Blackwell Reference Online

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We know Shakespeare through print. While writers of every sort – poets, dramatists, essayists, satirists – left behind manuscripts, the only “manuscript” in Shakespeare's hand may be the 147 lines in Sir Thomas More , a play in manuscript in the British Library (Harleian 7368). It is to print and to a developing culture of print that we must turn to piece out Shakespeare's works. And it is through print that our narrative will unfold, using the facts of print culture to speculate on the author and his literary and dramatic pursuits. In its own fashion, that culture, following the dictates of early modern capitalism, put Shakespeare into print surely for its profit, even perhaps for its readers' pleasure. The texts it put before the book-buying public varied greatly. Although scholars a decade ago could with some confidence have presented a hierarchy of Shakespearian texts, ranging from the “bad,” “mutilated” first edition of Hamlet in 1603, to its “good” edition in 1604, to its “theatrical” edition in the first folio of 1623, today scholars are less sure; and while they may in some cases prefer one early printed version of a Shakespearian text to another, they do not reject other printed versions. Rather than dismissing variant editions as “spurious” or “corrupt” and clinging to those deemed “authorial” or “theatrical,” this essay seeks to understand the cultural forces – social, ... log in or subscribe to read full text