Shakespeare's Literary Authorship

Patrick Cheney is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University.

• Introduction: 'Printless foot': finding Shakespeare; Part I. Rethinking Shakespearean Authorship: 1. The epic spear of Achilles: self-concealing authorship in The Rape of Lucrece, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet; 2. The forms of 'counter-laureate authorship': Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1 Henry IV, The Tempest; 3. Lyric poetry in Shakespearean theatre: As You Like It, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest; 4. Books and theatre in Shakespeare's plays: Richard III, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Othello; Part II. Fictions of Authorship: 5. 'Shows of love . . . bookish rule': theatre, book, and literary history in 2 Henry IV; 6. Halting sonnets: the comedy of Petrarchan desire in Much Ado about Nothing; 7. The profession of consciousness: Hamlet, tragedy, and the literary eternal; 8. Venting rhyme for a mockery: Cymbeline and national romance.

'Patrick Cheney's new monograph greatly enriches our sense of Shakespeare's authorial status in his own time. Cheney's incisive readings of plays of all genres, from early to late, suggest a playwright who reflected on literary authorship while functioning successfully within an intensely collaborative theatrical environment - a Shakespeare, in short, who could write both to the moment and for all time.' Lukas Erne, University of Geneva