The Oxford Shakespeare

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Oxford Shakespeare is the title of a complete edition of the works of William Shakespeare published by Oxford University Press . The chief editors are Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor .

precursor

Oxford University Press first published a complete edition of the works of Shakespeare in 1891. The Complete Works was a one-volume, linguistically modernized edition obtained by William James Craig .

The Complete Works

The "Oxford Shakespeare" edition includes a one-volume Complete Works version that was obtained in 1986 by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells. It includes all of Shakespeare's dramas and poetic works. It is preceded by a detailed introduction. Each individual work is briefly commented on. There are no text annotations in the output. The editorial principles and the basic work are documented in the extensive work William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion . The volume William Shakespeare: An Old-Spelling Edition contains a non-modernized text.

The Oxford edition is committed to considering the priority of the performances over the printing of the works. This results in numerous decisions that are very controversial in Shakespearean science. The Hamlet was shortened to include larger passages that were probably added later. In the case of King Lear , a reconstruction was dispensed with and the two surviving versions were printed instead. In Henry IV Part 1 , the name 'Falstaffs' was changed to 'Oldcastle', as this was probably the original name.

The Oxford edition was also the first to expressly refer to the collaborative nature of some of Shakespeare's works. Thus the presumed contribution of Thomas Middleton in the case of Macbeth , Measure for Measure and Timon von Athen is emphasized. In the case of the Pericles , emphasis is placed on the contribution of George Wilkins . The employees at Henry IV have not yet been identified, and for the dramas Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen , reference is made to the collaboration with John Fletcher . In the second edition from 2005, the presumably collaborative works Sir Thomas More (edited by John Jowett), and Edward III (edited by William Montgomery) were included.

To assess the controversial authorship issues and to clarify the text and dating problems, the editors of the Oxford edition rely primarily on the newer text-critical and empirical book studies methods of analytical book studies (New Bibliography ) using the possibilities of modern data processing for comparative statistical-analytical studies . The arrangement of the individual works in the one-volume complete edition of Oxford-Shakespeare follows the chronological sequence as it emerges on the basis of these findings, particularly with regard to the beginning and the end of Shakespeare's creative period. This is the first time that the editors of the Oxford edition break with the traditional grouping of genres in histories, comedies and tragedies, which Heminge and Condell had previously adopted in all subsequent complete editions since the first folio print in 1623 . In addition, as mentioned above, the Oxford edition provides two separate versions of King Lear for the first time , an early version based on the four- high print of 1608 and a late version based on the folio print of 1623. According to the editors of the Oxford edition are to regard both versions as authoritative texts; From their point of view, the folio version represents an author-revised theatrical version of the actors of the King's Men . With this, the Oxford edition also makes an equally spectacular break with the edition tradition of a single conflicted edition that has been established since Pope .

The Complete Oxford Shakespeare , edited under the direction of Taylor and Wells, also provides the basis for the edition of Norton Shakespeare , which was coordinated by Stephen Greenblatt and is the editorial result of the work of Taylor and Wells. With this integration into Norton Shakespeare , in which the final text-constitutive consequence of the Oxford edition is only withdrawn in a few individual cases, the text of the Complete Oxford Shakespeare has generally attained the status of the currently valid Shakespeare text for current Shakespeare research.

Separate editions of the dramas

The term "Oxford Shakespeare" refers to the single edition edition of Shakespeare's works published by Oxford University Press. The individual editions essentially follow the editing principles of the complete edition created by Wells and Taylor.

The volumes were published in this series:

With the publication of Richard II in August 2011, the publication of the so-called "canonical" dramas was completed. The individual editions of Edward III and Sir Thomas More are still in progress .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Books of the Week . In: The Times . December 3, 1891, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Craig, W. J (Ed.): The complete works of William Shakespeare , 1st edition, Oxford University Press ,, OCLC 13764144 .
  3. ^ Wells, Stanley W, et al (Eds.): The complete works . Oxford University Press ,, ISBN 978-0-19-812926-4 , OCLC 59180122 .
  4. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare-Handbuch. Time, man, work, posterity. 5th, revised and supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 226 f. See also The Oxford Shakespeare - The Complete Works , Second Edition 2005, p. 909, and Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor: William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987, ISBN 978-0-393316674 , esp. The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays , pp. 69–144, as well as on the two versions of King Lear pp. 510 ff. And 529 ff.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare-Handbuch. Time, man, work, posterity. 5th, revised and supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 228.

Web links