Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

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Cambridge University Press, Mar 13, 2003 - Drama - 287 pages
In this groundbreaking study, Lukas Erne 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. The usual distinction that has been set up between Ben Jonson on the one hand, carefully preparing his manuscripts for publication, and Shakespeare the man of the theatre, writing for his actors and audience, indifferent to his plays as literature, is questioned in this book. 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.

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Contents

The legitimation of printed playbooks in Shakespeares time
31
The making of Shakespeare
56
Shakespeare and the publication of his plays I the late sixteenth century
78
Shakespeare and the publication of his plays II the early seventeenth century
101
The players alleged opposition to print
115
TEXTS
129
Why size matters the two hours traffic of our stage and the length of Shakespeares plays
131
Editorial policy and the length of Shakespeares plays
174
Bad quartos and their origins Romeo and Juliet Henry V and Hamlet
192
Theatricality literariness and the texts of Romeo and Juliet Henry V and Hamlet
220
The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in print 15841623
245
Heminge and Condells Stolne and surreptitious copies and the Pavier quartos
255
Shakespeare and the circulation of dramatic manuscripts
259
Select bibliography
262
Index
278
Copyright

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About the author (2003)

Lukas Erne teaches English literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of Beyond The Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (2001), and of a number of articles published in Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Essays in Criticism, Theatre Research International, and elsewhere.