Arden Shakespeare

The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries. There have been three distinct series of The Arden Shakespeare over the past century, with the third series commencing in 1995 and concluding in January 2020. The fourth series is scheduled to commence publication in 2026.
Arden was the maiden name of Shakespeare's mother, Mary, but the primary reference of the enterprise's title is to the Forest of Arden, in which Shakespeare's As You Like It is set.

First Series

The first series was published by Methuen. Its first publication was Edward Dowden's edition of Hamlet, published in 1899. Over the next 25 years, the entire canon of Shakespeare was edited and published. The original editor of The Arden Shakespeare was William James Craig, succeeded by R. H. Case. The text of The Arden Shakespeare, First series, was based on the 1864 "Globe" or Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works, edited by William George Clark and John Glover, as revised in 1891–93.
The list of the first series is as follows:

Editor	Title	Year of publication
Edward Dowden	Hamlet	1899
Edward Dowden	Romeo and Juliet	1900
W. J. Craig	King Lear	1901
Michael Macmillan	Julius Caesar	1902
Morton Luce	The Tempest	1902
Edward Dowden	Cymbeline	1903
H. C. Hart	Othello	1903
Herbert Arthur Evans	Henry V	1904
W. Osbourne Brigstoke	All's Well That Ends Well	1904
H. C. Hart	Love's Labour's Lost	1904
H. C. Hart	The Merry Wives of Windsor	1904
H. Bellyse Balldon	Titus Andronicus	1904
Henry Cuningham	A Midsummer Night's Dream	1905
H. C. Hart	Measure for Measure	1905
K. Deighton	Timon of Athens	1905
R. Warwick Bond	The Taming of the Shrew	1905
Charles Knox Pooler	The Merchant of Venice	1905
R. Warwick Bond	Two Gentlemen of Verona	1906
Morton Luce	Twelfth Night	1906
K. Deighton	Troilus and Cressida	1906
R. H. Case	Antony and Cleopatra	1906
K. Deighton	Pericles	1907
Ivor B. John	King John	1907
Henry Cuningham	The Comedy of Errors	1907
A. Hamilton Thompson	Richard III	1907
H. C. Hart	1 Henry VI	1909
H. C. Hart	2 Henry VI	1909
H. C. Hart	3 Henry VI	1910
Charles Knox Pooler	Poems	1911
Henry Cuningham	Macbeth	1912
Ivor B. John	Richard II	1912
F. W. Moorman	The Winter's Tale	1912
J. W. Holme	As You Like It	1914
R. P. Cowl, A. E. Morgan	1 Henry IV	1914
Charles Knox Pooler	Henry VIII	1915
Charles Knox Pooler	Sonnets	1918
W. J. Craig	Coriolanus	1922
R. P. Cowl	2 Henry IV	1923
Grace R. Trenery	Much Ado About Nothing	1924

Second Series

The second series began in 1946, with a new group of editors freshly re-editing the plays, and was completed in the 1980s, though the Sonnets never appeared. It was published by Methuen in both hardback and paperback. Later issues of the paperbacks featured cover art by the Brotherhood of Ruralists. The second series was edited by Una Ellis-Fermor ; Harold F. Brooks, Harold Jenkins and Brian Morris. Unlike the first series, where each volume was based on the same textual source, the individual editors of each volume of the second series were responsible for editing the text of the play in that edition.

Editor	Title	Year	Notes
Kenneth Muir	Macbeth	1951
Richard David	Love's Labour's Lost	1951
Kenneth Muir	King Lear	1952
J.C. Maxwell	Titus Andronicus	1953
Frank Kermode	The Tempest	1954	Reprinted with revisions in 1957.
M. R. Ridley	Antony and Cleopatra	1954	The introduction by Case from the First Series was reprinted.
J.H. Walter	Henry V	1954
E. A. J. Honigmann	King John	1954
John Russell Brown	The Merchant of Venice	1955
T. S. Dorsch	Julius Caesar	1955
J. M. Nosworthy	Cymbeline	1955
Peter Ure	Richard II	1956
Andrew S. Cairncross	2 Henry VI	1957
R. A. Foakes	Henry VIII	1957
H. J. Oliver	Timon of Athens	1959
M.R. Ridley	Othello	1959
G. K. Hunter	All's Well That Ends Well	1959
A. R. Humphreys	1 Henry IV	1960
F. T. Prince	The Poems	1960	Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece
Andrew S. Cairncross	1 Henry VI	1962
R. A. Foakes	Comedy of Errors	1962
F. D. Hoeniger	Pericles	1963
J. H. P. Pafford	The Winter's Tale	1963
Andrew S. Cairncross	3 Henry VI	1964
J. W. Lever	Measure for Measure	1964
A. R. Humphreys	2 Henry IV	1966
Clifford Leech	Two Gentlemen of Verona	1969
H. J. Oliver	The Merry Wives of Windsor	1971
Agnes Latham	As You Like It	1975
J. M. Lothian and Thomas W. Craik	Twelfth Night	1975
Philip Brockbank	Coriolanus	1976
Harold F. Brooks	A Midsummer Night's Dream	1979
Brian Gibbons	Romeo and Juliet	1980
A. R. Humphreys	Much Ado About Nothing	1981
Anthony Hammond	Richard III	1981
Brian Morris	The Taming of the Shrew	1981
K. J. Palmer	Troilus and Cressida	1982
Harold Jenkins	Hamlet	1982

