The content of this edition include a list of the illustrations featured within the text and a preface by the editor on her work with the play. The thorough introduction discusses the tragicomedy as a genre, the writers thought to have collaborated on this play and the question of its authorship, and the significance of collaboration and censorship in the era when the play was written, as well as other notes on historical context. The editor goes on to address the public, literary, and theatrical contexts within and surrounding the play; the play's afterlife in theatrical adaptation and academia; and technical notes on editing the drama.
Six appendices follow the text of The Two Noble Kinsmen. They are: "John Fletcher, 'Upon An Honest Man's Fortune'"; "The Portrait rontispiece of John Fletcher, 1647"; "Francis Beaumont, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn"; "Beaumont's 1613 Masque and The Two Noble Kinsmen"; "The Morris"; and "The Music." Finally, a reference section provides a list of abbreviations and references, a catalog of Shakespeare's works and works partly by Shakespeare, and citations for the modern productions mentioned in the text, other collated editions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, and other related reading.
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright of the 16th and 17 centuries, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
Peter Swaab is Reader in English Literature at University College London. He has written programme notes for the Royal National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse, and his publications include editions of Edward Lear's poetry and The Collected Poems of Sara Coleridge.
Stanley Wells is Emeritus Professor of the University of Birmingham and Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. He is General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, and his books include Shakespeare: the Poet and his Plays, Shakespeare: For All Time, Looking for Sex in Shakespeare, and (with Paul Edmondson) Shakespeare's Sonnets.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
