Customer Reviews
Arden Shakespeare - By: Spider Monkey, 03 Nov 2007 
In some respects I think it'd be rather presumptuous of me to attempt to review Shakespeare. Someone so well known & influential wouldn't benefit from my opinions on their work, plus there are more scholarly & concise reviews out there. But I can comment on these Arden versions. Of all the Shakespeare I've read I've always found the Arden copies to be well laid out & to have excellent commentary & notes on the text. They really add to your understanding of Shakespeares outstanding plays & introduce you to the depthin his work. They have superb paper quality & are bound well, withstanding repeated readings & intensive study. For your collection of Shakespeare you can't do much better than Arden publications, some are quite hard to get hold of but it's worth the effort.
One of the great tragedies, get the edition you need - By: Budge Burgess, 28 Oct 2005 'Othello' is one of Shakespeare's later plays & one of his great tragedies, penned sometime between 'Hamlet' & 'King Lear'. It's a play which emphatically presents cultural tensions - gender, race, religion, nation, role. It's a play which, perhaps more thoroughly than any of his other works, relies on the potency of opposition & contrast, the characters being polarised into black & white.
Othello is a Moorish general who has saved Venice & who is now based on the exotic Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Here is a man who, despite his 'alien' origins, is hailed as the saviour of his community, a man who is universally loved & admired, except by his lieutenant, Iago.
In Iago Shakespeare beats out with blacksmith rhythm one of his greatest creations, a man fired by jealousy, tempered by hatred, a man whose determination is hammered into shape & whose evil expresses itselfin duplicitous twists & malignant turns enough to topple Othello. It is the nature of Shakespearean tragedy that the hero should plunge from the sublime heights to utter destitution, despair, & death.
The cornerstone of Othello's triumph is his great love for his lady, Desdemona. Winning her hand, securing her devotion is his greatest achievement & elevates him to unimagined happiness. Yet it this very foundation which Iago undermines with the seed of jealousy. As suspicion takes root, the whole edifice of Othello's power & completeness collapses about him. He murders his wife, faces the realisation of what he has done, & recognises that eternal damnation is less of a punishment that enduring life aware of his own guilt.
Shakespeare is a major architect of English. His phraseology permeates the language like the mortar binding together a building. 'Hamlet', it has been said, is a play writtenin clichés, so commonplace have become the scores of quotations which have been lifted from it. 'Othello' has had a less dramatic impact on the language, but it remains one of the great examples of the tragedian's craft.
'Othello' embodies Shakespeare's oft-repeated theme of love & duty as the mortar mix which binds society. It is Othello's tragedy that he should adulterate both, exposing them as weaknesses rather than strengths, the alchemy of his emotions reducing them to acids which will eat into his soul & corrupt his very nature.
Shakespeare took characterisation to a new level. His triumph is not onlyin his invigoration of the English language butin his psychological awareness & insight, his ability to get inside the minds of his characters long before social science was conceived or psychology became the lingua franca of literature. Shakespeare's characters have a realism which contrasts with the earlier role of the staged character as a mouthpiece for words & vehicle for action. Shakespeare's characters breathe, their dilemmas & tragedies are painfully human.
Othello & Iago are two of his greatest creatures. Villainy, we discover, can be as enthralling & dramatically dynamic as any heroic role. A play which can pit such characters against one another is a play which will provide lasting rewards for both its audience & its actors. Shakespeare's plays, remember, have thrilled & inspired actors for centuries: they continue to do so, & each generation of actors wrings new interpretations & understandings from performance.
There are many published editions of the play available - your choice may reflect your pocket, it may more likely reflect your need to study for school or college. It's worth contrasting the various popular editions available & considering which most adequately meets your needs.
My first choice, for any student or anyone seeking a sound understanding of the play, is the Arden edition. It provides the most extensive notes, offers insights into the play & its performance, explores the dynamics of its characters, & offers you an excellent appreciation of the text. The textual notes are comprehensive & readily comprehensible. They are included on the same page as the text - text at the top, notes at the bottom - & make it easy to follow the meaning of the dialogue. Add to this good quality paper & printing, & you have a robust edition & an exciting resource for the student.
