I really enjoyed this, and would definitely recommend as far as Shakespeare goes. I found this penguin edition quite useful; I think it is designed to be accessible to the average reader (hence its 'mass market paperback' format), and gave useful commentary and glossaries and general context and some stuff about the music in the play, and quite significantly with 'King Lear', the discrepancies between different versions of the written play (namely between the Quarto and the Folio), some of which turned out to be surprisingly significant, although I didn't read all the listed changes. The commentary was slightly annoying to access as I had to keep flicking back and forth, and there were no asterisks; pretty much every line had some commentary, and it was mostly explanatory. I personally wish it had been more critical or asking alternative questions about the text, but for its purpose it was fine. In terms of the play itself, I appreciated the double-plot structure although there were some moments where I was getting a bit bored with the Gloucester plot, but in the end it tied together quite nicely. Considering this is a major tragedy, I found a lot of really funny moments, where Shakespeare slips in some absurd phrases or satirical little proverbs into characters' lines which are just hilarious and break the dramatic tension so perfectly, and there were so many good ones that I ended up dedicating a post-it tab colour specifically to the funny quotes. Equally, of course this was laden with many a typical juicy Shakespeare quote, which I enjoyed on more of a poetic level. Overall, definitely had a good time reading this, but I probably would have gotten much more out of it if I studied it with some external nudges, as reading this independently I inevitably missed lots of interesting things going on beneath the surface that need a more critical eye.