Hamlet —— Third Series

The folks at Arden decided to bring forth all three versions of Shakespeare's revenge (or anti-revenge) tragedy so that those who care can study the similarities and differences between the texts for themselves. I teach many Shakespearean plays and using the "bad quarto" of 1603 in conjunction with the oft used conflated text is an eye-opener for students who get a chance to truly engage in the text when comparing, say, Hamlet's third act soliloquy of the Folio (1623) version with the often maligned 1603 version. As usual, the people at Arden do an excellent job at editing the works. This is an excellent companion piece to the recently released third edition of Hamlet by the same editors of the 1604 Quarto text. A welcome addition to any Bardolators library.

Who doesn't like Shakespeare? Love, love love Hamlet. And thanks to my teachers and lecturers I am now an expert in Hamlet, but you can never have perfect understanding when of Shakespeare's plays, there's always more to learn every time you re-read his plays, which is the great thing about them.

Got this for my daughter as this was required reading for 1st year English at Uni. One of 12 suggested books to read by the Uni.

This William Shakespeare can certainly write and he should continue to be popular! Seriously, this is an excellent edition of the play with copious notes and background material for those who want help with what is not always an easy play to understand.

Brilliant play with plenty of challenging questions to answer. This edition features all the quartos and is a great study aid for Hamleteers!

I am a traditional orthodox Protestant minister who presently must support myself while caring for my congregation. One line of enterprise I have undertaken to pay the bills, as have other preachers before me, is to teach and tutor students. Working with a Korean high schooler on Shakespeare, I came across this title during Internet research on HAMLET. Glad I ordered it! You could not desire a more comprehensive introduction, glossary, and commentary on this, possibly the greatest work of the Bard. Specially instructive in ferreting out nuances, double entendres and cultural references which 21st century goundlings might miss. The two-volume edition with all three recensions of the play gives great clarity to the problems of text involved, and helped me better appreciate the limits of the new Oxford Complete Shakespeare. If you can also buy the BBC video production, you're good to go. Hamlet: The Complete Dramatic Works of William ShakespeareHamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623: Third Series (Arden Shakespeare)

Reliable text and superior coverage of textual and performance history.

Love this book! The Arden Shakespeare editions provide so much supplemental material. I used it for my summer Literature class, and I think because I used this book, I got an A.

We thought this was the actual book "Hamlet" and it was not. We had to return it.

The Arden series are the perfect editions to accompanie someone through Shakespeare works, it gives you a wide image of historical context, cultural context and also the different theories about Shakespeare criticism, plus it also has a simple way to read each page with notes in the side.

This is by far the best edition of Hamelt I have ever found. I have kept H. H. Furness New Variorum and Riverside Editions, both are outstanding editions in their rights. But by comparison this Arden version is the single volume that has all the info you would need for advanced studies or just reading for literary appreciation of this masterpiece. New Variorum is obviously a product of early 20th century with outdated sources and Riverside is not dedicated to one play...

WARNING: The Kindle version of Hamlet is not the Arden Hamlet. It is not even the digireads version. The one I received did not even have a list of characters at the beginning 0f the play. Amazon can do better than this in making clear what people are being offered!

There are at least three versions of 'Hamlet'. The best is Q2 and this is the one Arden have chosen in the first volume of their two-volume 'Hamlet' edition. This is the best Arden edition I have come across in recent years - clear, incisive and beautifully set out. If you are studying this play or just want to read the text in full, then this is the edition for you.

It should be noted that none of these reviews refers to the book pictured at the top of the page, the Arden revised edition of Hamlet. Some of the reviews refer to "Romeo and Juliet" and other Shakespeare plays; some complain about the Kindle edition, some review films. The Arden Hamlet has easily readable print, copious annotations and informative background essays.

I purchased these texts for my students, and several of them have told me about the pages falling out. They are in different sections of the text, so it's not just the same for everyone. I'm embarrassed of this and the fact that I've purchased these, given them as gifts, and now the binding of the book (after 4 days of use) is starting to fall apart. It's terrible and pathetic. My students feel cheated out of money because the product they bought isn't holding together, and again after four days.

Examples from Act V, Scene I Line 118 reads "I think it be think indeed..." should read, "I think it be thine indeed..." Line 169 reads "this skull has lien you i' th' earth..." should read "this skull has lain in the earth..." Line 226 reads "Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants..." should read "Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites..." There are many other examples. It seems as though this was copied via computer, and never proof-read. If you want an accurate copy of Hamlet, this Collins Classic paperback is not for you.

I bought this and wish I could have a refund because the thing comes with ADVERTISEMENTS for games on it. The first screen you see is an advertisement. I don't want to be sold something when I BUY a book to read. I bought Hamlet so that I could read it, not so that I could get advertised to. I want to read HAMLET, not have someone try to distract me from reading Shakespeare with a stupid video game! DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS VERSION if you want to read. I downloaded it, saw the ad and DELETED the thing immediately. It's no longer on my phone because I DIDN'T WANT ADS! DO NOT BUY THIS!

Hamlet itself is a fantastic read, so I would definitely recommend it (even if you're not a Shakespeare fan, which I'm not). On a side note, I would also recommend reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard after to gain an entirely new and humorous perspective on Hamlet. Or you may even want to read it beforehand to help you get more enthusiastic about having to read Shakespeare. The book I received is stunning! As other reviewers have noted, it is small (this is because it's a pocket book). For someone like me that has already read the play, it works well--it's aesthetically pleasing on my bookshelf and easy to shove in my bag when traveling. If you need to analyze Hamlet for a class, you may want to get a normal-sized version however.

So I bought this book a month ago but I put it on my book shelf for a while and haven’t gotten around to reading it but when I did the English was hard to understand and the side notes weren’t helping much so I decided to come back to amazon to see if any of the side notes helped anyone else (they didn’t) then I saw one what I thought was a “fake review” of someone showing multiple books with pages falling out I assumed maybe they were just destructive and it was a lie because I had already gotten through Act.1 with no problem then at the end of reading act 2 I could tell one of the pages looked weird so I turned it and the whole next page fell out of the book and 2 other pages were coming apart from the bridge of the book. Its a waste to have a book that’s gonna just fall apart and have missing pages.

This book is giant! It is practically the size of my computer. I just looked more closely at the description and it does say the book is 11.7 inches tall, so I should have known. But I would never have thought to check the dimensions of a book. I thought I knew what size a normal paperback book is. This is not the size I was expecting. It is not even going to fit in my purse... I am laughing at myself now because it is comically large compared to what I pictured.

The regular paper back version of this book is HUGE. it’s basically the size of a ruler. If you are wanting to read this out in public and not gather a bunch of attention or look ridiculous go with mass paperback or the hardcover. If your eyesight is not the best and you need bigger text this is a decent option. I will say that with this paper back I have not had any issues with pages falling out.