What's your favorite Shakespeare edition?

[Angel]

There are so many different companies out there offering editions of Shakespeare's plays. I'm trying to narrow it down a little for our upcoming study. I want an edition that has decent sized print and side-notes or foot-notes. Right now I like the looks of the Oxford School Shakespeare editions and the Annotated Shakespeare editions. Any opinions on these? Any editions you prefer?

 

Thanks for your help! We are doing this as a group and I want us all to be reading the same edition so I need to get it picked.

[KAR120C]

There are so many different companies out there offering editions of Shakespeare's plays. I'm trying to narrow it down a little for our upcoming study. I want an edition that has decent sized print and side-notes or foot-notes. Right now I like the looks of the Oxford School Shakespeare editions and the Annotated Shakespeare editions. Any opinions on these? Any editions you prefer?

 

Thanks for your help! We are doing this as a group and I want us all to be reading the same edition so I need to get it picked.

Although every time I say it I think of coffee..... lol....

 

They have the text on the right side page and footnotes (side notes?) on the left page, so you can read through uninterrupted or stop to read all the notes if you need them, or skip back and forth as needed.

[Jenny in Florida]

But nowadays I'm fond of the Barnes & Noble Classics editions.

 

They are similar in format to the Folger, but are trade sized with larger pages and larger type. I find them much easier to read than any other edition I've seen.

 

We've also found the notes helpful.

[Moira in MA]

Another vote for Folger. Some of the more popular plays are available as trade paperbacks as well as the smaller format.

 

hth

~Moira

[Maura in NY]

I'm a Folger fan for individual plays. For an all-in-one edition, I like the Bevington -- and a forklift.

[MIch elle]

Oxford

[Angel]

Wow! Thanks! I didn't look at the Folger ones at Amazon yesterday. I will check them out today. I might have to check out the B&N ones too.

[karensk]

The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford's World Classics series). Here's Hamlet, which I own and have enjoyed marking up. They have great footnotes, too.

[swimmermom3]

I have both Folger and Oxford (I was trying to remember which Michelle to thank;)) My kids (ages 13-18) prefer the Oxford books. There is also another edition that gets high marks for its explanatory notes. I'll have to see if I still have the link, or perhaps someone else will know which one I am referring to.

[Guest]

Dd loathes being interrupted or distracted visually by footnotes, so we go looking for the cleanest texts with the fewest notes, and those preferably tucked away at the back. What she really likes are actors' scripts, because these are typically far less annotated, footnoted, or "messed up" with things that distract her from the text itself. We buy these are our local theater's little shop.

[Angel]

Thanks, again, for all the replies. We went out last night to actually get a hands-on feel for the different books. Dd thought the Oxford too "cluttered." She liked the Folger and the Annotated Shakespeare series. It was a tough choice. She liked the Folger for the notes on the other side so the text was clean reading but she was surprised that the footnotes in the Annotated Shakepeare were not as distracting as she thought. What it came down to was feel, sounds silly, but she likes to have a "comfortable book" for reading. (She's my aspie). So the Annotated Shakespeare won out over the Folger. The book is a little bigger and easier for opening up and taking notes. We will use Folger for the couple works that the other doesn't have in print.

 

Thanks so much for pointing me in the direction of the Folger series.