Recommend a Shakespeare omnibus

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So, I finally feel like getting a collected Shakespeare. Does anybody have a particular one they think is good? Most of them I come across at say, Borders, are sealed in plastic, but I've found a used store that's got a bunch of different ones way up off the floor and I haven't had a chance to browse yet.

― Su (BoredInsomniac), Monday, 21 June 2004 09:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The Riverside edition is the one I was assigned to use in college, and it's quite good. The paper's not too thin, the print is readable, and the annotations are complete but not obtrusive.

― marisa (marisa), Monday, 21 June 2004 11:15 (twenty-one years ago)

The one I used at university, and still use, is the Norton Shakespeare. I'd recommend it for its marginal glosses (which are so obviously necessary I cannot believe that all editions don't use them), and its choices of best texts which seem satisfactory to me. Obviously, as with all the one-volume editions, it's an unwieldy object, but I've managed to read it comfortably on both toilet and tube, so you could do worse.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Friday, 25 June 2004 07:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I just went for the cheapest one that had all the plays and poems in it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 25 June 2004 10:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Ditto.

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 25 June 2004 15:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Did you read it?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 June 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

That was a slightly cozenesque comment. What I really meant was: The thing about just getting a cheap edition is that it will be poorly designed, and thus harder to read, and also perhaps not have the best notes (which are, I should think, useful for Shakespeare, even though when I've read it they always note passages that make perfect sense and leave me to suss out the meaning to passages that baffle me), and thus harder to read.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 June 2004 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't read him with notes since I was in school (my edition has none), and I don't think cheapness necessarily equates to poor design/hard to read.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 25 June 2004 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I am counting you know.

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 25 June 2004 20:52 (twenty-one years ago)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 25 June 2004 21:01 (twenty-one years ago)

'cozenesque'

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 25 June 2004 21:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Martin: No, obv cheapness doesn't equate with it, but if you went for the "cheapest" edition rather than the "cheapest and yet most readable", etc. Blah blah blah.

In my high school, we were supposed to read one Shakespeare play a year (from 7th through 12th grades), but it was a gifted program (and anyways I dropped out after 9th), and then I got through the better part of an English degree without ever reading him.

I suspect things might be different in the UK.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 June 2004 22:05 (twenty-one years ago)

(7th grade, Romeo & Juliet; 8th grade, Midsummer Nights Dream; 9th grade, Julius Caesar. Actually I think we read Richard III at some point too.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 June 2004 22:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I think I only did two Shakespeare plays at school - I can only recall doing Macbeth and, ferchrissakes, Coriolanus.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 25 June 2004 22:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I am expected to read all of them over the summer. I mean, I'm really looking forward to it, I like all I've read and have properly loved a couple. But, all!

(We did three at school I think - one for A-level, one at GCSE and one the year before).

― Gregory Henry (Gregory Henry), Saturday, 26 June 2004 19:38 (twenty-one years ago)

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