Romeo and Juliet (Dover Thrift Editions)
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Poetry
Romeo and Juliet (Dover Thrift Editions) Details
From the Back Cover Romeo and Juliet was the first drama in English to confer full tragic dignity on the agonies of youthful love. The lyricism that enshrines their death-marked devotion has made the lovers legendary in every language that possesses a literature. Read more About the Author "He was not of an age, but for all time," declared Ben Jonson of his contemporary William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Jonson's praise is especially prescient, since at the turn of the 17th century Shakespeare was but one of many popular London playwrights and none of his dramas were printed in his lifetime. The reason so many of his works survive is because two of his actor friends, with the assistance of Jonson, assembled and published the First Folio edition of 1623. Read more
Reviews
I really love this book. It made understanding a lot easier for my students. ~BUT~ I will say that some parts are a little much. It seems the translator looks for the most vulgar way to word some of Shakespeare's crude jokes (Shakespeare is crude, to be sure--and some of it is quite funny. However, sometimes the translator goes too far the other way). Plus, there were parts that weren't necessarily as sexual in the original as it was presented in the translated version (like scenes that were purposely left ambiguous so that it might have been interpreted in more than one way). This actually took away from the cleverness and thoughtfulness of some of Shakespeare's jokes.Because of this, I had to pre-read all the scenes to choose which scenes we read in this book, and which ones we read from the original text (from the textbook, where students couldn't read the translation). I did find, however, that the classes that used BOTH original and translated readings for the unit had an easier time understanding the original text when challenged to do so (likely because they didn't feel as overwhelmed from days of old text).This is a very useful tool for the classroom. Both versions are important--and, truthfully, some of my students preferred the original text, and some preferred the new text, so switching between the two for certain scenes was a great exercise.
