Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Paperback)

by Lukas Erne (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"It may seem crazy that a man has to sit down and write an exceedingly learned book to prove that Shakespeare is literature. But I must say I found this mustered evidence and these arguments completely gripping."
- New York Review of Books, James Fenton

"One of the best books this year.... Erne achieves nothing less than the complete undoing of our understanding of Shakespeare as author."
- Studies in English Literature

"Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist is an unusually lively and provocative book exploring the status of printed drama in Shakespeare's England. Erne forces a welcome rethinking of many of the most confidently held assumptions about early modern literary culture, as he powerfully re-examines the interests of theatre companies, the operations of the book trade, the activities of early readers, and, perhaps most consequentially, Shakespeare's own literary understanding and ambitions."
- David Kastan, Columbia University

"This is an ambitious book which convincingly rewrites theatre history, textual criticism, and the relation between the two. Of interest to all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, the argument shows Erne to be as fine a literary critic as he is a textual scholar and theatre historian. This is essential reading for all Renaissance graduate courses, for those who care about the workings of the Elizabethan theatre and the book trade, and for those who are interested in the evolution of literary status and authorship."
- Laurie Maguire, Magdalen College, Oxford University

"Lukas Erne's Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist is a book for the new century. Erne shows decisively that Shakespeare and his acting companies produced playtexts for both performance and publication, on stage and on page, for the playhouse and the printing house. Thus, Erne's Shakespeare is precisely a man of the theater who became a literary dramatist, at once concerned with the next perfomance and his own literary reputation. Lucidly cast and carefully researched, this book will be an important study in the ongoing attempt to recover the original historical conditions under which Shakespeare's plays were written, performed, and printed."
- Patrick Cheney, Penn State University

"Anyone who has suspected that Shakespeare wrote for the page as well as the stage will want to read this eloquent and convincing book. Lukas Erne has worked through a mountain of evidence, thoughtfully and thoroughly. to reconsider the received idea that Shakespeare was indifferent to the survival of his work."
- Ruth More, Univ. de Paris VII

"One of the most fascinating, thought-provoking, and lucid studies of Shakespeare I can remember reading."
- Ben Jonson Journal

"An important book for students of Elizabethan drama. highly recommended."
- Choice

"...a bold, provocative study..."
- Sixteenth Century Journal, Lois Kim, University of Texas at Austin

"Thoroughly researched, coherent, and clear, Erne's book is a solid work of scholarship; it exemplifies the fruitful marriage of the historicist method and the Shakespearean text."
- Renaissance Quarterly, Julie Keenan

"Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist is an elegant and subtly conceived peice of work. Its arguments are well constructed and compelling and Erne writes with great lucidity and persuasiveness. The book is ambitious in its scope and offers arguments that should fundamentally change the way in which we conceive of Renaissance textuality and theatrical practice. It lays the foundations for an exciting new program of research within the field of Renaissance studies."
- Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

"This is a fine and useful book, generous in matter and manner, that will certainly change our future discourse about dramatic texts and about Shakespeare. "
Modern Philology Richard Knowles

"Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist is intelligently argued, impeccably researched, and accesibly written. Whether a performance specialist, textual scholar, cultural historian, or interested general reader, if you find time to read only one book on Shakespeare's drama from cover to cover this year, this should be the one." Essays in Theatre Margaret Jane Kidnie, University of Western Ontario

Product Description
Lukas Erne argues in this study that Shakespeare, apart from being a playwright who wrote theatrical texts for the stage, was also a literary dramatist who produced reading texts for publication. Contrary to a long-standing consensus, Shakespeare does not seem to have been opposed, or indifferent, to the publication of his plays, and he pursued a policy of trying to get them published. Accordingly, Shakespeare's long play texts survive in a literary format that would have required shortening before they reached the stage.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (August 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521045665
• ISBN-13: 978-0521045667
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,693,855 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A revolution in Shakespeare studies!, March 25, 2005

By	Q (my office) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Hardcover)

