The Struggle for Shakespeare's Text by Gabriel Egan

Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
Summary

We know Shakespeare's writings only from imperfectly-made early editions, from which editors struggle to remove errors. This book analyses the controversies provoked by this struggle across the twentieth century, showing the reader why Shakespeare's texts are not settled, and why modern editors cannot agree on how they should present them.

The feel-good place to buy books
  • Free US shipping over $15
  • Buying preloved emits 41% less CO2 than new
  • Millions of affordable books
  • Give your books a new home - sell them back to us!

The Struggle for Shakespeare's Text by Gabriel Egan

We know Shakespeare's writings only from imperfectly-made early editions, from which editors struggle to remove errors. The New Bibliography of the early twentieth century, refined with technological enhancements in the 1950s and 1960s, taught generations of editors how to make sense of the early editions of Shakespeare and use them to make modern editions. This book is the first complete history of the ideas that gave this movement its intellectual authority, and of the challenges to that authority that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Working chronologically, Egan traces the struggle to wring from the early editions evidence of precisely what Shakespeare wrote. The story of another struggle, between competing interpretations of the evidence from early editions, is told in detail and the consequences for editorial practice are comprehensively surveyed, allowing readers to discover just what is at stake when scholars argue about how to edit Shakespeare.
'An eminently readable guide to all the key concepts and tools in engaging with Shakespeare's text' Around the Globe
Gabriel Egan began his academic career at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, where, in addition to teaching theatre history and running workshops on the Globe stage, he taught students to print on a replica wooden hand-press using the methods employed in Shakespeare's time. He is the author of Shakespeare and Marx (2004), Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism (2006) and The Edinburgh Critical Guide to Shakespeare (2007). He edited the play The Witches of Lancashire by Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood (2002), and co-edits the journals Theatre Notebook and Shakespeare.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780521889179
ISBN 10 0521889170
Title The Struggle for Shakespeare's Text
Author Gabriel Egan
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year published 2010-10-21
Number of pages 332
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.