Overview

From the Royal Shakespeare Company a fresh new edition of the most famous of all love stories. This edition includes an illuminating introduction to Romeo and Juliet by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate, the play - with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page ; a helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play ; an introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre ; a rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions. This unique edition presents a historical overview of Romeo and Juliet in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with a leading director and two actors, Michael Attenborough, David Tennant and Alexandra Gilbreath  so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer an accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.