot." "Hour" was pronounced in the same way "whore" was pronounced at the time -- so there's this beautifully bawdy and dark double meaning happening there that's completely missed in our modern pronunciation. Ben Crystal does a lot of really great work on this topic if you're interested -- but I'm thinking we may need to do a video on this soon since it is really cool stuff! :)
I'm so glad you liked it. :) Here are my thoughts on the "original pronunciation" deal. We have only a few vague ideas of how Shakespeare was pronounced in his time. Yes, we know that words which don't rhyme now presumably rhymed then, and there are a few anecdotal accounts of some audience impressions of how the text was performed, but this is all seriously filmsy evidence. Think about people attempting to learn how to pronounce a foreign language from a text book. Even with whole chapters detailing pronunciation, with diagrams of how you're supposed to hold your tongue, there's no way you're going to learn accurate pronunciation without listening to someone speak it. David and Ben Crystal are doing some really interesting experimentation with using a pronunciation which is their best approximation of what it might have been like, and though I've never seen it done, I'd be interested. However, it's just one way of doing Shakespeare, and I think that if it makes Shakespeare seem even alien, and hard to understand, or if people are claiming that it's only really Shakespeare if you do it with the original pronunciation? Then I think it's not a good thing. I love seeing different takes on Shakespeare, and I'd love Shakespeare to be more inclusive and less exclusive. :)
I really like the RSC editions :) I might use different editions if I had to write an essay about them, but I like these editions for fun reading and I like the footnotes. (I had to write an essay about the history plays once and only had Penguin editions - cover buy - and nah, it wasn't a good idea xD)
Nice video. There are so many different editions out there it can be hard to know where to start, and which might suit you in your own particular way of reading or study. I like the Arden for diving into the finer details of individual plays (I am still not sure whether I prefer second or third series - they are so different it can sometimes be worth getting both), but for collected works and reading plays for the first time, I am quite happy with the 2007 edition of "RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works". I've heard the 2022 edition isn't as great as the old one, though I've not seen it myself to compare. It has decent introductions and synopses before each play, footnotes covering the very essentials of word definitions, double meanings, explanations of humorous malapropisms, and - which is unusuall for a collected works volume - the text is single column, making it easier to read even though it does as a compromise have slightly smaller text than some other editions. It also makes it easy to see at a glance when the text is in verse and when it is in prose, and it gives you room to make notes, too, if you are so inclined. I know some people have some bias against it, but I also think there is a great need for things like the Spark Notes No Fear Shakespeare series. With a modern translation of the text, it does allow people who struggle with the language to understand what is going on and what is being said, something that makes Shakespeare far more accessible. Some might argue that relying too much on a modern translation will make you miss out on the poetry and rhythm of the original, as well as not doing justice to double meanings, but none of that matters if you don't understand what's going on in the first place. Only once you know the literal meaning of a text can you truly start to appreciate the artistry of the writing. While I don't have any No Fear books myself, I have had a look at them in the bookshop and it seems to me they are laid out in a very clear way for reading the original text too. Indeed, glancing across to the opposing page to see a modern translation can be less disruptive to the reading experience than trying to find the correct footnote in another edition if you're not sure of the meaning.
I'll have to remember these editions (probably the student intended ones you first talked about) when I feel like reading Shakespeare after one of your videos! : )
Love this video, I have some nice hardback collections of Shakespeare but it is difficult to read. I need to get separate copies with more details, I love the Oxford World Classics for this. Those editions with the play on one page and the notes on the other, sound amazing.
Knowledge Lost Sorry, yes, it's an American press, so I imagine it's more expensive abroad. Some suggestions for plays to start with: I reccomend Midsummer or Twelfth Night for a comedy, Hamlet or Macbeth for a tragedy, and Henry V or maybe Richard III for a history. All of those have good movie versions if you'd like to watch a film version or two to go along with your reading. Would it be nice if I did a "where to start with Shakespeare" video?
Where to start video is a good idea. I have done Macbeth recently and really enjoyed it. As well as antony and cleopatra, I do like the tragedies, so maybe Hamlet.
