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New Kittredge Shakespeare Series

Series editor: James H. Lake

George Lyman Kittredge’s insightful editions of Shakespeare have endured in part because of his eclecticism, his diversity of interests, and his wide-ranging accomplishments — all of which are reflected in the valuable notes in each volume. The plays in the New Kittredge Shakespeare series retain the original Kittredge notes and introductions, changed or augmented only when modernization is necessary. These new editions also include introductory essays by contemporary editors, notes on the plays as they have been performed on stage and film, and additional student materials.

 

Books in Series  |  Description  |  About the Author  Contents  |  Reviews

   

 

 Books in Series                                      

 

The Life of King Henry V

Editor: Annalisa Castaldo
2007 • 978-1-58510-161-0 • paper • 144 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95      Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Editor: Sarah Hatchuel

2008 • 978-1-58510-260-0 • paper • 142 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95      Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Editor: Annalisa Castaldo

2008 • 978-1-58510-162-1 • paper • 136 pages •; 5½ x 8½ • $8.95      Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Tragedy of Antony & Cleopatra

Editor: Sarah Hatchuel

2008 • 978-1-58510-272-3 • paper • 182 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet

Editors: Bernice W. Kliman & Laury Magnus

2008 • 978-1-58510-163-4 • paper • 180 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Merchant of Venice

Editor: Kenneth Rothwell

2008 • 978-1-58510-264-8 • paper • 128 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Editors: Bernice W. Kliman & James H. Lake

2009 • 978-1-58510-140-5 • paper • 208 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The First Part of King Henry IV

Editor: Samuel Crowl

2009 • 978-1-58510-273-0 • paper • 140 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Taming of the Shrew

Editor: Laury Magnus

2010 • 978-1-58510-266-2 • paper • 140 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Editor: Jeffrey Kahan

2010 • 978-1-58510-313-3 • paper • 122 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

Midsummer Night's Dream

Editor: John Ford

2010 • 978-1-58510-165-8 • paper • 126 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

The Second Part of King Henry IV

Editor: James Wells

2010 • 978-1-58510-289-1 • paper • 152 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

As You Like It

Editor: Patricia Lennox

2010 • 978-1-58510-279-2 • paper • 129 pages • 5½ x 8½ • $8.95         Sample Pages       Buy This Book

 

 

2010 Releases:

Othello (Schultz)  978-1-58510-253-2

The Tragedy of King Lear (Rothwell)  978-1-58510-265-5

Twelfth Night; or What You Will  (Gaskill)  978-1-58510-164-1

The Tragedy of King Richard the Third  (Kilpatrick)  978-1-58510-271-6

 

 

 Description of Series                              

 

Features of the text 

    The original introduction to the Kittredge Edition

    NEW Introduction to the Focus Edition

  • With a section on performance considerations and performance histories.

    NEW Performance notes

  • That appear separately and immediately below the textual footnotes.  These will include some discussion of performance concerns (places where directors or actors need to make choices), staging, issues of interpretation, etc.

    NEW How To read the play as Performance Section

  • A discussion of the written play vs. the play as performed (considerations, differences, accomplishments, etc.); film and/or stage; historic and modern that will allow the reader to envision the work “off the page.”

    NEW Comprehensive Timeline

  • Covering major historical events (with brief annotations ) as well as relevant details from Shakespeare’s life.

    NEW Topics for Discussion and Further Study Section

  • Critical Issues: dealing with the text in a larger context.

  • Performance Issues: Questions related to the Introduction to the Focus Edition’s performance histories.

    NEW Production stills, commentary, pages from the script, etc.

Each play will include some or all of the following:

  • Photos from major productions, for comparison and scene study.

  • Annotated (facsimile) pages from a script or promptbook.

  • Interviews with director or cast members.

    NEW Select Bibliography & Filmography

 

 Authors                                                   

  • Annalisa Castaldo is assistant professor of English at Widener University. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from Temple University. Her scholarly interests are Shakespeare and popular culture, and performance studies.

  • Samuel Crowl is Trustee Professor of English at Ohio University. He is the author of four books on Shakespeare in Performance and has been honored five times for distinguished teaching.

