Note that many editions of Shakespeare modernize the language a bit. I don't know what Folger does (anyone know?) and I haven't found an authoritative source for the original, but Open Source Shakespeare is the best I've found so far:<p><a href="https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/</a><p>Does anyone know an authoritative source for the 'original' text [0]? I suppose books in the Interet Archive might be a good place to look next.<p>[0] In some cases, the true original has been lost to time and the earliest text we have was published many years later.
A couple of years ago I read <i>The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio</i>, the story of how Henry Folger got obsessed with early editions of Shakespeare and created the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He was a high ranking executive at Standard Oil and had the money to buy up a large number of copies of the First Folio, bringing them to America. An interesting story of obsession and, let's face it, greed coming out of the Gilded Age.
I also really appreciate Standard E-Books <a href="https://standardebooks.org" rel="nofollow">https://standardebooks.org</a>. Their renditions of public domain works is better than most paid Kindle versions.
Does it included the notes and annotations found in the Folger print editions.<p>I recommend Folger editions if you want to read Shakespeare in print, they are inexpensive and has each facing page filled with definitions of obscure words and explanations.
I know this is Heathen Heresy but I never enjoyed Shakespeare. As part of my English studies I have read the following ones - Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Winter’s Tale.<p>Average grades on them were between A+ to B's but dayamn! that olde timee englishee is hard to parse (even with the crib notes) and made me question the validity of them as an example of 'good English writing'<p>'Get Thee to a Nunnery!' Indeed.<p>And don't even get me started on Chaucer <shudder>.
Lovely, but kind of an overwrought interface for what can be found in other places also completely and freely.<p>Also hot take: we need to stop making kids read Shakespeare in School.<p>Shakespeare wrote plays. They were meant to be heard and seen. Filled with drama and comedy (lots of poop and sex jokes). Imagine if we forced children to experience Star Wars as a screenplay, read aloud in class? It’s ridiculous.<p>The plays themselves had a runtime of approximately only 2.5 - 3 hours. No need to stretch out Romeo and Juliet for weeks reading through passage by painful passage. Let them watch the movie version and then discuss certain parts or re-enact it themselves. Shakespeare was entertainment. And we now treat him like some kind of biblical text. It’s crazy!<p>edit: and to reinforce that last point, Shakespeare was put his plays in the Globe theater, across the River Thames, which at the time was not considered London proper. He was also not a court playwright and considered at best, midbrow. The “high art” playwright of the time who did play in London proper was Ben Johnson.<p>There is even a theory that Shakespeare was Ben Johnson’s secret identity so he could write freely away from the stuffy conventions of high society and the court. Like, Shakespeare was not high art. We must stop treating him that way and kill the love of literature in children by forcing them dryly read “To be or not to be.”