This book has totally changed the way I think about Shakespeare. Erne absolutely demolishes an entire tradition of Shakespeare scholarship: i.e.,that Shakespeare wrote only for the stage and did not care about the publication or literary afterlife of his plays. Erne reminds us that Renaissance stage performances were approximately 2 hours long, 2 ½ at most. And even at performance speeds far exceeding modern standards, the maximum number of lines that could be acted in 2 ½ hours is 2500. Yet no less than 28 out of Shakespeare's 37 plays are over 2700 lines! Why did Shakespeare write such long plays that could not be acted on the stage? Erne argues convincingly that he wrote the long versions for publication and then abridged them for stage performance. The so-called "bad quartos" of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Henry V represent acting versions of the longer folio versions. The quarto versions of the plays were published by Shakespeare and the acting company; they were not stolen by spectators with notebooks, or reconstructed later by actors. Likewise, Erne argues that Shakespeare himself planned the folio text, even though he never lived to see it through to publication. In sum, Shakespeare was self-conscious literary artist, well aware of the literary value of his plays, who wrote his plays both as literature to be read and as scripts to be performed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Elegant, Truism-Shattering Study, August 30, 2008

By	Antti Keisala (Finland) - See all my reviews

Perhaps the most elegantly argued study of Shakespeare since A. D. Nuttall's New Mimesis, Lukas Erne's exploration of Shakespeare not only as a playwright but as a literary dramatist is a profound study of textual history. The groundbreaking argument in Erne's work is that Shakespeare not only wrote for the stage but self-consciously for the reader also. This might sound apparent, yet nowadays it is so out of fashion, mainly thanks to Oxfordian performance criticism, that this is an impressive undertaking not only because it deals with now-unfashionable possibilities, it does so by intelligence rather than pompousness.

The study is divided into two parts, "Publication" and "Texts". The first part is a thorough analysis of the Elizabethan-Jacobian playbooks, and here Erne forwards his innovative argument that the Lord Chamberlain's men actively seeked to publish Shakespeare's plays in the 1590s. Erne examines a wide range of texts and also investigates the birth of the dramatic "author", often attributed to Ben Johnson with the publication of his "Workes" in 1616; Erne places it to the early 1590s and traces early quartos and the development of the quarto title pages in the way they exhibit the author's name, starting from the initials to the full name in display.

The latter part in great deal demolishes many long-standing assumptions, especially attacking the Oxford editors in the performance criticism they practice. He surmises, in great detail, the length of the performances and the implications this length has on the texts that were performed during Shakespeare's time (he shows that it was not possible that most of Shakespeare's plays were performed unabridged - this is, for example, the stance of the Oxford editors). He also puts forth convincing arguments as to the true origins and functions of the so-called "bad" quartos such as the 1603 Q1 Hamlet - he also deals with the early quarto of "Henry V" and "Romeo and Juliet", the latter which he also edited for the New Cambridge Series. You will never read the so-called "bad" quartos in the same light again after reading this book, and it will surely enrich your reading experience of the whole canon. I, for one, am now ever as glad for the Arden (third series) Hamlet that provides us with both quartos and the Folio, and the New Cambridge Early Quartos Series, as Erne convincingly shows that there is something much more penetrating in the quartos that have been generally accepted.

In short, this is a convincingly argued and thoroughly researched study. Not only is it informatively written and thought-provokingly truism-shattering, his style is refreshingly proleptic without never being imperious. Along the way he utterly destroys long-held "academic" theories and lays new ground, in the footsteps of Peter W. M. Blayney, to an exciting future of Shakespearen textual criticism. What is the most convincing aspect of his writing is that he does all this soberly and never allows himself, no matter how innovative, to use such a graveyard of a word, his insights be, to provide us with an argument either with Bloomian pompousness or the kind of leaps of faith that the Oxford editors (Taylor, Wells et al.) amply entertain us with and assume that we as readers should take. This is level-headed criticism that is interested in the facts, and when crossing the line and entering the realm of hypothesis clearly states it accordingly. He does not abandon factual evidence if unfit for his argument but is strikingly honest: when a hypothesis is mostly just that, he tells us so - I suppose this is the commodity of only the most learned men. He also offers some wonderful insight into the structure of the three plays, in particular in how the dynamics of "Hamlet" change in the three versions we now have.

If you are discouraged by the rather steep price for the paperback edition, please do not be, as the riches are manifold. This is also required reading for anyone considering buying the Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works.

Five stars to a study whose only fault is that it is too short.

With best regards,
Antti