Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: Based on Lectures Given at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

by Stanley Wells

144 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 1984

About the author

Stanley William Wells, CBE, is a Shakespeare scholar and Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An utterly fascinating (if slightly dated) book, which lays out good rules for how to wrestle sometimes uncomplete, and therefore complicated, Shakespeare texts into a form where they can be read by a modern reader.

The Shakespeare texts that come to us are so often cleaned up versions, with stage directions added (for "clarity") which sometimes end up obscuring ideas in the text. I do not agree with Wells' decisions in chapter 4 (I prefer my Titus Andronicus unsoiled by too many additional Stage Directions) but he explains clearly the choices he made, and why.

I sometimes wish other editors would do the same.