Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

by Lukas Erne

Overview

Now in a new edition, Lukas Erne's groundbreaking study argues that Shakespeare, apart from being a playwright who wrote theatrical texts for the stage, was also a literary dramatist who produced reading texts for the page. Examining the evidence from early published playbooks, Erne argues that Shakespeare wrote many of his plays with a readership in mind and that these "literary" texts would have been abridged for the stage because they were too long for performance. The variant early texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet are shown to reveal important insights into the different media for which Shakespeare designed his plays. This revised and updated edition includes a new and substantial preface that reviews and intervenes in the controversy the study has triggered and lists reviews, articles, and books which respond to or build on the first edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107685062
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2013
Pages:	323
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lukas Erne is Professor of English at the University of Geneva. He has been the Fowler Hamilton Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford, and the recipient of research fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library. Lukas Erne's other publications include this book's sequel Shakespeare and the Book Trade (2013), Shakespeare's Modern Collaborators (2008) and Beyond 'The Spanish Tragedy': A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (2001). He is also the editor, with Guillemette Bolens, of Medieval and Early Modern Authorship (2011), of The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet (2007) and, with M. J. Kidnie, of Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare's Drama (2004). The first edition of Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist was published in 2003 and was named a 'book of the year' in the Times Literary Supplement.

Table of Contents

Preface to the second edition; Introduction; Part I. Publication: 1. The legitimation of printed playbooks in Shakespeare's time; 2. The making of 'Shakespeare'; 3. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (I): the late sixteenth century; 4. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (II): the early seventeenth century; 5. The players' alleged opposition to print; Part II. Texts: 6. Why size matters: 'the two hours' traffic of our stage' and the length of Shakespeare's plays; 7. Editorial policy and the length of Shakespeare's plays; 8. 'Bad quartos' and their origins: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet; 9. Theatricality, literariness, and the texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet; Appendix A: the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in print, 1584–1623; Appendix B: Heminge and Condell's 'Stolne, and surreptitious copies' and the Pavier quartos; Appendix C: Shakespeare and the circulation of dramatic manuscripts.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'Erne's book is marvellously researched, meticulously annotated, sensitively illustrated, and delivered in clear, refulgent prose … its conclusions are so engaging that its arguments will become well known by a generation or more of Shakespeareans.' Kevin de Ornellas, New Theatre Quarterly

'An important book whose careful engagement with difficult questions and often conflicting evidence will command serious attention in Shakespearian scholarship.' Lawrence Manley, Renaissance Journal

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent book … to learn much of what is known about the quarto and Folio texts of the eighteen plays published in both formats, with special attention given to the shorter quartos. Erne presents his tremendous learning on this subject in a very understandable way."
Michael P. Jensen, The Shakespeare Newsletter

From the Publisher