Hello. I am an Early Modern undergrad student. I was looking through your blog (because it is FANTASTIC and a wonderful resource in my favorite area of interested). I was reviewing your post about Norton vs. Arden and some other versions. Briefly, you mentioned the Cambridge. I think I own maybe one recent Cambridge edition (... Edward III maybe?) How do you feel about the Cambridge editions on the whole? I do not know enough about them as a scholar's text
Hi there @orestes-fasted! Glad you’re finding my blog useful, and the editions guide too.
You’re right I didn’t really do justice to the New Cambridge Shakespeare in that post. The main reason being that I don’t own as many of them as I do Arden and Oxford editions so I don’t have as much experience using them. But from the seven volumes I do own, I can tell you that New Cambridge Shakespeare is just as scholarly as the Arden and Oxford editions, with a comprehensive set of notes and well-written introductions. The only reason I own more of the others is because those are the texts I’ve tended to use in teaching (partly because some of my colleagues are editors of those editions, and partly because my institutions have online access to them).
Although this depends on the editor of each edition, I think the key thing that stands out about the Cambridge editions is their focus on the ways the play might be and have been realised on stage. That is, they’re textual editions, but are very conscious of the plays as plays, to be staged. So, for instance, they contain some lovely illustrated reconstructions of what Elizabethan stagings may have looked like (by C. Walter Hodges) and notes about performance. Although the Arden and Oxford also cover performance history, the Cambridge editions give that aspect a lot of space in the introduction.Â
Otherwise, much the same as the other editions, the New Cambridge Shakespeare contains expert notes, textual variations, suggested reading, and textual interpretations. I hope that helps!
