# The Oxford Shakespeare **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 15, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621 "2016-10-15T18:21:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/1 "2016-10-15T18:21:39Z")
I’ve been listening to some Shakespeare lectures from The Great Courses. I have thought about purchasing hard copies of Shakespeare’s plays and noticed The Oxford Shakespeare. > **[Amazon.com: The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet (Oxford World's Classics):...](https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Shakespeare-Hamlet-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199535817)** > > Amazon.com: The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet (Oxford World's Classics): 8601404261879: Shakespeare, William, Hibbard, G. R.: Books Anyone familiar with these editions? They’re kinda pricey at around the $10 level, but I’m willing to pay that if the annotations are worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/2 "2016-10-15T18:26:51Z")
Oxford annotated editions are about the best that are widely available, for annotations. In graduate literature courses we always got those as a first choice, with Penguin annotated editions the second choice. There are complete Shakespeares, if you want to go for it all at once, but I don’t know if the annotations are the same. It looks like the grandaddy is [this upcoming three-volume set](https://www.amazon.com/New-Oxford-Shakespeare-Reference-Authorship/dp/0198791321/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1476555779&sr=8-5&keywords=oxford+complete+shakespeare). If you just want the plays out of that set you can [get them here](https://www.amazon.com/New-Oxford-Shakespeare-Critical-Complete/dp/0199591156/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1476555779&sr=8-6&keywords=oxford+complete+shakespeare), though I’d like to point out that in school I used the Gary Wells annotations, which are [still available](https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Shakespeare-Complete-Works-2nd/dp/0199267170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476555779&sr=8-1&keywords=oxford+complete+shakespeare), too. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/3 "2016-10-18T10:54:22Z")
Are the annotations useful to understanding the plays better? Or, are they more of interest to scholars, such as very minor differences in text between surviving copies of the play? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/4 "2016-10-18T11:15:45Z")
Some of the very minor differences between texts are very major differences. As in, they only disagree on one letter, but that one letter changes a word to a completely different one, and hence radically changes the meaning of the line. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/5 "2016-10-18T13:19:15Z")
Over the past ten years I’ve read a bunch of the plays in the Oxford School Shakespeare series, which I believe is different from the Oxford Shakespeare series. I recommend the Oxford School series. The annotations are mostly explanations of words whose meanings are different from the present-day meanings and of references that a well-educated person of Shakespeare’s time probably would have understood but a well-educated person today probably wouldn’t understand. I didn’t consider the annotations to be trivial nitpicks at all. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/6 "2016-10-18T14:22:08Z")
Agree that the annotations aren’t trivial nitpicks. Often they’ll explain a historical reference, a custom Shakespeare is taking for granted that we don’t understand anymore, or explain a particularly clever piece of wit. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oxford-shakespeare/768621/7 "2016-10-18T14:41:52Z")
I personally always preferred the Arden Shakespeare editions to Oxford or Penguin. I was using them to prep for performances of the plays (I briefly ran a Shakespeare company), and Arden is THOROUGH. If you want to know everything there is to know about any given line, Arden will tell you. Oxford is designed to be slightly more accessible I think.