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Measure for Measure
Contributor(s): Shakespeare, William (Author), Ioppolo, Grace (Editor)
ISBN: 0393931714     ISBN-13: 9780393931716
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
OUR PRICE:   $21.85  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: November 2009
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Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) is the most influential writer in English history. Shakespeare has been called The Barb of Avon and England's national poet. There are 2 narrative poems, 154 sonnets and 38 plays in his collected works. He began work as an actor and writer in London first writing comedies and historic plays. He later wrote tragedies. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Othello are some of his more famous plays. Measure for Measure was written around 1603 and is considered to be one of Shakespeare's problem plays. When Vincentio leaves the city government in the hands of judge Angelo the laws against fornication, which had been loosely enforced would now be more strictly observed. When a young couple is caught expecting a child out of wedlock the man is sentenced to death. Vincentio is disguised as a friar to spy on the doings in his city and aids in a plan to stop Angelo.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Drama | Shakespeare
Dewey: 822.33
LCCN: 2009037096
Series: Norton Critical Editions
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5" W x 8.2" (0.55 lbs) 272 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - British Isles
Accelerated Reader Info
Quiz #: 53869
Reading Level: 9.1   Interest Level: Upper Grades   Point Value: 4.0
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
The Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1623 First Folio text, the only authoritative edition of the play. The editor has modernized spelling but preserves, for the most part, the original lineation and characteristically heavy punctuation. The text of Measure for Measure is accompanied by a full introduction, a note on the text, textual variants, and related illustrations.

"Sources" considers the probable, primary, and analogous sources Shakespeare drew upon while composing Measure for Measure, including excerpts from G. B. Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi and The Tragedy of Epitia, King James I's Basilikon Doron, and--most directly--George Whetstone's The History of Promos and Cassandra.

"Criticism" collects seventeen important commentaries on Measure for Measure spanning four centuries, including, among others, those by Alexander Pope, Charlotte Lennox, Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Inchbald, A. C. Bradley, G. Wilson Knight, Jonathan Dollimore, and Marliss C. Desens.

"Adaptations and Responses" reprints alternative versions of the play: William D'avenant's The Law Against Lovers (1662), Charles Gildon's Measure of Measure, or, Beauty the Best Advocate (1700), and Charles Marowitz's postmodern version (1975).

A Selected Bibliography is also included.


Contributor Bio(s): Ioppolo, Grace: - Grace Ioppolo is the founder and director of the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project and is Professor of Shakespearean and Early Modern Drama in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Reading, England. She is the author of Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Heywood: Authorship, Authority, and the Playhouse (2006) and Revising Shakespeare (1991). She has edited Shakespeare's King Lear for Norton and has published widely on textual transmission, the history of the book and literary and historical manuscripts, most recently as the co-editor of Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing (2007). She is the General Editor of The Collected Works of Thomas Heywood, forthcoming 2012-15.