Final Point 3

We have chosen to write our own edition of the play Macbeth. Our edition will be geared toward high school English students. We chose to do Macbeth because it is relatively short and therefore will keep high school students interested while still providing them with a play that highlights Shakespearean features and skills. Additionally, Macbeth deals with a lot of the themes that are highlighted in other Shakespeare tragedies. We feel that doing our own version of Macbeth will be helpful because there was very little introductory material and commentary in the edition that we read, and therefore we can approach our own edition with a "blank slate," focusing on what we think high school students should be focusing on, but not pushing them to view the play in a certain way.

Final Point 2: Annotations

For our edition we plan only to annotate "tough language." We liked the way that both Richard III and Measure for Measure did this in the editions that we are going to read. This tough language could be classified as definitions to words that may be misunderstood (or not understood), difficult metaphors or symbols, or cultural references that would be over the heads of our main audience, high schoolers (which we just changed by the way). We feel that by doing this we will encompass the "average Joe" audience as well, but it gives us a more concrete audience to work with while we are thinking about our edition.

For our example we chose the dagger scene from Act II Scene I. Once again, the "tough language" is what we would annotate here. Phrases like "heat-oppressed brain," words like "Alarumed" or "knell," and cultural references to "Tarquin" or "Hecate" would be annotations in our edition.

The point is to clarify the tough language for the high schoolers. Obviously we could provide more in depth readings of the play for them through footnotes that could perhaps enhance their reading of the play, kind of like the annotations in our edition of As You Like It. But we feel that high schoolers would be too easily influenced by these "authoritative" readings and adopt those opinions as their own without much, if any, push back. We would rather simply make the play accessible to them by defining and describing language that would otherwise be over their head and then let them develop their critical thinking skills on their own through their own interpretation.

Final Point 1: The Audience

Macbeth

Stephen Orgel seemed to write his introduction for an audience that is interested in learning about major themes in the play, and also about connections to other works. Orgel assumes that the audience knows the plots of popular plays, especially Hamlet. He seems to want to connect with his audience by discussing implications of specific characters in the play. He goes into detail about what the motives of some of the characters are, and even gives away major parts of the plot. The audience is most likely college students who are well-versed in the typical themes that Shakespeare uses in his plays. While Orgel does not go into much scholarly criticism, he does take a deep look into the historical influences on Macbeth. So the audience needs to be somewhat familiar with the time period. 

As You Like It

This edition is edited by Juliet Dusinberre. The audience seems to be undergraduate or graduate students who are very familiar with Shakespeare and his other works. The audience could also be scholars who are familiar with criticism and other research on Shakespeare. Dusinberre assumes that the reader is familiar with other works as well as with the Elizabethan time period. She also gives a lot of information, but does not expand on some points she makes, suggesting that the reader do their own research. Dusinberre seems to want to connect with her audience on a very scholarly level and does not take time to explain many of the concepts she refers to.

The Tempest

I believe this edition of The Tempest is geared toward an audience who is very enthralled with learning more about Shakespeare and what the historical events of the time were. The introduction just stated that it will include different documents of the time that Shakespeare may or may not have been influenced by. Then each document had a little introduction to it. I think this edition would be geared to an undergraduate student IF it didn’t go into as much detail. However, the edition included all sorts of different historical events and writing, often times it made no obvious connection to Shakespeare and was just like a history side note about what else was happening around that time. I would suggest the audience is more for either history buffs, or graduate students studying Shakespeare. 

Richard III

This edition is from Norton. By glancing through it and reading some of the preface I think that the audience is us, undergraduate students. The preface doesn't assume that we know Shakespeare's canon and the editor helps spell some things out for the reader that average English undergraduate wouldn't know. The text itself gives definitions of words that the reader might find challenging. While these things could be said for an edition for the average reader I think that it is for undergrad students because of the vast supplementary material at the end of the text. There are several essays for context and criticism that the average reader I don't think would care about but a college student who either had an interest in Shakespeare or had to write a paper about Richard III would find helpful.

Measure for Measure

The introduction to Measure for Measure is definitely geared toward an audience familiar with literary criticism in general, and who is familiar with Shakespeare's other works and the intertextuality between them. This is evidenced by Kamps and Raber referencing critics of the time like Coleridge and Dryden without giving summaries of their criticism. Also, they connect Measure for Measure with this criticism, and with other of Shakespeare's plays. 

Our Audience 

We would be most interested in connecting with an undergraduate, new to Shakespeare, audience. It would be enlightening to students who are serious about studying Shakespeare to make connections that maybe not everyone would catch on to. However, we don’t think that it is necessary to go into much detail about the connections that are not very relevant to the play itself. We are interested in targeting this audience because it is the category we fall under. Though we are not seeking to become Shakespeare experts or scholars, we are interested in learning in depth about how his works connect to the society in which he lived.