The Life and Death of King John: Applause First Folio Editions (Applause Shakespeare Library Folio Texts) Review

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(More customer reviews)KING JOHN has one of Shakespeare's best death scenes and a character, Faulconbridge the bastard son of Richard the Lion Hearted, who is a first draft for Falstaff -- and better integrated into the play's main action than Falstaff is. It's unique among Shakespeare's works in being about Realpolitik in a genuine historical context -- as if a modern American playwright should write a play about George Washington's political compromises, complete with a presentation of the real historical situations that led up to them. Faulconbridge is there to make cynical comments, and yet remain loyal to King John, who almost, but not quite, becomes a child murderer in the course of the action. Earlier, the complexities of wartime politics are revealed when a town refuses to admit either the King of England or the King of France as its rightful ruler until the two kings have fought out the question first -- whereupon the two kings decide to agree on a truce, just long enough to wipe the town out together, then go back to fighting one another. The play is a wonderful mix of history and ironic commentary, one of two plays of Shakespeare's that is entirely in verse (the other one is RICHARD II, which he wrote just before KING JOHN), and it's tragically poetic and satiric in equal measure. Shakespeare never wrote anything else quite like it. If he wrote better plays, they were also different kinds of plays: this one is unique. The Folger edition has excellent notes for beginning students; the Oxford edition is for more advanced students, and also exceptionally good.

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If there ever has been a groundbreaking edition that likewise returns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be the Applause Folio Texts. If there has ever been an accessible version of the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modern fonts.
The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Folio text forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices which have encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship and performance. Notes refer the reader to subsequent editorial interventions, and offer the reader a multiplicity of interpretations. Notes also advise the reader on variations between Folios and Quartos.
The heavy mascara of four centuries of Shakespearean glossing has by now glossed over the original countenance of ShakespeareÕs work. Never has there been a Folio available in modern reading fonts. While other complete Folio editions continue to trade simply on the facsimile appearance of the Elizabethan "look," none of them is easily and practically utilized in general Shakespeare studies or performances.

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