  • John R. Ford has taught courses in Shakespeare, Milton, and other Renaissance topics at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi since 1983. Ford is the author of Twelfth Night: A Guide to the Play (2005), published by Greenwood Press.

  • Sarah Hatchuel lectures in English at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and teaches "Shakespeare on Screen" at the University of Paris VII. She co-organized two conferences on the screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays at the University of Rouen; has published several articles on the aesthetics of Shakespeare on screen; and is the author of A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh (2000) and Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen (Cambridge, 2004).

  • Jeffrey Kahan is a Professor at the University of La Verne in California. He completed his PhD at the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, England. He has published extensively on Shakespearean forgeries and parodies, has published numerous articles, notes, and reviews, and has edited many editions of Shakespeare, including the Shakespeare for Children series.

  • Bernice W. Kliman is professor emeritus of English at Nassau Community College, State University of New York. She has authored and edited numerous works on Shakespeare and especially Hamlet.

  • James H. Lake is Professor of English at Louisiana State University-Shreveport. Lake received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Tulane University and his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. He has published widely on Shakespeare and cinema. He is the Series Editor of the Focus New Kittredge Shakespeare Series.

  • Patricia Lennox teaches at the Gallatin Center for Individualized Study at New York University. Her teaching and research interests include myths, fables, and fairy tales; Shakespeare; early modern female writers; fashion; classic literature; film history; and theater. Her published writing includes theater reviews and articles, often about Shakespeare and performance, in academic journals, and anthologies.

  • Laury Magnus is Professor of Humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, and has authored numerous books and articles on British and American poetry, Russian literature, and Shakespeare.

  • Kenneth S. Rothwell is professor emeritus of English at The University of Vermont, where he chaired the department and received two awards for excellence in teaching. He co-founded and co-edited (with Bernice W. Kliman) the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter.

  • James Wells earned his Ph.D. from Ohio University. He teaches courses in Shakespeare, Early Modern English Literature, British Literature, Drama, and Composition. He has published articles on Coriolanus and Macbeth.

 

 General Table of Contents                     

Introduction to the Kittredge Edition

Introduction to the Focus Edition

The Tragedy of [insert play name]

How to Read [play name] as Performance

Timeline

Topics for Discussion and Further Study

Bibliography

Filmography

 Reviews                                                    

With its careful glosses and lively supporting essays on film and performance, this Taming of the Shrew provides the puzzled and the offended with a useful and intelligent guide to the possibilities of this play in a way that is historically informed yet alert to the pleasures of theater. The book does an especially fine job in its treatment of the Taylor and Zeffirelli film versions.

~ Pamela Allen Brown, University of Connecticut, Stamford

 

Laury Magnus’ edition of The Taming of the Shrew is much more than a revision of Kittredge. Her splendid introduction and appendices are sensitive to the play’s language and its paradoxical nuances of gender, and she understands that the play is, after all, a love story. Her explanatory notes are excellent, but most impressive and original is her emphasis on film, theater, and television performance.

~ Maurice Charney, Emeritus, Rutgers University

 

Seventy years after their publication, George Lyman Kittredge’s editions of Shakespeare remain exceptional for the combination of learning, acuity, wit, and clarity. Now, in the twenty-first century, Patricia Lennox broadens that understanding in her excellent edition of As You Like It where she draws on her knowledge of international film and television. She offers new meaning for modern readers who, while they savor Shakespeare’s language also understand visual signals from contemporary media.

~ Irene G. Dash, Hunter College, CUNY, retired

 

This edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is wonderfully lucid and thoughtful, offering supporting material that will appeal to readers from high school students to scholars. The introduction is especially thoughtful, offering, in addition to expected discussions of love, magic and imagination, an exploration of the theatrical history. The bibliography and filmography are both detailed and helpful, and the questions guide students to consider the play from many viewpoints without ever forcing an interpretation onto them.

~ Annalisa Castaldo, Widener University

 

 

Kahan has presented the performance and printing issues [of Pericles, the Prince of Tyre] with directness and clarity, leaving many technical details that might discourage some students to the footnotes. The result is a very readable “Introduction” to one of Shakespeare’s late romances.

