Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare

During the early modern period, the publication process decisively shaped the history play and its reception. Bringing together the methodologies of genre criticism and book history, this study argues that stationers have – through acts of selection and presentation – constructed some remarkably influential expectations and ideas surrounding genre. Amy Lidster boldly challenges the uncritical use of Shakespeare's Folio as a touchstone for the history play, exposing the harmful ways in which this has solidified its parameters as a genre exclusively interested in the lives of English kings. Reframing the Folio as a single example of participation in genre-making, this book illuminates the exciting and diverse range of historical pasts that were available to readers and audiences in the early modern period. Lidster invites us to reappraise the connection between plays on stage and in print, and to reposition playbooks within the historical culture and geopolitics of the book trade.

• The first study of the early modern history play to examine the genre through the publication process, combining the traditionally divergent methodologies of book history and genre criticism
• Upends conventional understandings of genre and its construction, revealing how book history can be used to examine genre and demonstrating the importance of evaluating the history play both on the stage and on the page
• Offers detailed readings of history plays alongside the non-dramatic publications of their stationers in order to show how dramatic and non-dramatic publications responded to each other within the geopolitics of the book trade in early modern London