The Complete Works of Shakespeare [38 plays, 4 poems, sonnets] Review

The Complete Works of Shakespeare [38 plays, 4 poems, sonnets] review

The strongest reason to read a collected Shakespeare is the argument that one work can have with another. A ruler who treats speech as proof of loyalty, a lover who mistakes an imagined person for a real one, and a conspirator who persuades himself that violence will restore order belong to different plots. Placed together, their stories reveal a writer repeatedly changing the conditions under which language succeeds or fails. This The Complete Works of Shakespeare [38 plays, 4 poems, sonnets] review recommends the collection for that comparative pleasure: it makes revisiting and connecting possible on a scale that a small selection cannot match.

Its size is also its principal obstacle. Reading every page in sequence can turn theatrical invention into an exercise in endurance. A more rewarding approach follows a problem, a genre, or a particular play into neighboring works. The collection belongs naturally in our poetry and drama selection, but its most useful role is as a long-term reading companion. This assessment concerns the literary range of the gathered works; the quality and extent of notes, introductions, and other editorial material depend on the particular edition.

What the promise of completeness actually offers

The Open Library work record groups editions under this title and lists thirty-eight plays alongside the sonnets and four other poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, and A Lover's Complaint. That breadth matters because it prevents the familiar tragedies from standing in for an entire writing career. It gives readers the opportunity to discover that the author of Macbeth can also be interested in awkward courtship, verbal games, political succession, and narrative delay.

Completeness nevertheless has a history. The 1623 First Folio collected thirty-six plays, and the Folger Shakespeare Library explains that Pericles and the collaboration The Two Noble Kinsmen were absent. A modern collection therefore represents editorial decisions about what belongs together, rather than a single volume Shakespeare prepared himself. That distinction encourages a productive attitude: approach the book as a collection assembled from a varied theatrical and poetic inheritance. Its value comes from the relationships it makes available, rather than from the suggestion that one binding settles every question about the canon.

The chief strength: language becomes action

Shakespeare's verbal richness is often praised in a way that makes it sound decorative. Across a collection, its more interesting quality is practical. Characters speak to recruit allies, delay decisions, test affection, conceal desire, and produce versions of themselves that others might believe. A speech is something someone does to another person. Even a character apparently speaking alone can rehearse a justification or struggle to make an intention bearable.

Hamlet is especially revealing in this respect. Its revenge plot gives the prince an apparent task, but the uncertainties surrounding the ghost, the court, and his own behavior keep changing what action can mean. The Folger introduction to the play usefully foregrounds those unresolved questions. Our Hamlet review offers a focused route into the difficulties that a collected volume can otherwise encourage readers to hurry past.

The pleasure of comparison is that similar verbal resources can produce very different pressures. A comic disguise permits one character to speak more freely while making honest recognition harder for everyone else. A public declaration can create a political fact even when the speaker's private motives contradict it. The collection teaches readers to attend to the listener as closely as the speaker. Who accepts a claim, who resists it, and who cannot afford to answer often matters as much as the memorable phrase.

Tragedy and comedy unsettle different expectations

The major tragedies offer compelling entrances, but they should not determine the expected emotional temperature of the whole collection. Macbeth concentrates attention on the conversion of imagined kingship into murderous action. Its speed and gathering pressure make a useful contrast with the circling doubts of Hamlet. The Folger account of Macbeth presents ambition and the witches' temptations as questions the drama keeps active. Reading the plays beside one another makes a single explanation such as excessive thinking or excessive ambition feel inadequate to Shakespeare's range. The Macbeth review develops that play's particular atmosphere and moral pressure.

Comedy changes the terms. In Twelfth Night, Viola's disguise lets desire move along routes that the characters do not understand. The Folger synopsis identifies the central confusion: Olivia falls in love with the messenger sent by Orsino. The resulting comedy depends on unequal knowledge. Readers can enjoy a conversation while recognizing that its participants believe they are having different conversations.

Such contrasts are a major strength of the collection. Tragedy does not own emotional seriousness, and comedy does not guarantee that everyone will be welcomed into its resolution. Returning to a comic scene after a tragedy can reveal vulnerability beneath wit; returning to a tragedy after comedy can make its failed opportunities for recognition more painful. The genres give related human mistakes different consequences.

