Antony and Cleopatra – Norton Critical Edition: 0 (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William; Loomba, Ania

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393930777 ISBN 13: 9780393930771

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

This Norton Critical Edition of Antony and Cleopatra is based on the First Folio (1623), the only authoritative text of the play. The edition includes a preface, detailed explanatory annotations, two maps, and visuals ranging from a silver tetradrachm (34 B.C.E.) to an Egyptian Queen Barbie. "Sources, Analogues, and Contexts," a rich selection of historical and literary writing, gives readers an understanding of Antony and Cleopatra's origins, from the earlier texts that inspired Shakespeare, especially those by Herodotus, Plutarch, and Virgil, to later works by Chaucer, Mary Sidney (Countess of Pembroke), and Samuel Daniel. The volume also includes a wide array of the early modern English views of Egyptians, gypsies, and women that informed Shakespeare's worldview and his writing. "Criticism" includes fourteen essays representing four centuries of interpretation, from the early observations of Samuel Johnson to the Romantic readings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt, from the razor-sharp analyses of Anna Brownell Jameson to recent essays by Jonathan Gil Harris, Patricia Parker, Anston Bosman, and Ania Loomba, among others. "Adaptations, Rewritings, and Appropriations" reprints alternative versions of Antony and Cleopatra's story, including one by John Dryden, a burlesque version by F. C. Burnand, a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, and an Arabic version by Ahmad Shawqi. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

About the Author:

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, which has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and these are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, however, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time".

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393930777
• ISBN 13: 9780393930771
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400