Arden Shakespeare
Encyclopedia
The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. 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, and the third series has not yet been completed.

The first series was published by Methuen. Its first publication was Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden , was an Irish critic and poet.He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve...

's edition of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, published in 1899, and over the next 25 years, the entire canon of Shakespeare was edited and published.

The second series began in the 1950s, with a new group of editors freshly re-editing the plays, and was completed in the 1980s. It was published by Methuen in both hardback and paperback. The paperbacks featured cover art by the Brotherhood of Ruralists
Brotherhood of Ruralists
The Brotherhood of Ruralists is a British art group founded in 1975 in Wellow, Somerset, to paint nature. Their work is figurative with a strong adherence to 'traditional' skills...

.

The third series began in the 1990s. The first editions were initially published by Routledge
Routledge
Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...

, then by Thomson, and then by Cengage Learning
Cengage Learning
Cengage Learning is a publisher of print and digital information services for the academic, professional and library markets, and delivers customized learning solutions for colleges, universities, professors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations and professionals around the...

. In December 2008, the series returned to Methuen, becoming part of Methuen Drama, a subsidiary of A & C Black
A & C Black
A & C Black is a British book publishing company.The firm was founded in 1807 by Adam and Charles Black in Edinburgh, and moved to the Soho district of London in 1889. In 1851, the firm bought the copyright of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels for £27,000. In 1902 it published P. G...

. The general editors are Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan and Henry Woudhuysen. The series is not yet complete, having published about half of the Shakespeare canon. In 2010 an edition of Double Falsehood was published, which was somewhat controversial as this play is generally regarded as non-canonical.

Arden has also published a Complete Works of Shakespeare, which reprints editions from the second and third series.
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