The poems deserve more than a place at the back

The poems make this a substantially different reading proposition from a collection of plays alone. Dramatic speech is inseparable from an imagined body, listener, and occasion. A sonnet can instead hold an argument within a tightly bounded shape, allowing a turn of thought to alter what the preceding lines seemed to promise. Read in small groups, the sonnets complicate any expectation that Shakespearean love poetry will provide stable reassurance.

The Folger history of the Sonnets identifies the 1609 quarto as their first collected printing and the usual basis for modern editions. That historical fact is useful without turning the poems into transparent autobiography. Their speakers, situations, and changes of emphasis merit attention on the page before readers try to reconstruct a private life behind them.

The longer poems require another adjustment of pace. The Folger discussion of the language of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece explains how stanza forms, repetition, and altered word order shape emotional intensity. These works reward attention to the tension between narrative movement and rhetorical expansion. A reader chiefly interested in plot may find that expansion frustrating. A reader interested in how a mind elaborates desire, fear, or grief gains a valuable comparison with the plays' speeches. The poetry broadens the collection's artistic questions rather than merely increasing its contents.

Where admiration needs resistance

A collected edition should make Shakespeare available for argument. Reverence can become an obstacle when it turns every discomfort into an ingenious defense of the author. The works contain violence, sexual coercion, religious hostility, and forms of social domination that require specific attention. Calling a work complex does not settle what it asks an audience to enjoy or accept.

The Merchant of Venice is an important case. The Folger introduction acknowledges the anti-Jewish prejudice involved in Shylock's characterization while also recognizing the force of his expression of alienation. Both aspects matter. Reading sympathetically toward a character cannot erase the structure of humiliation around him. Conversely, naming the prejudice need not prevent a reader from examining how the play distributes eloquence and vulnerability.

There are practical difficulties too. Unfamiliar senses of ordinary words can be more misleading than obviously unfamiliar vocabulary. Dense wordplay may slow a scene without immediately revealing why it matters. Some plots require patience with conventions that modern fiction does not share. These are reasons to choose appropriate support and allow uneven progress. They also explain why the collection is less welcoming as an unguided first book than its promise of having everything in one place might suggest.

Useful routes through the collection and its alternatives

For a new reader, one carefully read play is a better beginning than a compulsory march through all thirty-eight. Macbeth offers concentrated tragic momentum; Twelfth Night offers a different encounter with mistaken understanding. Reading either alongside an available performance can clarify that pauses, movement, and the presence of other actors carry meanings that printed dialogue leaves open. A collection becomes more useful once a reader has a work to return to and a question to pursue.

For comparison, move from Macbeth to Hamlet, or from a comedy of disguise to a late play concerned with control and reconciliation. The Tempest is particularly productive because Prospero's orchestration of events makes the management of other people's knowledge unusually visible. The Folger introduction stresses the difficulty of assigning its characters fixed heroic and villainous roles. Our The Tempest review considers that tension in more depth. It can serve as a bridge between close attention to one drama and the larger patterns visible across the collection.

Readers preparing an essay on one work may be better served initially by a separately edited play with substantial annotation. Readers interested primarily in lyric poetry may prefer a dedicated edition of the sonnets, where the sequence receives sustained attention. These are useful alternatives because they concentrate editorial space and attention. A complete collection is strongest when breadth is itself part of the reader's purpose: comparing a dramatic problem, following a recurring image, or discovering works outside the usual classroom group.

Verdict: a book for return and comparison

This collection's strongest claim is that Shakespeare becomes more interesting when no single masterpiece is made to explain him. The plays and poems differ in pace, form, emotional reach, and demands on the reader. Their proximity can sharpen those differences while revealing recurring concerns with belief, authority, desire, and the risk of misunderstanding another person.

Recommended for readers who want sustained exploration and can accept a selective, patient route. The cautions are substantial: scale can discourage, language can resist, and historical prejudice requires active judgment. Yet the reward is equally substantial. A collected Shakespeare gives readers room to change their minds, revisit a difficult scene, and discover that a work once treated as secondary may ask the question they are now ready to consider.