| Summary: | For much of the twentieth century, textual criticism of Renaissance drama concentrated upon the scribes and compositors who may have been responsible for changing the author's spelling, punctuation, and (occasionally) individual words. Shakespeare Reshaped instead focuses upon agents and institutions which affected playtexts much more dramatically: legislated expurgation, theatrical innovation, and posthumous adaptation. Expurgation transformed the linguistic texture of such works as King John and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The insertion of musical intervals between acts retrospectively transformed the structure ofplays as different as andIA Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear. And, another playwright (probably Thomas Middleton) transformed Measure for Measure by expanding and adapting Shakespeare's original. Together, these studies produce a new model of the transformation of Renaissance plays by a collective industry of the imagination.
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