The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 2 of 9]

by William Shakespeare

This second volume of the Cambridge Shakespeare, edited by William George Clark and William Aldis Wright and first published in the 1860s, contains five comedies from the middle 1590s: Much Ado About Nothing, with the sparring of Beatrice and Benedick; Love's Labour's Lost, in which a king and his lords swear off women and immediately fall in love; A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its lovers, fairies and the amateur actors of Athens; The Merchant of Venice, with Shylock, Portia and the trial for a pound of flesh; and As You Like It, the pastoral comedy of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden. The Cambridge text became the basis of most later editions, and each play carries its record of variant readings and notes. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first act free.