Our edition places a greater emphasis on the theatrical than is custom.”įor instance, he explained, the book minimizes the act and scene divisions by printing them in small numbers in the margins. We’ve tried to think afresh about the plays. “We haven’t re-written Shakespeare, but we have thought hard about the text. The book “has its shock features, which are attracting attention,” Wells admitted. Many scholars question the authenticity of the 90-line poem “Shall I Die?” and all consider it bad poetry. The book also includes the controversial “new” poem, a long-overlooked work uncovered last year by Taylor during his research. The plays have less punctuation and more stage direction. Other characters have undergone name changes and some play titles have been altered in the new edition. The episodes “turn ‘Macbeth’ into a musical comedy,” commented a disapproving George Walton Williams, a Shakespeare professor at Duke University, and one of the critics of the new work. In the new edition’s “Macbeth,” the witches sing incantations in two scenes not found in the traditional text.
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