Lukas Erne

This study establishes the remarkable presence of Shakespeare's plays and poems in the early modern English book trade.

Shakespeare and the Book Trade

A study of Shakespeare's modern editors, suggesting that modern textual mediators can decisively shape and enable our response to Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's Modern Collaborators

Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and textual studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on all the major areas of current research, notably the Shakespeare manuscripts; the printed text and paratext in Shakespeare's early playbooks and poetry books; Shakespeare's place in the early modern book trade; Shakespeare's early readers, users, and collectors; the constitution and evolution of the Shakespeare canon from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century; Shakespeare's editors from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century; and the modern editorial reproduction of Shakespeare. The Handbook also devotes separate chapters to new directions and developments in research in the field, specifically in the areas of digital editing and of authorship attribution methodologies. In addition, the Companion contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and textual studies.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies

Shakespeare and the Book Trade follows on from Lukas Erne's groundbreaking Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist to examine the publication, constitution, dissemination and reception of Shakespeare's printed plays and poems in his own time and to argue that their popularity in the book trade has been greatly underestimated. Erne uses evidence from Shakespeare's publishers and the printed works to show that in the final years of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, 'Shakespeare' became a name from which money could be made, a book trade commodity in which publishers had significant investments and an author who was bought, read, excerpted and collected on a surprising scale. Erne argues that Shakespeare, far from indifferent to his popularity in print, was an interested and complicit witness to his rise as a print-published author. Thanks to the book trade, Shakespeare's authorial ambition started to become bibliographic reality during his lifetime.

Devani Singh

Bel-vedére; or The Garden of the Muses is an early modern printed commonplace book containing an anthology of nearly 4,500 short verse quotations arranged under topical headings. The book first appeared in 1600 and a second edition was published in 1610. It is of exceptional importance for the early historical reception of early modern authors such as William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe (whose verse it includes); for the late Elizabethan practice of commonplacing; for the rising status of English literature (including dramatic literature); and for early modern English canon formation. Until now the book has never been properly edited. This edition provides the first full analysis of the contents of Bel-vedére, presenting the text for today's readers and filling an important gap in the study of early modern English literature.

An Early Modern Printed Commonplace Book

Bel-vedére or the Garden of the Muses

Soliman and Perseda, written c. 1588 and first published in 1592 or 1593, is a late Elizabethan romantic tragedy by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy. It dramatises the triangular relationship of the Turkish emperor Soliman, his captive Perseda and her beloved Erastus, and the fortunes of the comic servant Piston and the braggart knight Basilisco, against the fictionalised backdrop of the Turkish invasion of Rhodes in the early sixteenth century. The introduction to this facsimile edition contains the fullest analysis of the text to date. It also provides an account of the play's editorial history, a detailed analysis of its original printing, and lists of all erroneous readings in the first quarto, together with significant differences between the first and second quartos. This edition provides the best access we have to an important play by one of Shakespeare's leading early contemporaries.

Soliman and Perseda, by Thomas Kyd

Margaret Jane Kidnie

This important collection brings together leading scholars to examine crucial questions regarding the theory and practice of editing Shakespeare's plays. In particular the essays look at how best to engage editorially with evidence provided by historical research into the playhouse, author's study, and printing house. How are editors of playscripts to mediate history, in its many forms, for modern users? Considering our knowledge of the past is partial (in the senses both of incomplete and ideological), where are we to draw the line between legitimate editorial assistance and unwarranted interference? In what innovative ways might current controversies surrounding the mediation of Shakespeare's drama shape future editorial practice? Focusing on the key points of debate and controversy of the present moment, this collection makes a vital contribution to a better understanding of how editorial practice (on the page and in cyberspace) might develop in the twenty-first century. -- Publisher's description.

The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare's Drama

Textual Performances

This is the first book in more than thirty years on the playwright who is arguably Shakespeare's most important tragic predecessor. In Lukas Erne's book, The Spanish Tragedy - the most popular of all plays on the English Renaissance stage - receives the extensive scholarly and criticaltreatment it deserves, including a full reception and modern stage history. Yet as Erne shows, Thomas Kyd is much more than the author of a single masterpiece. Don Horatio (partly extant in The First Part of Hieronimo), the lost early Hamlet, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia all belong to whatemerges in this study for the first time as a coherent dramatic oeuvre.

A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd

Beyond "The Spanish Tragedy"

Kareen Seidler

This book is a translation of German versions of both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The introductions to each play place these versions of Shakespeare's plays in the German context, and offer insights into what we can learn about the original texts from these translations. English itinerant players toured in northern continental Europe from the 1580s. Their repertories initially consisted of plays from the London theatre, but over time the players learnt German, and German players joined the companies, as a result of which the dramatic texts were adapted and translated into German. A number of German plays now extant have a direct connection to Shakespeare. Four of them are so close in plot, character constellation and at times even language to their English originals that they can legitimately be considered versions of Shakespeare's plays. This volume offers fully edited translations of two such texts: Der Bestrafte Brudermord / Fratricide Punished (Hamlet) and Romio und Julieta (Romeo and Juliet). With full scholarly apparatus, these texts are of seminal interest to all scholars of Shakespeare's texts, and their transmission over time in print, translation and performance.

Lukas Erne

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