No mention of the Yale Shakespeare? Footnotes and endnotes very helpful, and I do love the format - slim clothbound volumes that you can carry in a coat pocket. Probably not the best for scholarly research, but for the unscholarly among us, maybe a good choice?
If you enjoy those editions, by all means, read them! I've liked Yale Shakespeare editions I've read, and they do have nice notes. (I remember especially liking the Henry IV plays I looked at!) but you're right it's an omission here-- I'm questioning why I don't own any, and I think it's probably the clothbound price point. But I know they're widely available used!
Thank you so much, this is very helpful! I wish I watched this video before getting a bunch of "No Fear Shakespeare" edition. I think I will try that Folger edition and eventually Arden. My current edition is the individual Pelican Shakespeare and I choose them because of the cover, hahah.
Thank you so much for this great video. I recently started reading Shakespeare and am completely hooked! I started with individual pelicans and found the notes to be somewhat lacking. I am not a native speaker so perhaps need more guide understanding what the Bard's saying. I then decided to pick up some RSCs and found the notes to be much more comprehensive. I flipped through Arden and Oxford at bookstores and felt that they're too heavily noted for a casual reader like me (but your good words make me want to give them another go). Living in the UK, Folger is painfully hard to buy. My question is, does it matter/is it undesirable that I read different plays from series that are based on different texts? I believe, but do correct me if I'm wrong, that RSC pride themselves for sticking to F1 and Oxford uses their own heavily edited text (and I've come across a blogger who thinks that it's poorly edited). Thanks again and sorry for the long post!
I've actually made a video about how plays have been assembled from different texts-- it's a super complex topic! I would be surprised if the RSC uses just F1, for one thing, several plays (including Pericles) aren't included in the Folio, and for another, some plays, (like King Lear) are so different in the quarto vs the folio that the play we think of is conflation, a third play entirely. No need to apologize for a long post, this stuff is fascinating.
@@booksandquestions9135 Thanks for your kind reply. I've watched your video on Shakespeare texts; another great video and love those mini quartos and folios you made! I was being too brief. My understanding is that (quoting directly from "About the text" chapter in my RSC Richard III, p.11): "... the RSC Shakespeare, in both Complete Works and individual volumes, uses the Folio as base text wherever possible". If not mistaken, I think this sentence is also printed in my individual RSC Macbeth and Cymbeline (currently not with me). Of course, every series make their own editorial choices and thus publishes, I presume, (potentially pretty) different texts for the same play. I thus wonder if it's better to stick to one series throughout the whole cannon (for a casual reader like me)? Is there a "consistency" to be desired here?
@@user-lf8mq2li3i This is fascinating. I hadn't realized that the RSC said this, it surprises me very much as I think of the conflations from the time about 100 years after Shakespeare's death as being the "standard" of what people think of when they think of Shakespeare. (For instance, I'd be surprised if the RSC Romeo and Juliet has something other than the "Or hand or foot or any other part belonging to a man" line for Juliet in the balcony scene although maybe they do!) However, it's possible they mean the folio is their "base text" in the way it was the "base text" for these early editors who made the conflations so popular today. My advice is to use whichever edition you enjoy reading, and not to worry too much about utter authenticity or consistency. I don't recommend "translations" of Shakespeare into "modern English" such as Shakespeare Made Easy or No Fear Shakespeare as equivalent to reading any well edited version of Shakespeare's text, but I'd already been reading and loving Shakespeare's plays for a decade before I even learned about textual variance, so please don't let worries about reading the "right" Shakespeare slow you down in reading the plays.
@@booksandquestions9135 It is likely you are right about what they mean by "base text" and thanks for raising that particular textual difference in R&J. I'll check out the RSC R&J one next time I go to a library/bookstore. And thank you so much for the advice! I do find Shakespeare terribly enjoyable. All the twists and subplots just make me want to keep reading! On the other hand, he's still, like, THE Bard, so I was worried whether I should be approaching his works with a bit more caution. It's very reassuring to know from someone knowledgeable in Shakespeare that I should just lean back and enjoy!