Third Series

The third series of The Arden Shakespeare began to be edited during the 1980s, with publication starting in 1995 and concluding in 2020. The general editors for this series were Richard Proudfoot; Ann Thompson of King's College London; David Scott Kastan of Yale University; and H. R. Woudhuysen of the University of Oxford.
The first editions in this series were published by Routledge, before moving to Thomson. They then moved to Cengage Learning. In December 2008, the series returned to Methuen, becoming part of Methuen Drama, its original publisher. From February 2013, the titles appeared under the Bloomsbury imprint.
The editions in the third series were published very much in line with the traditions established by The Arden Shakespeare; however, editions in this series tended to be thicker than those of the first and second series, with more explanatory notes and much longer introductions. One unusual aspect of this series was its edition of Hamlet, which presents the play in two separate volumes. The first, released in 2006, contained an edited text of the Second Quarto, with passages found only in the First Folio included in an appendix, while the supplementary second volume, released a year later, contained both the text of the First Quarto of 1603, and of the First Folio of 1623. Other plays with "bad" quartos have them reproduced via photographs of each leaf of a surviving copy rather than deal with each textual anomaly on an individual basis.

Editions

Due to the long period of time over which the series was published, several editions of the third series were re-issued in revised editions, from 2010 to 2018. Eight editions were reissued in revised form. Some contained minor revisions in later printings, such as Henry V, but are not so noted on the title page. Editions that were revised are marked with the year of revised publication in the 'Year' column.

Title	Year	Editor	Notes
King Henry V	1995		Contains a complete photo facsimile of Q.
Antony and Cleopatra	1995
Titus Andronicus	1995
Othello	1996		Ayanna Thompson contributed a new introduction to the 2016 revised edition.
The Two Noble Kinsmen	1996		The play is attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher on the title page.
King Lear	1997		Contrary to the editors' decision to publish the three versions of Hamlet as three separate texts, Foakes' edition of King Lear is based upon a conflation of the quarto and folio texts of the tragedy, disregarding the practice established by the Oxford Shakespeare of treating them as two separate texts.
Shakespeare's Sonnets	1997		Contains every poetic work included in the original Shakespeare's Sonnets quarto of 1609—that is, 154 sonnets, plus the narrative poem A Lover's Complaint.
Troilus and Cressida	1998
Love's Labour's Lost	1998
Julius Caesar	1998
King Henry VI Part 2	1999
The Merry Wives of Windsor	1999		Contains a complete photo facsimile of Q.
The Tempest	1999
King Henry VI Part 1	2000
King Henry VIII	2000		The play is attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher on the title page.
King Henry VI Part 3	2001
King Richard II	2002
King Henry IV Part 1	2002
The Two Gentlemen of Verona	2004
Pericles, Prince of Tyre	2004		The play is attributed to Shakespeare and George Wilkins on the title page.
Much Ado About Nothing	2005
Hamlet	2006		Contains the Q2 text.
Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623	2007		Contains the Q1 and FF text. A supplementary volume to the main edition based on Q2.
As You Like It	2006
Shakespeare's Poems	2007		Contains Shakespeare's two major narrative poems—Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece—as well as his metaphysical poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, plus several shorter works attributed to Shakespeare.
Twelfth Night	2008
Timon of Athens	2008		The play is attributed to Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton on the title page.
King Richard III	2009
The Taming of the Shrew	2010		Contains a complete photo facsimile of The Taming of a Shrew.
The Winter's Tale	2010
The Merchant of Venice	2011
Romeo and Juliet	2012
Coriolanus	2013
Macbeth	2015
King Henry IV Part 2	2016
The Comedy of Errors	2016
Cymbeline	2017
A Midsummer Night's Dream	2017
King John	2018
All's Well That Ends Well	2018
Measure for Measure	2020