Synopses & Reviews
SIGNATURE SHAKESPEARE SERIES
Featuring remarkable laser-cut paper designs throughout, this new series offers stunning presentations of Shakespeare's plays, complete with scholarship, commentary, notes, and illustrated essays about Shakespeare's language and performances of the play. It's a keepsake package worthy of the greatest, and most loved, playwright in the English language.
Each volume in the Signature Shakespeare series includes:
- Illustration: Original paper-cuts, in the form of laser tip-ins and scans, beautifully illustrate each play. Paintings and photographs add depth to front and back matter.
- Scholarship: Premier scholars introduce each play with contemporary scholarship. An essay on editing the text provides an in-depth look at the quartos and folios used in the edition.
- Context: Essays on Shakespeare's England, language, and life, along with essays on performing Shakespeare and significant performances, frame the play in both historical and theatrical context for readers. A look at the lasting influence of the play on music, art, film, and dance creates an interdisciplinary framework with which to approach the play.
- Notes: Through one-word margin definitions, facing-page glosses, and longer end notes after each play, the series' approach to notes pulls readers away from the text fewer times while providing them with more information and comprehensive analysis.
- Further Reading - An annotated bibliography of titles, hand-selected by the introduction author, takes readers beyond the edition for further reading.
Macbeth — Shakespeare's dark and bloody “Scottish play” — is one of the first two works we're offering. It includes contextualizing essays and timelines by scholar Jesse M. Lander, in collaboration with one of the world's foremost Shakespeare authorities, David Scott Kastan of Columbia University.
Synopsis
'Fair is foul and foul is fair' — so said three weird women in ghoulish glee, predicting a subversion of order in fair Scotland...
In the reign of King Duncan, Scotland is a just and hospitable land, with loyal, warlike thanes guarding the best interests of people...
...'Till the very best among them, Macbeth, gives in to a fatal temptation and commits regicide. But will the crown of Scotland sit easy on his head? Will justice be restored to Scotland? Or will Macbeth remain invincible?
One of Shakespeare's most famous plays, Macbeth goes beyond a mere tragedy of moral order to a deeply psychological study of a mind preyed on by ambition, insecurities, fear, and regret.
About the Author
ABOUT THE EDITORS:Jesse M. Lander (Editor), Notre Dame, IN: PhD, Columbia University; Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs Associate Professor of English, and Director, Graduate Studies in English, University of Notre Dame
David Scott Kastan (Series Editor; Introduction), New Haven, CT: PhD, University of Chicago; George M. Bodman Professor of English, Yale University ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR:
Kevin Stanton. Brooklyn, NY. BFA, Communications Design, Pratt Institute. Specializes in hand-cut paper artwork.