Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

Lukas Erne is Professor of English at the University of Geneva. He has been the Fowler Hamilton Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford, and the recipient of research fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library. Lukas Erne's other publications include this book's sequel Shakespeare and the Book Trade (2013), Shakespeare's Modern Collaborators (2008) and Beyond 'The Spanish Tragedy': A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (2001). He is also the editor, with Guillemette Bolens, of Medieval and Early Modern Authorship (2011), of The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet (2007) and, with M. J. Kidnie, of Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare's Drama (2004). The first edition of Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist was published in 2003 and was named a 'book of the year' in the Times Literary Supplement.

• Preface to the second edition; Introduction; Part I. Publication: 1. The legitimation of printed playbooks in Shakespeare's time; 2. The making of 'Shakespeare'; 3. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (I): the late sixteenth century; 4. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (II): the early seventeenth century; 5. The players' alleged opposition to print; Part II. Texts: 6. Why size matters: 'the two hours' traffic of our stage' and the length of Shakespeare's plays; 7. Editorial policy and the length of Shakespeare's plays; 8. 'Bad quartos' and their origins: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet; 9. Theatricality, literariness, and the texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet; Appendix A: the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in print, 1584–1623; Appendix B: Heminge and Condell's 'Stolne, and surreptitious copies' and the Pavier quartos; Appendix C: Shakespeare and the circulation of dramatic manuscripts.

Review of the first edition: 'The year's best book on Shakespeare.' Jonathan Bate, The Times Literary Supplement