The Oxford Shakespeare: Oxford World's Classics: King Lear

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers - a new, modern-spelling text, based on the Quarto text of 1608 - on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions and much else - detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances and changing critical attitudes to the play - illustrated with production photographs and related art - includes 'The Ballad of King Lear' and related offshoots - full index to introduction and commentary - durable sewn binding for lasting use 'not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement

Stanley Wells ran the Oxford Shakespeare Dept. within OUP for the years in which the Complete Works were in preparation; and he is the general editor of The Oxford Shakespeare/Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare series in which the present volume appears. He is also co-general editor of the new Oxford Shakespeare Topics series. Formerly Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, he is now Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor Emeritus in the University of Birmingham. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor were the general editors of the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare. Gary Taylor [WHOSE TEXT WAS USED, WITH SOME MODIFICATIONS, FOR THE PRESENT EDITION] is co-general-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Thomas Middleton edition.