Serious collectors of the Bard who intend to actually read the Shakespearean titles they're putting on the shelves of their private library will want at least one modern critical edition among the mix. Shakespeare used a lot of Middle English words that usually are unfamiliar to modern readers. To fully experience the poetry and majesty of those words, you need to know what they mean.
Fortunately, modern critical editions of the Bard's various works provide not only definitions, but also context for the works themselves, so the modern reader is better able to appreciate how such works would have been received in Shakespeare's own time. Critical editions are in print for both his complete works, as well as for individual titles. A couple of the more noteworthy critical editions that you should easily be able to find in the marketplace are The Norton Shakespeare...
...and The Riverside Shakespeare...
Each letterpress edition of The Folio Society's Letterpress Shakespeare, which we covered in yesterday's post, also comes with a separate commentary volume that contains a "reading copy" of the title at hand (so the letterpress copy can be kept "pristine" if you so desire), both layered within a solander case.
Tomorrow, we will see what Librarians of Congress have to do with the private library....
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