Constructing the Canon of Early Modern Drama
Constructing the Canon of Early Modern Drama
For one hundred years the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries has been consistently represented in anthologies, edited texts, and the critical tradition by a familiar group of about two dozen plays running from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy to Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by way of Dekker, Jonson, Middleton and Webster. How was this canon created, and what ideological and institutional functions does it serve? What preceded it, and is it possible for it to become something else? Jeremy Lopez takes up these questions by tracing a history of anthologies of 'non-Shakespearean' drama from Robert Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays (1744) through those recently published by Blackwell, Norton, and Routledge. Containing dozens of short, provocative readings of unfamiliar plays, this book will benefit those who seek a broader sense of the period's dazzling array of forms.
- Presents a history of the early modern dramatic canon as it has evolved since the eighteenth century and provides historical context for regularly used anthologies
- Contains a large number of short, provocative new readings of unfamiliar plays, giving those interested in unfamiliar or non-canonical works a starting point for plays with limited or no critical tradition
- Develops a theory of dramatic form through which the canon of early modern drama might be expanded, and creates a productive and useful critical vocabulary that embraces the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries simultaneously rather than in opposition
Reviews & endorsements
'This is a remarkable book: confidently and wittily written, exhaustively and widely researched, timely, provocative, enlightening and highly original. The strength of Lopez's argument is that he resists the impulse to shape his own anthology, offering instead a history and a method of critical enquiry and appreciation that completely destabilise current practice.' Richard Cave, Royal Holloway, University of London
'By moving beyond a Shakespeare-based repertoire, Lopez is taking a look at which plays were considered better than others, what kind of criteria were used in the making of those judgements, and especially how the works selected to exemplify the early modern era might change.' Amy Arden, Folger Magazine
Product details
October 2017Paperback
9781316627464
243 pages
230 × 153 × 18 mm
0.37kg
1 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Part I. Early Modern Dramatic Canons: Origins:
- 1. Excluding Shakespeare
- 2. Trollope's Dilke
- 3. What is an anthology? (Part 1)
- 4. Collecting early modern drama, 1744 to the present
- 5. Ejecta
- 6. How to use this book
- 7. Table of contents
- 8. Autogenesis: The Custom of The Country (Part 1)
- 9. Endless tragedy
- 10. Negative canon
- Attachments:
- 11. Lamb in the library
- 12. Dodsley's Hog
- 13. Blunt instrument
- 14. Fragments
- 15. Comedy and tragedy
- 16. The Mermaid series
- 17. The Keltie exception
- 18. The ties that bind: The Custom of The Country (Part 2)
- 19. Hints of designs
- 20. What is an anthology? (Part 2)
- Paradoxes:
- 21. Introductory
- 22. Bullen's Nero
- 23. Collier's Reed's Dodsley
- 24. Beaumont our contemporary
- 25. History in disguise
- 26. The aesthetic under erasure
- 27. The turn of the corkscrew
- 28. Return of the repressed: The Custom of The Country (Part 3)
- 29. The Changeling
- 30. The greatness of English Renaissance drama
- Interlude: reading a bad play: The Fair Maid of Bristow
- Part II. Early Modern Dramatic Forms: Bifurcation:
- 31. The Bowers Dekker
- 32. Fletcher's Shakespeare
- 33. Early modern dramatic form
- 34. The Bloody Brother
- 35. Early modern dramatic forms
- 36. What is an anthology? (Part 3)
- 37. Apples and oranges
- 38. The sleepwalker: Northward Ho (Part 1)
- 39. The war in The Shoemaker's Holiday
- 40. The Holaday Chapman
- Opposition:
- 41. Laws of canon
- 42. Rowley's sow
- 43. Form in collaboration
- 44. Love's Labors Won
- 45. 'A sort of dramatic monster'
- 46. What should an anthology be?
- 47. The surviving image
- 48. Other voices: Northward Ho (Part 2)
- 49. Disappearing act
- 50. Anon., anon
- Inheritance:
- 51. Voluminous Heywood
- 52. Ford's Webster
- 53. Labored forms
- 54. The Triumph of Time
- 55. Moral Massinger
- 56. No heir
- 57. Apocalypse now
- 58. Bedlam at Ware: Northward Ho (Part 3)
- 59. Modern times
- 60. Principles of selection and exclusion
- Afterword
- List of primary-text editions
- Bibliography.
