The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works
The best-value book I ever bought was on instruction from my College tutor, in February 1982. The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare (above, left), published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1973, had as its general editor Sylvan Barnet of Tufts University, with an impressive array of contributing editors such as Frank Kermode and Barbara Everett providing short introductions plus source- and text-notes. I have no idea how many times I have used it, but I still do, every week. As a physical object it is still in pretty good shape. Importantly, despite being 1776 pages and 1.867kg it sits flat at any page I open. Characters’ names are printed complete (nothing more irritating than ‘Cord.’, or ‘Cleo.’) with the words clearly printed in two columns. There is a simple glossary at the bottom of each column.
But you can never have too many Complete Shakespeares (and I move between classroom, school office and home study, so I need a few). And naturally scholarship and performance have given us a lot more in the 50 years since the Signet was published. Last year Bloomsbury Academic published the second volume of the Complete Works edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (with Ian De Jong and Molly G. Yarn).
It passes the lying-flat test despite its greater heft (2472 pages and 3.294kg) so congratulations to the Italian printers and binders.
Signet is in chronological order, but this is genre-based: in order, Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, Plays not in the First Folio (Pericles and the Two Noble Kinsmen), Poems and Sonnets.
The two columns of Signet here are reduced to a single one, which gives lots of space for annotations, though the huge blocks of small text in the introduction can stretch your attention.
Thankfully character names are again full and clear.
In the margins we get ‘staging notes’ on the RSC productions, which can be particularly helpful for teachers in prompting fruitful classroom discussion. For instance, I have just started teaching King Lear for the nth time: in two RSC productions, Cordelia’s first line What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent was an aside; in a third, it was cut entirely, creating ambiguity about her reactions. In Lear’s furious 2.2 outburst against Goneril in the 2016 Doran production Lear hugged Goneril, then began to squeeze her ribs; she gasped in pain and struggled to breathe.
There are also standard explanatory notes at the bottom of each page.
There is much more commentary than in Signet, with Jonathan Bate’s fine Preface and General Introduction touching on issues like sexual orientation, gender identity, race and climate change, as well as topics like ‘Plague and Poetry’, ‘Cult and Heresy’ and the First Folio, now 400 years old.
There is a collection of colour plates of RSC productions.
Again there are short individual play-introductions with textual notes and Key Fact boxes (Plot, Date, Sources and so on).
So this edition is a terrific companion to have, and well-worth buying.