Review by Choice Review
Meek (Univ. of York, UK), Rickard (Univ. of Leeds, UK), and Wilson (Univ. of Cardiff, UK) offer an important collection that advances recent studies of Shakespeare as an author deeply concerned with the production and reception of his poetry and plays. In the 12 essays, the editors and their fellow contributors--all eminent Shakespearean scholars--explore the implications of recent books by Lukas Erne (Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, CH, Apr'04, 41-4494) and Patrick Cheney (Shakespeare: National Poet-Playwright, 2004). The collection is divided into three sections. The four essays in part 1, including one by Cheney, focus on what the idea and materiality of a book meant to Shakespeare and his era as both an emergent technology and a cultural performance. Part 2's three chapters concentrate on what repetition, deletion, and mediation of text suggest about how Shakespeare understood and exploited various relations of stage and page. The four chapters in part 3 (including Stanley Wells's study of one of Shakespeare's first early-modern readers) explore the reception of Shakespeare, especially of the First Folio. An afterword by Erne completes the book. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. A. DiMatteo New York Institute of Technology
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
