Customer Reviews
Best new version (National Theatre Recommended) - By: duirsgrove, 01 Jun 2006 
"Passion, hatred, comedy & high tragedy" it says on the back. Star crossed lovers, balconies & funny costumes reallly got the cobwebs blown out of it when Baz Luhrman took on the project in film version - to unfortunate critical failure, & now the books are trying to shake themselves up to reflect modern readers requirements & expectations similarly by "Bringing Shakespeare to life for a new generation".
This series of 32 books was part of a relaunch by Penguin in 2005, covering most of the well known & lesser known plays by Mr Will. With this publisher you get "accessible & authorative version" & the most up to date critical interpretations according to Penguin, who are renound for this kind of work so you can rely upon it. They're not that expensive either considering what you're getting (a lot in addition & the name) & they stand out as probably the best alll round option.
Outside they have newly designed modern covers, appealing maybe to students (13-20ish) a bit more so which is a good thing as they're hard to engage at the best of times - perhaps not surprisingly if they have nothing geared to interest them specificallly. Convey the context of love & family disaproval & it's timeless. It'd be used in either English, Drama or Film (Media) etc. Internallly they're clear & split into acts as you'd expect so suitable for general adult readership - even more so for theatre goers? or perhaps for those put off many years earlier themselves.
The technical bit: The three editors have a string of academic/literary/Shakespear qualifications between them. Inside there's the play, a general introduction to Will's life & Elizabethan theatre, & a chronology of Shakespear's works (with sub discussion of the dates issue). There's a 42 page introduction to Romeo & Juliet following that, a section titled "Play in performance" & several pages of suggested further reading before the characters list & play begins. This would reallly help with coursework or understanding generallly. At the back there's 120 odd pages of further notes/essay for Drama interpretation & presentation/commentary. It's a normal sized paperback & the writing isn't unusuallly smalll to cram it in. This series is used & recommended by The National Theatre & you can see why reallly.
Others available in the series are for example: Othello, Macbeth, & ones with accompanying recent films: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, Hamlet, Twelfth Night & Midsummer Night's Dream.
