The Oxford Shakespeare The Oxford Shakespeare The Oxford Shakespeare is the range of editions of William Shakespeare's works produced by Oxford University Press. The Oxford Shakespeare is produced under the general editorship of Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford University Press first published a complete works of Shakespeare in 1891. Entitled "The Complete Works", it was a single-volume modern-spelling edition edited by William James Craig. This 1891 text is not directly related to the series known as the "Oxford Shakespeare" today, which is freshly re-edited. The "Oxford Shakespeare" includes a "Complete Works" edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells,
The Plays of William Shakespeare to Johnson's "Preface to Shakespeare": a discussion of Shakespeare's "greatness" especially in his "portrayal of human nature"; the "faults or weakness" of Shakespeare; Shakespeare's plays in relationship to contemporary poetry and drama; and a history of "Shakespearean criticism and editing down to the mid-1700's" and what his work intends to do. Johnson begins: That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox;