Shakespeare's Great Tragedies (Barnes & Noble Shakespeare)

Bringing together six tragedies from the Barnes & Noble Shakespeare series, including the Bard’s four most famous (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth —all written within between 1601 and 1608), this unique set combines scholarship and design to make these masterworks of human striving and tragic undoing newly accessible to contemporary readers:

• Hamlet - A compelling treatment of guilt and revenge
• Othello - A portrayal of jealousy and deception that remains as shocking today as when it was first written
• Romeo and Juliet - Introducing the world’s most famous star-crossed lovers
• King Lear - An unparalleled portrait of an old man’s descent into madness
• Julius Caesar - A dramatization of the assassination of Julius Caesar
• Macbeth - The only Shakespearean tragedy that has a villain as its hero

All volumes include newly edited texts prepared by leading scholars from America and Great Britain, in collaboration with one of the world’s foremost Shakespeare authorities, David Scott Kastan of Columbia University. Together, they have produced texts as faithful as possible to those that Shakespeare wrote.

Each volume in the Shakespeare Library includes:

• New Scholarship - Premier scholars introduce each play with contemporary scholarship. An essay on editing the text provides an in-depth look at the quartos and folios used in the edition.
• Contextualizing Essays - Essays on Shakespeare’s England, language, and life, along with essays on performing Shakespeare and significant performances frame the play in both historical and theatrical context for readers. A look at the lasting influence of the play on music, art, film, and dance creates an interdisciplinary framework with which to approach the play.
• Better Notes - Through one-word margin definitions, facing-page glosses, and longer end notes after the play, our innovative approach to notes pulls readers away from the text fewer times while providing them with more information and comprehensive analysis.
• Further Reading - An annotated bibliography of titles, hand-selected by the introduction author, takes readers beyond the edition for further reading.

Biography

William Shakespeare, also known as the "Bard of Avon," is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and the world's preeminent dramatist. He was baptised April 26, 1564 and died April 23, 1616. (The date of his birth is unknown.) He authored 38 plays (comedies, histories, and tragedies), 154 sonnets, and several other poems.