~ Stanley Stewart, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

 

Shakespeare scholars Bernice W. Kliman and James H. Lake have carried out the important task of bringing up to date, while retaining the significant features of the text of Hamlet edited in the last century by the celebrated Shakespearean George Lyman Kittredge. They have succeeded in preserving for today's students the essence of Kittredge's legendary system of notes and scholarly apparatus while adding their own insightful performance notes. As Professor Kittredge himself understood, the nuances and complexities of Hamlet perennially invite new interpretation and speculation. Kliman and Lake have retained that spirit by stressing in their own fresh introductory essay how recent productions have in their diversity brought about a "freeing" of Hamlet. The editors' discerning analyses of performances by Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Almereyda, and Simon Russell Beal drive home the point that Hamlet today remains restless and unpredictable.

~ Kenneth Sprague Rothwell, Professor Emeritus, University of Vermont
Author, A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television
 

 

(Henry IV, Part 2) is an exciting new edition, with a clear and lively introduction that succinctly captures the play's complexity and challenges. Wells' discussion of the play's relationship with Henry IV, Part One is especially thoughtful, and his attention to performance and film history is extremely valuable. The thorough and clear notes will be extremely helpful to students navigating Shakespeare's language for the first time, as well as for deepening the understanding of those who have some familiarity already.

~ Tanya Pollard, Associate Professor of English, CUNY Brooklyn

 

It is good to have Kittredge's editions--with his notes updated by respected scholars, new introductions, and suggestions on approaching the plays in performance--readily and inexpensively available.

~ James L. Harner, Texas A&M University. Editor, World Shakespeare Bibliography

 

The New Kittredge Series is both a delight and a steal. Kittredge’s textual authority, updated by eminent scholars sensitive to classroom needs and alert to staging choices, is once again available in these slim, elegant, inexpensive, user-friendly volumes. With lucid notes and incisive introductions geared especially to popular film versions, the series also offers an overview of both stage and film performances of each play. A must for any Shakespeare class.

~ Laury Magnus

 

Ken Rothwell does a splendid updating of Kittredge’s Merchant of Venice with considerations of the play in performance. His essay on the play’s stage history is lucid, his additions to Kittredge’s notes are indicative of performance choices, and, as one would expect of the preeminent scholar of Shakespeare on film, his discussion of cinematic adaptations of Merchant is richly informative.  This edition should prove useful to all levels of undergraduates.

~ James Bulman, Allegheny College

 

The Henry V volume is handsome and impressive.

~ Samuel Crowl, Ohio University

 

Seventy years after their publication, George Lyman Kittredge’s editions of Shakespeare remain exceptional for the combination of learning, acuity, wit, and clarity he brings to his notes on the plays. Annalisa Castaldo makes Kittredge’s Macbeth even more useful for modern readers by skillfully streamlining Kittredge’s annotations and adding helpful analyses of the play and its film productions. There is no better edition of Shakespeare for students, beginning or advanced.

~ James Wells, Belmont University

 

This splendid edition [Romeo & Juliet] furnishes readers, students, and theater people alike with a marvelous set of tools for appreciating the many facets of Shakespeare's play: a freshly edited text from the authoritative 1599 quarto, trenchant explanatory notes, and - best of all - insightful performance notes detailing the various ways in which individual passages have been interpreted in important films and stage productions.

~ Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada - Reno
Co-editor of the RSC Shakespeare edition

 

Samuel Crowl's revision and updating of George Lyman Kittredge's edition of I Henry IV makes this useful text even more attractive to a contemporary audience of both general readers and students. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of and sensitivity to Shakespearean performance, Crowl provides a new Introduction, in addition to Kittredge's original, highlighting performance history, together with an essay on "How to Read The First Part of King Henry the Fourth as Performance," which pays particular attention to Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight and two television productions of the play available on DVD. Crowl has lightly revised and extended Kittredge's annotations, and has added extensive performance notes where appropriate.

~ Michael Anderegg, University of North Dakota

 


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