This edition of one of Shakespeare's most popular and attractive plays adopts a radically new approach to the text. It offers modernized texts not only of the 1599 good quarto, but also of the short, or bad quarto of 1597, regarding each as an independent witness to a mobile text which changed in composition as Shakespeare wrote it and which has continued to evolve throughout its richly varied performance history. The longer and more familiar text, first printed in 1599, is presented along with a detailed explanatory commentary sensitive to both literary and theatrical issues. The earlier, shorter text is annotated only where it differs significantly from the later.
