British Literature

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  1. The Tempest

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by John W. Mahon and John M. Mucciolo
    Series Editor: James Lake

    "Kittredge's landmark edition appears now with an insightful and informative introduction to the play, its background and its history on stage and screen, together with excellent suggestions for reading it with performance in mind and commentary on significant productions. I recommend it warmly to readers who are already familiar with the play, as well as to those approaching it for the first time." —Russell Jackson, Professor Emeritus of Drama, University of Birmingham

    “An inspired edition of Shakespeare's late masterpiece, larded with riches that are at once accessible and challenging to students of The Tempest. These riches include a masterful introduction that sets forth major and minor characters in all their complexity; great page-for-page textual and performance notes that aptly explain the play’s obscurities and showcase the many ways given scenes and speeches have been performed; an enlightening guide to the reading experience—"How to Read the Play as Performance;" and brilliant questions for thought and discussion. Mahon and Mucciolo are the perfect guides through this most wondrous and perplexing play. —Laury Magnus, Professor of Humanities, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

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  2. The Tragedy of Macbeth

    William Shakespeare
    Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Jan H. Blits

    The fourth in a series of editions of Shakespeare’s most political and history-soaked plays, this Macbeth offers copious aids to understanding the play not found in any other edition. By attending to the play’s medieval Scottish setting in a way that rival editors have never matched—when they have even dug beyond the early seventeenth-century context in which it was produced—Jan H. Blits’s edition richly rewards readers left unsatisfied by “decodings” of the play’s supposed allusions to the politics of early modern England who wish to look deeper. In doing so, it opens the text for readers to encounter, in new ways, the play’s historical, political, and psychological significance.

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  3. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by Matthew Kozusko
    Series Editor James H. Lake

    "Even as the New Kittredge Shakespeare series glances back to George Lyman Kittredge's student editions of the plays, it is very much of our current moment: the slim editions are targeted largely at high school and first-year college students who are more versed in visual than in print culture. Not only are the texts of the plays accompanied by photographs or stills from various stage and cinema performances: the editorial contributions are performance-oriented, offering surveys of contemporary film interpretations, essays on the plays as performance pieces, and an annotated filmography. Traditional editorial issues (competing versions of the text, cruxes, editorial emendation history) are for the most part excluded; the editions focus instead on clarifying the text with an eye to performing it. There is no disputing the pedagogic usefulness of the New Kittredge Shakespeare's performance-oriented approach."
         —Studies in English Literature, Tudor and Stuart Drama

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  4. The Winter's Tale

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by Mark Z. Muggli
    Series Editor James H. Lake

    "The Winter's Tale is a kind of miracle play in which performance is of the essence of an exciting, imaginative, and inspiring plot embodied in visionary dialogue. In creating a course in Shakespeare Performed (2010) with his students staging an abridged Winter's Tale, Mark Muggli was in an ideal position to edit the play especially from the perspective of performance, as he did. This is a twenty-first-century edition up-to-date enough to include the Guthrie Theater's production of 2011 together with the solid twentieth-century scholarship of G. L. Kittredge. Kittredge's introduction, lightly edited, begins with Muggli's 'Spoiler Alert' about plot revelations the reader might prefer to experience first in the play itself. His notes are designed less to interpret than 'to facilitate the reader's interpretation,' and the reader and the play are primary in this presentation of The Winter’s Tale."
         —Tom Clayton, Regents Profesor, University of Minnesota

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  5. Three Shrew Plays

    Edited, with Introduction, by Barry Gaines and Margaret Maurer

    This annotated collection of three early modern English plays allows readers to explore the relationship between Shakespeare's Shrew and two closely related plays of the same genre, the earlier of which, the anonymous The Taming of a Shrew (whether inspired by Shakespeare's play or vice-versa), once enjoyed a level of popularity that likely surpassed that of Shakespeare's play. The editors' Introduction brilliantly illuminates points of comparison between the three, their larger themes included, and convincingly argues that Shakespeare's Shrew is seen all the more vividly when the anonymous A Shrew and Fletcher's table-turning The Tamer Tamed are waiting in the wings.

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  6. Timon of Athens

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by Douglas Lanier
    Series Editor: James Lake

    "Timon of Athens is one of the most enigmatic and underappreciated of Shakespeare's plays, yet its urgency for our times is not to be understated. Guided by Douglas Lanier's astute and accessible commentary throughout, this edition positions Timon in a range of historical, theoretical, and performance contexts. The superb Introduction and supplementary resources help the reader navigate key issues—ranging from money, friendship, and cynicism to art, ethics, and collaborative authorship—as well as consider contemporary adaptations on stage and screen. This edition will be a welcome resource for teachers and students at both undergraduate and graduate levels." Jay Zysk, Department of English, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

    "Douglas Lanier's Introduction immerses us in the play's daring experiments with genre, its ethical and economic dilemmas, and its emotional and tonal range. He shows how Timon of Athens not only resonates with our troubled cultural moment but also speaks eloquently of its own times. His essay on appreciating the play as a performance script advises us expertly on how to read it as directors do and how to be alert to its radical openness to interpretation." Stephen M. Buhler, Department of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

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  7. Titus Andronicus

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by J. Michael Drew
    Series Editor James H. Lake

    "J. Michael Drew's edition of Titus Andronicus in the New Kittredge Shakespeare series refreshes Kittredge's text with extensive and helpful explanatory notes as well as a thorough and enlightening introduction. A distinctive and attractive feature of Drew's edition is its generously illustrated focus on Julie Taymor's famous film adaptation. With its detailed and engaging questions for further study, this is an edition perfectly designed for classroom use."
         —Matthew Wikander, University of Toledo

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  8. Troilus and Criseyde in Modern Verse

    Geoffrey Chaucer
    Translated, with notes, by Joseph Glaser
    Introduction by Christine Chism

    This fast-moving Modern English version of Chaucer's greatest tragic romance highlights the poem's rapid shifts in register and diction as well as its subtle and elusive characterizations, while preserving the enchanting rhyme-royal stanza of the Middle English original. Christine Chism's Introduction illuminates the work's historical context, poetic devices, first audiences, sources, and non-traditional re-conception of a traditional female protagonist "whose faults," as Criseyde says, "are rolled on every tongue."

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  9. Twelfth Night

    William Shakespeare
    Edited by Gayle Gaskill
    Series Editor James H. Lake

    "Gayle Gaskill offers appropriate tribute to G.L. Kittredge by updating his classic edition with a mastery, thoroughness, and verve worthy of the original. This excellent edition is marked by impeccable scholarship that everywhere displays careful attention to detail and keen sensitivity to the needs of modern readers."
         —John W. Mahon, Senior Editor, The Shakespeare Newsletter, and Professor of English, Iona College

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  10. Utopia

    Thomas More
    Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by David Wootton

    “In addition to its elegant and precise translation of Utopia, this edition offers the prefatory material and postscripts from the 1518 edition, and More’s letter to Giles form the 1517 edition. Mr. Wootton has also added Erasmus’s ‘The Sileni of Alcibiades,’ which is crucial for the interpretation he gives in his Introduction of the many ambiguities and contradictions in More’s text as well as his life. The Introduction is a most valuable guide for understanding this man who was a proponent of toleration and a persecutor of heretics, a courtier full of worldly ambition ending as a fearless martyr. The contradictions of the man translated into a complicated and contradictory historiography to which Mr. Wootton’s Introduction is a most intelligent guide. A welcome addition to the More literature.”
         —J. W. Smit, Professor of History, Columbia University

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