Blog Archive

The RSC Shakespeare

To celebrate Shakespeare's birthday there is a new edition of the complete works from the Royal Shakespeare Company: William Shakespeare Complete Works, or less formally, The RSC Shakespeare. Edited by noted scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, the RSC Shakespeare is based entirely on the First Folio edition. In fact, the splendid UK web site for this volume claims "...no one has edited it in its entirety for over three hundred years." Exclusive reliance on the First Folio text, in fact, is unique, and is defended in a long and fascinating paper, published on the UK web site by Bate "The Case for the Folio" [PDF - 818K]. Since I have not had a chance yet to review the text, I will review materials from the UK and American web sites for this volume and their remarkable resources.

The UK web site for the RSC Shakespeare, in addition to the downloadable Bate's Folio article, contains several notable resources:

An active blog, updated reularly by Bate (here is the RSS subscription address, just paste it into your aggregator to subscribe: http://palgrave.typepad.com/rsc/index.rdf);
Four brief QuickTime movies by Gregory Doran, Chief Associate Artistic Director, Royal Shakespeare Company introducing the First Folio (note especially the third on the listing of actors);
A PowerPoint presentation (with audio narrative) by Eric Rasmussen introducing the editorial uses of the quartos and the First Folio (Note that this resource is in PPT format and can be downloaded. If the audio truncates after downloading, save for the web with a supporting folder and play the mp3 files stand alone. If you do not own PowerPoint, click here to download the free PowerPoint viewer from Microsoft);
RSC staging histories of the plays, with plot synopses;
Annotated PDF versions of The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint;
A fascinating discussion of the glossing process in the RSC Shakespeare Héloïse Sénéchal, Chief Associate Editor of The RSC Shakespeare;
Several interesting audio discussions (downloadable mp3) between Bate and actor Michael Pennington on the challenges of using Shakespeare's language on stage;
A useful list of online Shakespeare resouces (among which we are honored to be included);
100+ of the best books on Shakespeare, by Jonathan Bate.

Kudos to the designers of this simple and elegant web site, but many more to the authors and editors who have mounted a very substantial and academically useful site.

A parallel site is available through the Modern Library, containing much, but not all, sadly, of the same material. Most interesting from this site is the page devoted to "poems and scenes attributed to Shakespeare."

Click here to purchase the RSC Shakespeare from Amazon.