Shakespeare’s plays are complex to design because they contain not only drama in prose and verse form but also songs within the drama, and yes, the songs are different to verse drama.
The volumes also have standard prose in the front-matter, this often contains displayed quotations of prose, verse and songs from the plays. The end-matter of the books is also complex, containing detailed textual commentary.
Getting all of these elements to work together across all of the volumes was a marvellous challenge.
‘... the new volumes are attractive in every way ... aided by a clean layout, the uncluttered page makes for faster reading. Penguin’s pellucid design reminds us that Shakespeare did not write in a foreign tongue.’ Boyd Tonkin the Independent