How do you feel about No Fear Shakespeare? I think it really helps me with Shakespeare because it has the original text and modern language side-by-side. But I have heard that teachers don't like their students to read them.
So I read something really similar when I was a teenager, it was called, "Shakespeare Made Easy" but it was the same concept as No Fear Shakespeare, and it totally helped me understand what was going on, and I still really love all the end material? They had tons of essay questions, a giant quiz, and they really got be thinking in depth about the plays. Since then, I'm not as big a fan of the "translations" of Shakespeare because I think it makes it seem like Shakespeare by itself is incomprehensible, a whole different language. Or... it annoys me a little to see a specific word or phrase translated just one way, and I worry that people will think, "that is what it means" when the people paraphrasing it are only using one of the many potential meanings. I prefer getting notes just about the harder bits, (explaining the reference, telling me what historical event is being alluded to, etc) rather than just getting a paraphrase of every line. That said, if it helps you get excited about Shakespeare? I say go for it! :)
Oh yeah I totally understand what you mean. I never thought of it that way. I have been watching The Hollow Crown and I understand what they're saying but if I get tired it gets confusing and I think that's my problem when reading Shakespeare. I do only read the original text unless I don't understand whats going on but the Folger Shakespeare Library edition sounds like it would be really helpful. I like that it has the summary at the beginning of every scene. I will have to check them out!
I was in a used bookstore and happened across a copy of "The Tempest" in the Folger edition. I like having the text and annotations on opposite sides which was not something I was used to. I don't think I would choose the Folger for the "heavier" plays though, the Tragedies for example. I haven't heard you mention Yale University Press, but I have a "Hamlet" from them that strikes the right balance between text layout, introduction (two actually) and even a short essay by Harold Bloom! Can't beat that! All this in around 250 pages. Highly recommended!
I love the Arden series, but I also seek out (in used bookshops) the Bantam Classic series edited by Joseph Bevington. They're very pocketable, with good footnotes and extras, and what's really cool is that each play has the source material at the back of the book. So you get Richard II, but you also get hearty chunks of Holinshed; you get Othello, but you also get a bespoke translation of the story from the Hecatommothi. Also, one of the introductory sections discusses the play in performance, both on-stage and on-screen.
For me, it's the ideal combination of price, annotations, source material, performance notes, readable print, and portability. I'm slowly replacing my Pelican and even Folger editions with Ardens and Bantams, although the less-loved editions still live in my car.
Great video! One of my favourite editions is actually the Penguin Shakespeare as I prefer having the commentary at the back rather than footnotes on individual pages. That way I get a straight read through of the play itself, where I can flip to the notes at the back if necessary, which I find the most useful. Though I have to agree the Arden shakepeares are the absolute powerhouse of Shakespeare editions! I have King Lear and Henry V in the Arden, and it's hard to find the play among all the other information!! I really enjoyed this video, thank you for sharing!! :)
Nice! That does sound nice for reading. I'm so glad you liked it. :)
Crazy helpful, Folger Shakespeare was an amazing suggestion, thx a mil!
I'm so glad!
Your thumbnail game is on fire! 🔥
Well done!
Signet, Folger, Arden - for complete Riverside, Pelican, Norton
thanks!
I found some of the Oxford editions a bit eccentrically edited for a beginner. Their King Lear only has the Quarto edition; the Folio passages aren't even in an appendix. I didn't realise anything was missing until I tried to check some lines I saw quoted elsewhere. The New Cambridge & Arden are more traditionally edited. Thanks for the video, though!
This is fascinating! My guess would be that this is a really special edition Quarto Lear, and that they have other more normal Lears as well, (also probably a Folio Lear if they have the Quarto?) The Norton complete works has all three, the Q, the F and the conflation.
@@booksandquestions9135 The collected Oxford has Quarto & Folio. The single volume King Lear only has the Quarto - there's no edition of the Folio.
@@finneygreen9578 That is wild! Thanks for sharing, this makes me want to check out all the oxford editions and look them through.
