Shakespeare and Textual Theory

An essential resource for the history of Shakespeare on the page, this book traces the historical intersection of textual theory and Shakespeare studies and analyzes current theoretical debates in the field.

Series Editor's Preface
Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One: Textual Studies Before 'Theory'
1 Shakespeare's Texts From the Sixteenth to the
Nineteenth Century
The progress of an early modern play
The First Folio
Successive Folios
Early editions

Part Two: Twentieth-Century Theories
2 The New Bibliography

3 The Advent of Poststructuralism

4 Textual and Other Theories

Part Three: Current Debates
5 Authorship, Agency, and Intentionality

6 Attribution and Collaboration
External evidence
Internal evidence
Enlarging the canon
Theoretical implications

7 The (In)Stability of the Text
What if the printer went to lunch?
Why are some texts bad?
Why - and how and when - do some texts change?

8 Editing and Unediting
Editing Shakespeare
Editing collaborations
Unediting Shakespeare
Deciding on intervention

9 Book History and the Text
Shakespeare as literary dramatist
The creation of 'Shakespeare' through books
Readers, commonplacers and collectors
Women and Shakespeare books
Two material texts

10 Performance and the Text
Traces of early performance
Editing for performance

11 Textual Theories and Difficult Cases: Hamlet
and Pericles
Shakespeare's texts and early editions
Enter the New Bibliography
The challenge of post-structuralism, or authorship,
authority, and intention
Textual and other theories
Attribution and collaboration
Printing unstable texts
Editing and unediting
Book history and the text
Performance and the text

Coda: The Immaterial Text

12 Textual Studies After the Digital Turn

References
Index