The Arden Shakespeare has long set the gold standard in annotated, scholarly editions of William Shakespeare’s plays. Each volume features a modernized text with comprehensive commentary notes glossing meanings, discussing staging issues and explaining literary allusions. The accompanying introduction by a leading scholar explores the play’s critical, theatrical and historical contexts. This third series, like its predecessors, is the best and most comprehensive of any edition to date.
Arden House was built for Edward Henry Harriman (1848-1909) and his wife Mary Williamson Averell (ca 1851-1932). It is unique among the Gilded Age estates for being wholly American – from its materials to its decoration, it was an expression of America’s finest qualities. It is located on the top of Mount Orama in a 450-acre protected site within the Palisades Interstate Park, only 40 miles from Midtown New York City.
The home is used for dinners, concerts and theatrical performances as well as for private parties and meetings. It is also available on a limited basis for weddings and other events. The Moonlight Theater, with a grassy amphitheater, sits to one side of the home and the Swimming Gild’s pool sits behind it.
The Arden Club is the cultural umbrella for many Gilds in the three villages known as The Ardens: Ardentown, Ardentown Heights and Ardencroft. It promotes the arts, crafts, music and theater as well as its underlying economic philosophy — that of a single tax community based on the ideas of Henry George and the arts and craft movements of William Morris and Ebenezer Howard.