From Longman's new Cultural Editions Series, Hamlet ,edited by Constance Jordan, includes the play and contextual materials from the era of Shakespeare. This edition represents Shakespeare's text as it appears in the most authoritative of early editions, the Folio, published in 1623, and it supplies readers with useful footnotes to the interpretation of the text. It also includes brief samples of works by Shakespeare's contemporaries in a section entitled "Contexts"; these will help readers to understand the historical setting and the cultural ideas that helped shape the meaning of Shakespeare's play. By listening to these voices from the past, readers can approach the play with some knowledge of why Hamlet asks the questions he does and of why the character himself, the creation of a distant century, also seems so much a part of our own world. Readers interested in Shakespeare's Plays and the time they were written Jordan Hamlet SMP.doc Page 1 of 1