William Shakespeare

'In a minute there are many days.' In Verona, in the height of summer, two young people meet at a party. The rest is tragedy. Shakespeare's electrifying and timeless tale of love was brought to life in a new production directed by Robert Icke, which premiered at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, in 2026. It was produced by Empire Street Productions and starred Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe in their West End debuts. This edition features the version of the text used in that production, alongside an introduction by the director and an essay by author and academic Daniel Swift.

'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.' Henry VI, Part II opens with a wedding and ends with a civil war, cycling through witchcraft, adultery, multiple murders, pirates, and an entire popular rebellion across its five acts. Its characters are larger-than-life, wielding curses as easily as they do swords or daggers, conjuring demons to seek prophetic knowledge, and transforming a struggle for the English throne into a cosmic blood feud between the houses of York and Lancaster. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'It is required You do awake your faith' Variously seen as a romance, a comedy, and a tragic fairytale, The Winter's Tale is a radical experiment with genre, character, and storytelling towards the end of Shakespeare's career as a playwright. Addressing key cultural, religious, and theatrical contexts, this edition's introduction explores the play's preoccupation with fiction and game-play, its fraught representation of misogyny and female agency, its foregrounding of nonhuman objects, animals and creatures (toys, spiders, bears, flowers, ghosts, statues), and its provocations on different kinds of faith and magical thinking. The introduction emphasises what was and is startlingly new and urgent about the play, in the early seventeenth century and in our own historical moment. But it also attends to the play's retrospective impulses as a work that looks back, achingly, at 'old tales' on the stage and beyond. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'No, no, I am but shadow of myself...' Henry VI, Part I paints a vivid picture of political ambition, civil unrest, and war. One of Shakespeare's most collaborative plays, it was a theatrical hit when it was first performed in 1592. Scenes alternate between conflict at home and on foreign soil: between the growing civil dissention that would lead to the Wars of the Roses and the battles of the Hundred Years' War over England's claim to the French throne. It is an action-packed play, but one that offers a profound meditation on individual sacrifice and heroism, corruption, and the costs of conflict. Amy Lidster's introduction examines the play's historical, political, and theatrical contexts, offering a compelling analysis of the affective potential of theatre, language, and narrative to effect political change and shape our understanding of the history that it dramatizes. The introduction explores the play's use of sources, its position within a trilogy of plays about the reign of Henry VI, and its prominent but conflicted representation of France's defender, Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc). The introduction offers a fresh analysis of the vibrant theatrical repertory into which the play emerged — one that was marked by politically invested drama that staged diverse, transnational histories. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'He must leave to live that we may love' Arden of Faversham is based on the murder of Thomas Arden in Faversham in 1551 by his wife, Alice. The play depicts Alice Arden's increasingly desperate attempts to kill her husband so as to be with her lover, Mosby. It is a collaborative play, but also Shakespeare's earliest 'domestic tragedy'. Complete with explanatory notes, a full chronology, and author biography, Iman Sheeha's introduction explores Arden of Faversham's place within the genres of tragedy and true crime, as well as how the play portrays gender, class, race, household service, and neighbourly relationships. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''As flies to th' wanton boys are we to th' gods: They bite us for their sport.' Set in the recesses of British antiquity, King Lear broods on gift-giving, gratitude, service and love; the bonds that sustain human life within families, communities and the state. Concerned with what remains and what is possible when these bonds crack, cool off or come apart, the tragedy forces repeated confrontations with abysmal cruelty, which it yokes together with instances of compassion that seem chillingly frail by comparison. By the end of the twentieth century, Lear took its place not only as Shakespeare's greatest work, but also his best play for our times, fitting then, in its anguish and denials of consolation, as it is now. Its wild mixtures of levity and terror, kindness and malevolence, what came to be called its absurdity, was prized as especially modern. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.