Customer Reviews

A New History of Early English Drama

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In this collection of essays each author strives to give a "new" or revisionist account of his or her subject matter. As with most essay collections, the results range from the sublime to the ridiculous. There are some valuable essays here, notably Peter Blayney's essay on "The Publication of Playbooks," which should be required reading for all teachers of Shakespeare. Blayney corrects the notions (1) that acting companies resisted the publication of their plays, (2) that the plays were "stolen" by sundry rogues and scoundrels, and (3) published at great profit. On the contrary, the acting companies, including Shakespeare, willingly sold scripts to publishers--for publicity--and there was precious little money to be made in publishing these playbooks, which mostly lost money, with a few exceptions. Other valuable essays include "Theater and Religious Culture" by Paul Whitfield White, "The Theater and Literary Culture" by Barbara Mowat, "Censorship" by Richard Dutton, "The Revision of Scripts" by Eric Rasmussen, and "The Repertory" by Roslyn Knutson. Most of the other essays will be of interest to micro-specialists only. There is also one very silly essay on "Playwriting" by Jeffrey Masten, in which we learn that "seventeenth-century authors did not exist" (369)--which is actually a metaphysical statement of faith in the dogma of poststructuralism, and not an argument. I would recommend getting this book from the library and reading the essays of interest to you.

Could be titled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know." This is unquestionably the best book about Renaissance Drama ever put together: authoritative essays, brilliantly organized, in a book that changes the shape of the field--hopefully forever.

This is an important volume, if for no other reason than that it will--for better or worse--undoubtedly become the standard history of early English drama. However, the volume's slavish devotion to postmodernist sensibilities underlie the majority of material and make for a few terribly skewed pieces. Did you know, for example, that early modern playwrights very seldom actually wrote their plays? This volume assures us that the plays instead usually emerged through the semi-mystical process of "collaboration" that has become a buzz-word for postmodernist critics. Most of those apparently thematically unified and rhetorically tight Renaissance plays were actually the result of various pens and voices chiming in with whatever they felt was appropriate. Terribly impressive.

If you are a student or devotee of early English drama, you need to have this book on your shelf if for no other reason than that you will be referred to its articles time and again in subsequent scholarship. You are almost obligated to read them. Fortunately, you are not obligated to be convinced by them.

This is the best companion to Renaissance Drama we have. It is nothing less than a revolutionary account of the conditions of writing, producing, and experiencing the plays of Shakespeare's age. The individual essays are clearly written, learned, often ground-breaking in their impact--but it is the totality of this book that is most impressive, allowing us to see the great achievement of the English Renaissance through the defining contexts of its production and performance. Wow!