As someone with an English Lit degree, I read a lot of Shakespeare in college.  Pretty much all of it, at one point or another.  But I'll tell you what: these "Complete Works of Shakespeare" books are a total crock.

One of the first English classes I took in college specified a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" compendium on the list of required textbooks.  Being a complete sucker, and a rule abiding one at that, I bought the damned thing.  Between the shocking cost of the thing, and its weight, you would have thought it had been made of gold.

It turns out that the professor assigned it for two reasons:

1.     He was under the impression that someone else bought your textbooks.  Therefore, by assigning something cool, he was basically giving you a present on someone else's dime.

2.    He hated having to specify the act, scene, and line when he was referencing something on the fly in class.  If we all read from the same book, he could simply say "At the top of page 1,339" or whatever.

As for #1, unfortunately for myself and (dare I say it) most college students, we had to buy our own textbooks.  As for #2, WELL TOUGH PATOOTIES, BUSTER.

On my first day at class, I whumped that giant thing onto my desk, and everyone looked at me funny.  It turns out that everyone else was canny enough to just buy used copies of the specific plays that we would be covering that quarter.  I was literally the only person who had been dumb enough to buy the Complete Works.

Used copies of Shakespeare plays?  Pretty cheap.  Also, easy to find.  Also, easy to carry across campus.  I don't know what it's like now, but if you were taking English Lit classes at the University of Washington in the first half of the 1990s, your classes were scattered across campus in whatever broom closet or abandoned steam room the college could spare for that time slot.  

I learned a lot of valuable lessons from that experience.  For one thing, I learned that the UW bookstore would not accept returned textbooks at full face value.  (Not then, anyway.)  I also learned that college professors can be addled, out of touch, and tend to hinder more than help, despite their best efforts.

I kept my "Complete Works of Shakespeare" for many years, before finally selling it at Half Priced Books before a cross country move.  I got some pretty good cash for it - I think about $20 - nothing compared to the $80 cover price, but hey.  At that point I was just happy to be rid of the damned thing.

The final thing that I learned about "Complete Works of Shakespeare" books is that they are literally impossible to read.  They weigh about twenty pounds, and the pages are so massive that you practically need to crawl forward on the table in order to read the top line.  It's so cumbersome that it is virtually useless as a reference book.  Better to just buy everything individually.  Seriously, you can buy those books for about a buck apiece.