VOLUMINOUS editions of Shakespeare's works have appeared until at the present time it would seem that every need had been satiated. But this new one-volume compilation of the immortal bard's plays and poems justifies its existence by its formal and in-expensiveness.

The type is clear and makes reading easy. Such case is further facilitated by the placing of the names of the characters above their speeches. The text has been prepared by the distinguished Elizabethan scholar. Arthur Henry Bullen.

Summarizing the purpose of the edition the publishers state that they have arranged the plays in the chronological order of their composition. "The time honoured division into Comedies. Histories, and Tragedies, dating from the First Folio and since universally adopted has been abandoned." they say, "in the belief that there were room and need for an edition that should enable readers to approach the body of the plays not as a state monument of achievement but as a vital and growing organism revealing the evolution of the poet's personality and genius."