Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Emma Depledge is a lecturer in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland. She is co-editor (with Peter Kirwan) of Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640–1740 (Cambridge, 2017). She is currently completing a collection on John Milton and a monograph on mock heroic poetry and the book trade.

• Introduction; 1. Shakespeare in the civil war and Interregnum years, 1642–59; 2. Shakespeare on the early restoration stage and page, 1660–77; 3. Shakespeare and the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–82: the decision to alter his plays; 4. The politics of Shakespeare alterations of the Exclusion Crisis; 5. Selling Shakespeare on the Exclusion Crisis stage and page; 6. Shakespeare in the wake of the Exclusion Crisis, 1683–1700.

'Emma Depledge's work displays a masterful synthesis of bibliographic expertise, dramatic close reading, theatre history, and cultural analysis. I find this a field-reshaping book, beautifully executed in all these various aspects. I plan to draw on its insights and envision assigning it in graduate and advanced undergraduate classes.' Lauren Shohet, Villanova University, Pennsylvania