On November 8, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, the first three titles in the new Arden Performance Editions of Shakespeare series were launched at a public event which featured a masterclass on Hamlet given, with some recent RADA graduates, by the distinguished National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company actor Simon Russell Beale.
The series, which is produced under the general editorship of Simon Russell Beale, Abigail Rokison-Woodall and Michael Dobson, is the first edition of Shakespeare formally to be published ‘in association with The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.’ It provides scholarly texts of Shakespeare’s plays, but in a format and with notes and glosses specially designed for use in rehearsal rooms and by students. The first three titles published are Hamlet (edited by Abigail Rokison-Woodall), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (edited by Abigail Rokison-Woodall) and Romeo and Juliet (edited by Paul Menzer); these will soon be followed by Much Ado About Nothing (edited by Anna Kamarilli), Othello (edited by Paul Prescott) and Macbeth (edited by Katie Brokaw). Simon Russell Beale will be visiting the Shakespeare Institute on February 1 2018 to be made an Honorary Senior Research Fellow, and to give that week’s Thursday seminar.