The Penguin Shakespeare edition offers an excellent introduction - some seventy pages of analysis of the play's themes & dynamics. This is well worth reading by any student. A small, pocket-sized edition, it is also convenient for carrying around. However, the notes on the text, while excellent, are confined to the back of the book - you have to keep turning backwards & forwards to refer to them, & this can be a drawback. Note, also, that there are three Penguin edition available. The Penguin Shakespeare is more up-to-date than the New Penguin Shakespeare, & the Penguin Popular Classics simply delivers the text of the play with little or nothingin the way of notes.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare is a sophisticated resource - it provides a dynamic Introduction, analysing the play & providing the sort of intellectual baseline sixth form & first year university students need. It offers further analysis at the end of the play. The text, itself, is beautifully printed, with tight little notes at the foot of each page (you may find you need glasses to follow these, however). Still, an edition to be recommended.
The Cambridge School Shakespeare provides lots of ideas for groupwork & class analysis of text & themes, & must provide teachers with an excellent practical resource with which to engage their class. The text appears on the right hand page, notes & commentary are kept to the left hand page - making it very accessible & readable. There is also a quality feel to the paper & printing.
The Heinemann edition is aimed at 'A' level studentsin the UK. It offers page by page notes on the text plus an overview of what is happening on stage to give you an insight into this as an active dramatic production, not simply words on a page. It's well laid out, well produced, well printed, making the text easy to follow. There are questions posed about the drama & characters, providing stimulating material for teaching & learningin groups, or for individual thought. There's a significant section at the rear of the book exploring themes & the major questionsin the play, leading the student (and teacher) into a deeper awareness of language, setting, characterisation & drama. Designed emphatically for 'A' level students, it will nevertheless prove useful for first year at university (and possibly beyond), thanks to its ability to generate ideas & questions.
The Longman's School Shakespeare also provides notes on the left hand page, text on the right. The text is, perhaps, better presented than the Cambridge 'School' edition - it is slightly more expansive & lucid. The notes, however, don't feel as robust asin the Cambridge edition - they're more limited & less comprehensive.
The Oxford School Shakespeare is, I feel, the weakest of the 'school' editions. Overall, I didn't find it as dynamic or thought-provoking as the others. It provides a brief synopsis, a scene by scene analysis, & some useful notes. But text & notes run together on the same page, giving it a congested, claustrophobic feel which I found disconcerting.
For school work, I'd go for the Cambridge, Heinemann, or Longman's, for the keen student, the Arden edition is my top recommendation, followed by the New Cambridge. However, if you are studying the play, it's worth collaborating with your fellow students - you each acquire a different edition of the text, then you can compare & contrast the notes & commentaries.
Good notes. Simple. - By: , 10 Apr 2004 
To any english teacher planning to use this for their AS text: PLEASE SPARE US!
Wonderful, brilliant, beautifully written maybe. But I assure you, it is not appreciated by my class at least.
This book has the actual script for the play & many notes (which you need, believe me) which often add a interesting context, essential for including all the AOs for the exam. However the play itself, no matter how highly rated or whether it was written by the greatest english playwrite of all time etc etc is as dull as a mouldy potato to a bunch of 16 & 17 year olds. If you're being forced to read this play, however, this is a great edition as it has many notes which give depth to your answers & allows cross references galore!
Excellent For AS Students - By: , 30 Nov 2001 Before owning this version of the play, I had to make do with the grossly inferior 'Penguin Classics' version, & was not really enjoying the play. The notes explaining the text were minimal, I couldn't find any underlying themes and, to compund the problems I faced, the entire play was set outin an almost-illegible typeface.
So I decided to investin the Arden Version of 'Othello', & since it dropped through the letterbox I haven't looked back. It truly is exemplaryin terms of its coverage of the meaning of the text & its nuances, its context & overall coverage of the language, characters & themes (how does a 100-plus pages of introductory writing sound?).
Now that I have this book, I'm starting to appreciate Shakespeare's vision for 'Othello', I'm getting As for all my essays, & - God forbid! - I'm even starting to enjoy the play.
