Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre or slightly below for Shakespeare.
Review: When rating Shakespeare, I generally rate it as compared to other Shakespearean plays; otherwise, the almost unrelieved 4 and 5 star ratings would not be very informative. This book barely rates three stars as compared to other Shakespeare; compared to the general run of books in the world, it would certainly rate somewhere between four and five.The problem is that by Shakespeare's standards, it's sloppy. There are numerous places in which the language varies from folio to folio, and in various later editions, as the notes in this (the Dover Thrift Edition) make clear. And these are not just superficial alterations, but actual changes in the apparent meaning of the lines, or even attempts to insert meaning where it is almost impossible to find any in the original lines. Other than that, the story itself is interesting, better than many of Shakespeare's more famous works, and if there are no immortal lines that leap out at the reader on a par with "My kingdom for a horse" or "To be or not to be", that says more about the quality of his other works than about any lack of quality here. As with all of Shakespeare's plays, this is worth the read, although even more than with some of his others, it is imperative that the modern reader get an edition with good notes; otherwise, some of the sense is sure to be lost.
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