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 a factor in the reception of the work. Instead, Johnson believed that the reader of Shakespeare was the true audience of the play. Furthermore, Johnson believed that later editors both misunderstood the historical context of Shakespeare and his plays, and underestimated the degree of textual corruption that the plays exhibit. He believed that this was because "The style of Shakespeare was in itself perplexed, ungrammatical, and obscure". To correct these problems, Johnson believed that the original works would need to be examined, and this became an issue in his "Proposal". Johnson also believed that an edition of Shakespeare could provide