Individual Folgers are very good but if you're looking for a Complete Works book I'd go for the Complete Pelican Shakespeare. It has very useful notes and the characters' names are in full while in dialogue like Folger (but unlike Riverside a.k.a. Wadsworth, where the notes are scarce and the names are abbreviated). It's also smaller in size and lighter in weight. Plus it's harcover and has a nice ribbon and you can get it for like 40 bucks on Amazon. The RCS one is also good.
I love this video -- and I really couldn't have said it better myself. I couldn't live without my Ardens, they are hands down the BEST editions on the market. My advisor in grad school is actually the general editor for Arden, so if I didn't already love them enough -- I am pretty much obliged to love them as much as I do now! ;) I'm also really partial to my Norton. Riverside is great, but it is NOT travel-friendly! Looks gorgeous on a shelf, absolute hell to bring it place to place. Thanks for such a lovely, thoughtful video!! REALLY enjoyed this!
I agree with Krystal! As someone who only read a few plays as a teen and who has been wanting to try it again, this was a great video! I can't remember what versions we used except they were paperbacks with blue covers and yellow and red borders. They were nice because in the margins there were "translations" of certain lines to give you an idea of what was happening.
Wanted to ask you both about what were your thoughts on plays being performed in the Shakespearean accent or rather the historically accurate accent for his time? Apparently this reveals puns and jokes in the plays that are dependent on pronunciation?
I LOVE when plays are performed in original pronunciation -- it's rare nowadays, but an absolute delight. It's extraordinary to hear how the plays just come together when the accent changes. I think, weirdly, that our modern accent kind of contributes to this elitist persona Shakespeare has in our culture -- because our accents aren't as earthy or guttural, we speak roundly and with a higher pitch, which dramatically changes how some moments play. For example -- in "As You Like It," Jaques says: "And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot." "Hour" was pronounced in the same way "whore" was pronounced at the time -- so there's this beautifully bawdy and dark double meaning happening there that's completely missed in our modern pronunciation. Ben Crystal does a lot of really great work on this topic if you're interested -- but I'm thinking we may need to do a video on this soon since it is really cool stuff! :)
Yeah, we used the Norton in grad school, and it was enough of a brick to lug around. :) I miss it!
I'm so glad you liked it. :) Here are my thoughts on the "original pronunciation" deal. We have only a few vague ideas of how Shakespeare was pronounced in his time. Yes, we know that words which don't rhyme now presumably rhymed then, and there are a few anecdotal accounts of some audience impressions of how the text was performed, but this is all seriously filmsy evidence. Think about people attempting to learn how to pronounce a foreign language from a text book. Even with whole chapters detailing pronunciation, with diagrams of how you're supposed to hold your tongue, there's no way you're going to learn accurate pronunciation without listening to someone speak it. David and Ben Crystal are doing some really interesting experimentation with using a pronunciation which is their best approximation of what it might have been like, and though I've never seen it done, I'd be interested. However, it's just one way of doing Shakespeare, and I think that if it makes Shakespeare seem even alien, and hard to understand, or if people are claiming that it's only really Shakespeare if you do it with the original pronunciation? Then I think it's not a good thing. I love seeing different takes on Shakespeare, and I'd love Shakespeare to be more inclusive and less exclusive. :)
Awesome, I'd like to hear more of your take on this! I've watched the Ben Crystal video and I was skeptical, but I'm happy to be convinced. :)
I really like the RSC editions :) I might use different editions if I had to write an essay about them, but I like these editions for fun reading and I like the footnotes. (I had to write an essay about the history plays once and only had Penguin editions - cover buy - and nah, it wasn't a good idea xD)
Thanks for your thoughts! Yeah... Penguin is fine if you're just wanting to read through for fun, but not the best for writing scholarly work. :)
Nice video. There are so many different editions out there it can be hard to know where to start, and which might suit you in your own particular way of reading or study.
I like the Arden for diving into the finer details of individual plays (I am still not sure whether I prefer second or third series - they are so different it can sometimes be worth getting both), but for collected works and reading plays for the first time, I am quite happy with the 2007 edition of "RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works". I've heard the 2022 edition isn't as great as the old one, though I've not seen it myself to compare.
It has decent introductions and synopses before each play, footnotes covering the very essentials of word definitions, double meanings, explanations of humorous malapropisms, and - which is unusuall for a collected works volume - the text is single column, making it easier to read even though it does as a compromise have slightly smaller text than some other editions. It also makes it easy to see at a glance when the text is in verse and when it is in prose, and it gives you room to make notes, too, if you are so inclined.
I know some people have some bias against it, but I also think there is a great need for things like the Spark Notes No Fear Shakespeare series. With a modern translation of the text, it does allow people who struggle with the language to understand what is going on and what is being said, something that makes Shakespeare far more accessible. Some might argue that relying too much on a modern translation will make you miss out on the poetry and rhythm of the original, as well as not doing justice to double meanings, but none of that matters if you don't understand what's going on in the first place. Only once you know the literal meaning of a text can you truly start to appreciate the artistry of the writing.
While I don't have any No Fear books myself, I have had a look at them in the bookshop and it seems to me they are laid out in a very clear way for reading the original text too. Indeed, glancing across to the opposing page to see a modern translation can be less disruptive to the reading experience than trying to find the correct footnote in another edition if you're not sure of the meaning.
This is SUCH a helpful and informative video, thank you!
You're welcome!
Love the Folger Shakespeare editions! Great video! 💛
I'll have to remember these editions (probably the student intended ones you first talked about) when I feel like reading Shakespeare after one of your videos! : )
They're quite nice! We actually used them as our scripts when I directed Macbeth in undergrad, so nice and small and cheap. :)
Love this video, I have some nice hardback collections of Shakespeare but it is difficult to read. I need to get separate copies with more details, I love the Oxford World Classics for this. Those editions with the play on one page and the notes on the other, sound amazing.
I'm so glad you liked the video! Yeah, the Folger editions are really nice, and cheap! I think they're priced around $5 a copy? It's lovely. :)
+BooksandQuestions between $7-10 for me but they seem great. Not sure which one to read
Knowledge Lost Sorry, yes, it's an American press, so I imagine it's more expensive abroad. Some suggestions for plays to start with: I reccomend Midsummer or Twelfth Night for a comedy, Hamlet or Macbeth for a tragedy, and Henry V or maybe Richard III for a history. All of those have good movie versions if you'd like to watch a film version or two to go along with your reading. Would it be nice if I did a "where to start with Shakespeare" video?
Where to start video is a good idea. I have done Macbeth recently and really enjoyed it. As well as antony and cleopatra, I do like the tragedies, so maybe Hamlet.
No mention of the Yale Shakespeare? Footnotes and endnotes very helpful, and I do love the format - slim clothbound volumes that you can carry in a coat pocket. Probably not the best for scholarly research, but for the unscholarly among us, maybe a good choice?
If you enjoy those editions, by all means, read them! I've liked Yale Shakespeare editions I've read, and they do have nice notes. (I remember especially liking the Henry IV plays I looked at!) but you're right it's an omission here-- I'm questioning why I don't own any, and I think it's probably the clothbound price point. But I know they're widely available used!
Thank you so much, this is very helpful! I wish I watched this video before getting a bunch of "No Fear Shakespeare" edition. I think I will try that Folger edition and eventually Arden. My current edition is the individual Pelican Shakespeare and I choose them because of the cover, hahah.
I feel like any version you get will have Shakespeare in it, and that's the main thing that counts. :)
Folger is best. You can't go wrong with it
As a director definately Arden
Makes sense to me!
Very good
Thank you so much for this great video. I recently started reading Shakespeare and am completely hooked!
I started with individual pelicans and found the notes to be somewhat lacking. I am not a native speaker so perhaps need more guide understanding what the Bard's saying. I then decided to pick up some RSCs and found the notes to be much more comprehensive. I flipped through Arden and Oxford at bookstores and felt that they're too heavily noted for a casual reader like me (but your good words make me want to give them another go). Living in the UK, Folger is painfully hard to buy.
My question is, does it matter/is it undesirable that I read different plays from series that are based on different texts? I believe, but do correct me if I'm wrong, that RSC pride themselves for sticking to F1 and Oxford uses their own heavily edited text (and I've come across a blogger who thinks that it's poorly edited).
