This much-anticipated Norton Critical Edition of Shakespeare’s best-known play is based on the Second Quarto, widely agreed to be the most authoritative early text. By carefully selecting extracts from sources, scholars, and scriptwriters, Gordon McMullan tells a series of stories about Romeo and Juliet, globally and from their legend's origins to the present day. The Norton Critical Edition includes: · Introductory materials and explanatory annotations by Gordon McMullan as well as numerous images. · Sources and early rewritings by Luigi Da Porto, Matteo Bandello, Pierre Boaistuau, Kareen Seidler, and Thomas Otway, among others. · Critical readings and later rewritings spanning four centuries and including those by Stanley Wells, Wendy Wall, Dympna C. Callaghan, Jill L. Levenson, Nia?h Cusack, David Tennant, and Courtney Lehmann. · A Selected Bibliography.

“In the pure poetry and intoxication of words, Shakespeare never rose higher than he rises in this play.” —G. K. Chesterton This Norton Critical Edition includes: • Shakespeare’s most popular comedy—with its unforgettable love triangles, woodland fairies, and magic—based on Grace Ioppolo’s conflated text (Q1 with F1 variants) and accompanied by her introduction, note on the text, and explanatory annotations. • Five illustrations. • Seven sources for the play, including those by Geoffrey Chaucer, Plutarch, and Lucius Apuleius. • Fifteen wide-ranging critical assessments, including ones by Jan Kott, Margo Hendricks, and Peter Brook. • Adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Robert Cox and Henry Purcell and Elkanah Settle. • A Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format—annotated text, contexts, and criticism—helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

This much-anticipated Norton Critical Edition of Shakespeare’s best-known play is based on the Second Quarto, widely agreed to be the most authoritative early text. By carefully selecting extracts from sources, scholars, and scriptwriters, Gordon McMullan tells a series of stories about Romeo and Juliet, globally and from their legend's origins to the present day. The Norton Critical Edition includes: · Introductory materials and explanatory annotations by Gordon McMullan as well as numerous images. · Sources and early rewritings by Luigi Da Porto, Matteo Bandello, Pierre Boaistuau, Kareen Seidler, and Thomas Otway, among others. · Critical readings and later rewritings spanning four centuries and including those by Stanley Wells, Wendy Wall, Dympna C. Callaghan, Jill L. Levenson, Nia?h Cusack, David Tennant, and Courtney Lehmann. · A Selected Bibliography.

When Pierre was published one year after Moby-Dick, expectations were high. Readers expected—and Melville delivered—adventure, humor, and brilliance. Magnificent and strange, Pierre is a richly allusive novel mirroring both antebellum America and Melville’s own life. This Norton Critical Edition includes: · The Harper & Brothers 1852 first edition of the novel, accompanied by Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinstein’s editorial matter. · Six illustrations. · Contextual and source materials, including letters, responses to Pierre by Melville’s contemporaries, and works by Daniel Webster, Thomas Cole, James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Maria Child, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, that give readers a sense of Pierre’s time and place. · Seven critical essays on Pierre’s major themes by Sacvan Bercovitch, James Creech, Samuel Otter, Wyn Kelley, Cindy Weinstein, Jeffory A. Clymer, and Dominic Mastroianni. · A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

“I wanted an edition of Othello that had the necessary footnotes, background material, and a good selection of recent critical articles that would be accessible to students and would spark class discussions. This was it.” —Deborah Montuori, Shippensburg University This Norton Critical Edition includes: ·The First Folio text (1623). · An introduction, explanatory footnotes, note on the text, and textual notes by Edward Pechter. · Fifteen illustrations. · Giraldi Cinthio’s sixteenth-century story in its entirety, which Shakespeare used for both the plot and many details of Othello. · A generous selection of interpretive responses to Othello from its origins to the present day, including—new to the Second Edition—those by Stanley Cavell and Lois Potter. Edward Pechter’s popular theatrical and critical overview of Othello has been significantly expanded. · An updated Selected Bibliography.

The most accessible edition of Wordsworth’s poetry and prose, prepared to meet the needs of both students and scholars. This Norton Critical Edition presents a generous selection of William Wordworth’s poetry (including the thirteen-book Prelude of 1805) and prose works along with supporting materials for in-depth study. Together, the Norton Critical Editions of Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose and The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 are the essential texts for studying this author. Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose includes a large selection of texts chronologically arranged, thereby allowing readers to trace the author’s evolving interests and ideas. An insightful general introduction and textual introduction precede the texts, each of which is fully annotated. Illustrative materials include maps, manuscript pages, and title pages. “Criticism” collects thirty responses to Wordsworth’s poetry and prose spanning three centuries by British and American authors. Contributors include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lucy Newlyn, Stephen Gill, Neil Fraistat, Mary Jacobus, Nicholas Roe, M. H. Abrams, Karen Swann, Michael O’Neill, and Geoffrey Hartman, among others. The volume also includes a Chronology, a Biographical Register, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines of Poems.

A tragedy that evokes both pity and terror—now in a thoroughly revised and updated Norton Critical Edition. The Norton Critical Edition is again based on the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of the play. The volume includes a revised introduction and new annotations and textual notes. The Second Edition also includes the innovative feature “The Actors’ Gallery,” which presents famous actors and actresses—among them David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Ian McKellen, Hira Mikijirô, Patrick Stewart, and Kate Fleetwood—reflecting on their roles in major productions of Macbeth for stage and screen. “Sources and Contexts” provides readers with an understanding of Macbeth’s origins in earlier texts, specifically the works of the Roman playwright Seneca, the Tudor historian Raphael Holinshed, and the medieval drama The Slaughter of the Innocents and the Death of Herod. Contexts for the play include contemporary debates on predestination versus free will (Martin Luther versus Erasmus), witchcraft as fiction or fact (Reginald Scott versus King James I), the ethics of regicide (an Elizabethan homily versus Jan de Mariana, S.J.), and the ethics of equivocation (Henry Garnet, S.J., versus—new to the Second Edition—Sir Edward Coke). Eight carefully chosen essays represent four hundred years of critical and theatrical interpretation. Contributors include Simon Forman, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Harry Levin, Stephen Orgel, Peter Holland, and, presenting the latest arguments on the authorship controversy, Gary Taylor. Finally, an engaging new selection of Macbeth’s “Afterlives” includes excerpts from Giuseppi Verdi’s Macbeth and related letters, Eugene Ionesco’s Macbett (1972), Bill Cain’s Equivocation (2009), and more. This edition also provides a list of online and print resources.