Description: Edited by noted Shakespeare scholar Horace H. Furness, the New Variorum editions of Shakespeare's plays are simply indispensable to serious students of the playwright's work. Each volume contains a basic text (usually First Folio), collated against all variants in the other Folios and Quartos: omissions, additions, different readings, etc. Footnotes carry suggested emendations by every editor up to about 1900, interpretation of difficult passages, and other information, while exhaustive appendices reprint critical essays by noted authorities. These cover costuming, acting traditions, special features, and much more. In many volumes, original sources are reprinted in full.

Volume I encompasses Furness's own text, combining the copiously annotated texts of all Folio and Quarto editions, plus the 30-some critical editions extant at the time of this volume's initial publication. The second volume features reprints of three significant early works (the First Quarto version of Hamlet, the French prose tale called "The Hystorie of Hamblet"; and the German tragedy, Der bestrafte Brudermord, or Fratricide Punished), as well as critical appreciations by such distinguished writers as Johnson, Coleridge, Goethe, Heine, Voltaire, and many others. Inexhaustible in its coverage of texts, sources, critical history, and background information, this two-volume edition offers a priceless resource for enhanced understanding and appreciation of the play.

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