Necessary Shakespeare, The, 5th edition

Published by Pearson (January 4, 2019) © 2020
David Bevington

Title overview

For courses in Shakespeare.

Distills the best, most widely read and produced of Shakespeare's plays

In one compact volume, The Necessary Shakespeare captures Shakespeare's proficiency as a remarkable poet and dramatist across different genres. The 20 plays (categorized as comedies, histories or tragedies) and sample of sonnets offered are arranged to emulate the First Folio of 1623. The selections featured were chosen with feedback from instructors across the country, who deem each work truly “necessary” in the undergraduate classroom. Plays span from early works like The Taming of the Shrew to Richard the Third to The Tempest.

The 5th Edition borrows features in pedagogy and approach from Bevington's The Complete Works of Shakespeare, a more comprehensive collection of Shakespeare's works.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Offers a breadth of Shakespeare's works, from comedy to tragedy to romance to histories, to introduce his legacy.
  • Puts Shakespeare's work in historical context with insights on London theaters, drama companies, language and criticism, as well as appendices material on canon, dates, early texts and sources.
  • Sets the foundation for new Shakespeare readers in the introduction with an essay that offers practical strategies for contemporary students, as well as rich visuals that provide historical and cultural background.
  • Illustrates the 16th and 17th centuries with imagery, such as woodcuts depicting famous people, animals, customs, costumes, myths and more.
  • Brings performance history up to date, emphasizing film and TV, in an essay by Prof. Lois Potter.
  • Free download: The Pearson Guide to the 2021 MLA Handbook.

New and updated features of this title

  • NEW: Notes and glosses throughout help contemporary readers decode Elizabethan language and idioms line by line in clear modern terms. In addition, a complete revision of “Shakespeare's Language” in the general introduction begins the text with a solid foundation in Shakespeare's idioms and vocabulary.
  • NEW: The General Introduction adds context to Shakespeare's portrayals of families and women with reflections based on what we know of his personal life, as well as insights from a study of the many memorable female characters portrayed in his plays.
  • REVISED: Roman numerals have been replaced with Arabic numbers to make the general introduction more user friendly.

Visual updates fuel engagement and comprehension

  • NEW: Shakespeare's World: A Visual Portfolio includes 16 pages of full-color illustration to help students visualize Renaissance life and culture in relation to Shakespeare's historically inspired work. Almost 1/3 are new and drawn from Shakespeare productions around the globe.

Added appendices resources enhance the text

  • NEW: Films and Videos as a Guide to the Study of Shakespeare provides an extensive bibliography of the best and most available films or videos for each play in this edition.
  • NEW: The index has been recast and seamlessly integrated as part of this edition.

Table of contents

PART 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

  1. Reading Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century
  2. Life in Shakespeare's England
  3. The Drama Before Shakespeare
  4. London Theaters and Dramatic Companies
  5. Shakespeare's Life and Work
  6. How to Read Shakespeare
  7. Shakespeare's Language
  8. Shakespeare Criticism

PART 2: THE COMEDIES

  1. The Taming of the Shrew
  2. A Midsummer Night's Dream
  3. The Merchant of Venice
  4. Much Ado About Nothing
  5. As You Like It
  6. Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
  7. Measure for Measure

PART 3: THE HISTORIES

  1. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
  2. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
  3. The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
  4. The Life of King Henry the Fifth

PART 4: THE TRAGEDIES

  1. Romeo and Juliet
  2. Julius Caesar
  3. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  4. Othello, the Moor of Venice
  5. King Lear
  6. Macbeth
  7. Antony and Cleopatra

The Romances

  1. The Winter's Tale
  2. The Tempest

The Poems

  1. Sonnets

APPENDICES

  1. Canon, Dates, and Early Texts
  2. Sources
  3. Shakespeare in Performance
  4. Films and Videos as a Guide to the Study of Shakespeare

Author bios

About our author

David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, is a highly respected editor and Shakespearean scholar. He taught drama at the University of Chicago, focusing on Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Jonson, Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, etc.), as well as medieval drama and then the entire sweep of Western drama from Aeschylus and Sophocles down to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard.

In addition to courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, and medieval drama, Bevington co-taught in Theater and Performance Studies (variously with Heidi Coleman, Director of University Theater, John Muse, English Department, and Drew Dir, resident dramaturg at Court Theatre) a two-quarter sequence called The History and Theory of Drama from the 5th century B.C. down to the present day.

"One of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans," as characterized by Harold Bloom, he specializes in British drama of the Renaissance, and has edited and introduced the complete works of William Shakespeare in both the 29-volume, Bantam Classics paperback editions and the single-volume Longman edition. He also edits the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama and an important anthology of Medieval English Drama. Bevington's editorial scholarship is so extensive that Richard Strier, an early modern colleague at the University of Chicago, was moved to comment: "Every time I turn around, he has edited a new Renaissance text. Bevington has endless energy for editorial projects." 

In addition to Bevington's work as an editor, he has published studies of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the Stuart Court Masque, among others, though it is for his work as an editor that he is primarily known.

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