Regular marked price: $14.99Discount Price: $13.49
Cost Savings: $1.50 (10%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN num: 9781904271338
ISBN number: 1904271332
Label: Arden
Manufacturer: Arden
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 613
Printing Date: March 20, 2006
Publishing house: Arden
Sale Popularity Level: 75066
Studio: Arden
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The core of the ground-breaking, three text edition, this self-contained, free-standing volume gives readers the Second Quarto text (1604-5) and includes in its Introduction, notes and Appendices all the reader might expect to find in any standard Arden edition. As well as a full, illustrated Introduction to the play’s historical, cultural and performance contexts and a thorough survey of critical approaches to the play, an appendix contains the additional passages found only in the 1623 text. 'The new Arden Hamlet is a pathbreaking edition, one that promises to change irrevocably our understanding of Shakespeare's greatest play.' - Professor James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare “Hamlet's latest editors have undertaken a heroic task with great skill and thoroughnesss.” - Stanley Wells, The Observer '(The) new Arden Hamlet is quite simply the most comprehensive edition of the play currently available, a status I suspect it will enjoy for many years to come' - The British Theatre Guide 'Stunning! There is absolutely no doubt about this being the text to buy if you are studying the play at A Level. And the same stands for those students who will be studying the play at university. This critical edition gives the reader the Second Quarto Text (1604-1605), annotated with intelligence and care, a wealth of historical and cultural references and a survey of different critical approaches to the play.' - The Use of English, The English Association
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
The edition is awesome, Arden is wonderful. The problem is I HAVE NEVER RECEIVED my Hamlet, only other two.. so be aware that Amazon is not perfect..
Rated by buyers 
-
I am a Bardolator and an Orthodox Shakespearean; so that you'll know where I'm coming from. I paraphrase Whitman by claiming that Hamlet contains multitudes. And of what other literary figures can we say such things and get away with it sounding normal? Perhaps God (especially the Yahweh of the Tanakh) and Jesus (either Nazarethian or Christ), perhaps Ulysses. Hamlet is so huge a figure greater works than Amazon User Comments have been written on the mere subject of him being an influence greater than our comprehension. He transcends not only the literary but our cultural "genres", because it's in part his creation.
I don't recommend only one edition of Hamlet but as with Mozart's "Requiem", you get a richer picture by collecting publications that vary sometimes significantly and provide them as if they were pieces of a puzzle. But Arden is known for its impeccable quality and high standards in editing, so this is amongst those editions that you will find useful. I've already given my thoughts on the 1603/1623 edition, a treasure in itself, and about what makes this combination work. It's easier to read without falling under the annotations as happens with this edition, although it's necessary that the extensive web of footnotes exists right there where it's supposed to be: it's useful to have them there, and to have so extensive a bulk of annotations in the end would be a drag. I will say with a blink in the eye that they will make you educated.
This edition doesn't take sides on matters, although what I found positively surprising taking into account my own beliefs is how open-mindedly the editors Ann Thompson and Neil Taylour talk about the Shakespearean Ur-Hamlet instead of the Kydian. Ironic in itself since it was the 1982 Jenkins Arden edition that was quite aggressive about the chance of Shakespeare being the writer. I don't know if it has to do with Bloomian influence, but it's nice to see a widened perspective, considering that I'm always inclined to be fascinated by the thought of the young Shakespeare, having just arrived in London, creating this play of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark with whatever company Shakespeare was then, be it Pembroke's Men or those of Lord Chamberlain's, in the late 1580s, then it being performed and being pulled out of production. I would consider the Ur-Hamlet as being more of a collaboration in which Shakespeare wouldn't have had the complete freedom to create his vision, but a joint vision of a theatre group. It could've been pulled out because it wasn't well-received, or rather as I like to think, because Shakespeare, now in growing popularity with growing prestige and influence over his peers, felt that the play wasn't really what he had intended. If we believe that Shakespeare had his hand in the revisions of the Folio that was published in 1623, we could think that he was tinkering with the play until the very end. If we believe this to be true, it shouldn't be surprising if he had started moulding it not in 1603 but in the late 1580s or truly in the early 1590s.
We could continue of this subject forever, but then there is the thing itself: the play, the words, the beautiful narrative, the experience. "Hamlet" is so full of everything - not to mention the culture it has helped to mould - it's hard to come across unchanged; nay, it's impossible to come across unchanged, but hard not to be obsessed. If Hamlet obsesses with the ghost and revenge that transcends the mere excuse to kill, we've been trapped to obsess with Hamlet: there are cosmic things brewing in his mind, and in his words there's a metaphysical awareness, mysteriously shrouded to tingle our imagination in just the right way. He's a grand character, so much that Harold Bloom famously argues that it's in fact Hamlet that has been shaping our sense of a humanity; and ironically he's more human in his conflicted nature than any of us.
I'm also obsessed with self-reference, a term that's been losing its meaning since it very first was spoken out loud. But it's a sort of phase in the process of the narrative becoming self-conscious and possibly transcending the limitations set for it by the medium and extending to the mind of the reader, becoming a lucid flow of introspection. I would like to think of "Hamlet" and "Don Quijote" as the two works most responsible for our modern notion of narrative introspection which uses self-reference to create a multi-layered reality. The basic concept, of course, is to be found in "Hamlet" where the prince sets out a play to catch the king's conscience: with "Mousetrap" we have a new reality inside the one we're dwelling, in fact geniusly reflecting the reality in which we think we live in (that of Hamlet's), yet only know because of what an infernal ghost has been telling us. Basically this means that also "Mousetrap" could be a fiction, and we could be guilty parties, as well, in believing Hamlet. Since Quarto ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
I am currently working on my MFA/Directing. I directed Hamlet and am now writing my defense of it. I have two thoughts on this third edition.
After going through this edition, from a point of view of the script, I'm not sure I understand the need to update Harold Jenkins's 2d edition. The script itself was easier to navigate in the 2d edition and I thought Jenkins's notes were more helpful. I also disagree with some of what Thompson and Taylour have to say in their editorial notes below the script. That said, I am biased because I used the 2d edition as a sort of "Hamlet Bible" as I directed the piece. Jenkins's notes were extremely insightful and useful. I became very comfortable with it.
On the other hand, this third edition has some different insight into the play in performance than does the second edition, as well as information on casting and music that was not included in Jenkins. Obviously there is much written about William Shakespeare in the world, and this 3rd edition of Arden is probably the most up-to-date resource for bibliographic material (as well as some photos of past productions of the play). Jenkins edition is 24 years old, ancient in the scholastic world's "what's new" when it comes to sifting the vast quantity of material written on Shakespeare and Hamlet.
Obviously, the needs of the theatrical world for playing Hamlet are different than that of the scholastic world (of which I am currently stuck in both). I think Jenkins is more user-friendly for the theatrician while Thompson & Taylour suit the needs of the scholastic better. My final thought is that a scholar/student of Shakespeare will want to have both the second and third editions for the differences they have to offer.
Rated by buyers -
I certainly do not rate this item five stars for its stunning value. I rate this five stars because I think that if I had to pay the amount listed for any complete edition of Hamlet, I would. It is simply that good. If you have not read it, do so.
Find other books like this one:
