Overview

The Norton Shakespeare, Third Edition is both a handsome print volume and a free enhanced digital edition. This makes it possible for students to have a rewarding reading experience on screen and on the page.

Three opening essays - two new - bring Shakespeare's world and works to life.

• Stephen Greenblatt's General Introduction draws students into Early Modern England, including Shakespeare's family background and professional life, and shows how Shakespeare's experiences, imagination and immense rhetorical gifts are everywhere evident in his writing
• The new General Introduction by Gordon McMullan and Suzanne Gossett explores the central question; How authentic is the text I am reading? It looks at how the theatrical play-scripts moved through the burgeoning book trade to become printed texts
• The Theatre of Shakespeare's Time paints a colourful picture of the city and of the playwrights, players, investors, government censors, spectators and playhouses that comprised the flourishing theatre business

The Digital Edition's features include:

• Glosses and footnotes available with a simple tap or click of a word
• All the texts and introductions in the print book, plus additional versions of many texts
• Side by side scrolling view option for the Folio and Quarto texts of King Lear and other comparative scenes, allowing students to easily compare the variations in the texts
• Performance Comments signalled by a clickable marginal icon, which highlight how a director or an actor's interpretative choices in performance affect meaning
• Textual Comments, also signalled by a clickable marginal icon, that focus on textual-editing decision points that can affect meaning
• Links to the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare and to quarto facsimile pages
• Click on the text to hear over 8 hours of spoken word recordings that bring the plays to life and enhance understanding of complex passages
• Recordings of all songs in the plays, from the award-winning Shakespeare's Songbook audio companion
• An appendix of documents, maps, genealogies, bibliographies and a timeline
• Customizable highlighting, annotating and comment sharing tools that facilitate active reading

Students can access the Digital Edition online for a year or download it to their computer or tablet for permanent access. No matter how you access the Digital Edition, your notes and highlights will be visible and searchable.