Thanks again and sorry for the long post!
I've actually made a video about how plays have been assembled from different texts-- it's a super complex topic! I would be surprised if the RSC uses just F1, for one thing, several plays (including Pericles) aren't included in the Folio, and for another, some plays, (like King Lear) are so different in the quarto vs the folio that the play we think of is conflation, a third play entirely. No need to apologize for a long post, this stuff is fascinating.
@@booksandquestions9135 Thanks for your kind reply. I've watched your video on Shakespeare texts; another great video and love those mini quartos and folios you made!
I was being too brief. My understanding is that (quoting directly from "About the text" chapter in my RSC Richard III, p.11): "... the RSC Shakespeare, in both Complete Works and individual volumes, uses the Folio as base text wherever possible". If not mistaken, I think this sentence is also printed in my individual RSC Macbeth and Cymbeline (currently not with me).
Of course, every series make their own editorial choices and thus publishes, I presume, (potentially pretty) different texts for the same play. I thus wonder if it's better to stick to one series throughout the whole cannon (for a casual reader like me)? Is there a "consistency" to be desired here?
@@user-lf8mq2li3i This is fascinating. I hadn't realized that the RSC said this, it surprises me very much as I think of the conflations from the time about 100 years after Shakespeare's death as being the "standard" of what people think of when they think of Shakespeare. (For instance, I'd be surprised if the RSC Romeo and Juliet has something other than the "Or hand or foot or any other part belonging to a man" line for Juliet in the balcony scene although maybe they do!) However, it's possible they mean the folio is their "base text" in the way it was the "base text" for these early editors who made the conflations so popular today. My advice is to use whichever edition you enjoy reading, and not to worry too much about utter authenticity or consistency. I don't recommend "translations" of Shakespeare into "modern English" such as Shakespeare Made Easy or No Fear Shakespeare as equivalent to reading any well edited version of Shakespeare's text, but I'd already been reading and loving Shakespeare's plays for a decade before I even learned about textual variance, so please don't let worries about reading the "right" Shakespeare slow you down in reading the plays.
@@booksandquestions9135 It is likely you are right about what they mean by "base text" and thanks for raising that particular textual difference in R&J. I'll check out the RSC R&J one next time I go to a library/bookstore.
And thank you so much for the advice! I do find Shakespeare terribly enjoyable. All the twists and subplots just make me want to keep reading! On the other hand, he's still, like, THE Bard, so I was worried whether I should be approaching his works with a bit more caution. It's very reassuring to know from someone knowledgeable in Shakespeare that I should just lean back and enjoy!
Such a helpful video 👍🏽
How do you feel about No Fear Shakespeare? I think it really helps me with Shakespeare because it has the original text and modern language side-by-side. But I have heard that teachers don't like their students to read them.
So I read something really similar when I was a teenager, it was called, "Shakespeare Made Easy" but it was the same concept as No Fear Shakespeare, and it totally helped me understand what was going on, and I still really love all the end material? They had tons of essay questions, a giant quiz, and they really got be thinking in depth about the plays. Since then, I'm not as big a fan of the "translations" of Shakespeare because I think it makes it seem like Shakespeare by itself is incomprehensible, a whole different language. Or... it annoys me a little to see a specific word or phrase translated just one way, and I worry that people will think, "that is what it means" when the people paraphrasing it are only using one of the many potential meanings. I prefer getting notes just about the harder bits, (explaining the reference, telling me what historical event is being alluded to, etc) rather than just getting a paraphrase of every line. That said, if it helps you get excited about Shakespeare? I say go for it! :)
Oh yeah I totally understand what you mean. I never thought of it that way. I have been watching The Hollow Crown and I understand what they're saying but if I get tired it gets confusing and I think that's my problem when reading Shakespeare. I do only read the original text unless I don't understand whats going on but the Folger Shakespeare Library edition sounds like it would be really helpful. I like that it has the summary at the beginning of every scene. I will have to check them out!
Really? In school we relied on No Fear Shakespeare for all plays we ever studied.