The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works

The text in this edition is based on the 1623 First Folio, the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled and seen into print by Shakespeare's fellow-actors. The First Folio is a literary icon and is the version of Shakespeare's text preferred by many actors and directors, yet no one has edited it in its entirety for over three hundred years.

At the request of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmunssen, two of today's most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, have used the very latest techniques and research to correct the errors and variations in the early printed copies and to present the First Folio for modern readers. The result is a fresh and definitive Complete Works for the twenty-first century.

This edition includes all the material that might be needed by a student of Shakespeare. The Sonnets, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles, Shakespeare's scene from Sir Thomas More, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and Turtle, and a number of other interesting passages not published in the First Folio are also included.

'This is a glorious edition of one of the world's most important books. It's the essential reference book for anyone who's ever been in love, felt jealousy, hatred, or desire. All human life is here — and every home should have one.'
-Dame Judi Dench

'A splendid edition … the general introduction is among the best 50-page guides to Shakespeare you could hope to find, while the short essays prefixed to each play are informative, thought-provoking and humane. Marginal notes help readers imagine what's happening onstage … the RSC's edition allows you to lose yourself in the wonder of the works.'
-Dr Colin Burrow, Oxford University

'A triumphant addition to our times.'
-Fiona Shaw, The Times

'The scholarly apparatus is discreet, elegant and pertinent. For each play, we get brief accounts of plots, dates and sources … footnotes are found snugly and legibly at the bottom of each page … there is a universe to be found in these annotations: the Renaissance world of power and fate, sex and death, language and philosophy … an edition full of endless fascination.'
-Tom Deveson, Times Educational Supplement

'Bate's general introduction to Shakespeare's life, stage and reputation is superb, and the short introductions to individual works are among the best of their kind available … they manage to speak about what really matters about the plays.'
-Professor Michael Dobson, London Review of Books

'Excellent, succinct notes and introductions to each play.'
-John Carey, Sunday Times

'Outstanding … Jonathan Bate writes with as much elegance as insight about the making of theatre and the creation of the plays … an impeccably informative introduction gives a comprehensive theatrical, social, political and biographical context to the plays … exemplary notes at the foot of each page translate verbal and topical obscurities … for actors and directors it will be incomparably useful, but for any curious reader of Shakespeare's plays it provides an invaluable guide to reading them not as novels or dramatic poems, but as they were intended to be read: blueprints for live performance.'
-Richard Eyre, Sunday Telegraph