Unlike almost any other play still in copyright, productions of CWOWS(A) are not just allowed to alter the playwrights’ original text-they are commanded to. īy 2007, all three of us author/performers had hung up our tights and licensed the script. In 1988, we expanded our original silly gag about Othello-Adam stabs himself with plastic boats because he thinks “a moor is a place where you tie up boats”-when Adam and I wrote an “isn’t it funny when white guys do hip-hop?” number called Rap Othello. We added a silly speech by Daniel-ostensibly a member of the “house staff”-offering the helpful advice that seat cushions could be used as a flotation device, followed by a bombastic, evangelistic “Preface” for pseudo-scholar Jess, and finally, a “Life of William Shakespeare” that goofball-savant Adam manages to mix up with some research on Adolf Hitler. Originally just an hour long, the play’s first revision came out of the necessity of expanding it to serve as a full length show for booking tours. I and my co-authors Daniel Singer and Adam Long have undertaken major changes to the text several times over the years. Publicity photo from “The Complete Works…” 1987. It has been organized into Histories (including the poems and sonnets), Comedies, and Tragedies, with the plays grouped in chronological order in each volume.Īttractively bound, with gold stamping on front and spine, and beautifully designed, these handsome volumes will undoubtably become a treasure for lovers of Shakespeare throughout the English-speaking world.Daniel Singer, Jess Winfield, and Adam Long. It contains all the innovative features of the original, including a lucid General Introduction by Stanley Wells, and brief introductions to each work. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare divides this excellent book into three handy volumes. The result of the most fundamental rethinking of the text and presentation of Shakespeare's works ever undertaken, it offered many remarkable innovations features, including a new chronological order, revised stage directions, modern spelling and punctuation, and two full versions of King Lear-as originally written and as revised later for performance. Hailed in The Washington Post Book World as 'a definitive synthesis of the best editions of recent decades,' the massive one-volume Oxford Shakespeare was based on eight years of full-time research by a team of distinguished British and American scholars.

Shakespeare complete works book