Constructing the Canon of Early Modern Drama

Through short, provocative readings of unfamiliar plays, this book provides the first ever history of the canon of Renaissance drama.

Jeremy Lopez (Author)

9781107030572, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 January 2014

244 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.1 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.45 kg

'By moving beyond a Shakespeare-based repertoire, Lopez is taking a look at which plays were considered better than others, what kind of criteria were used in the making of those judgements, and especially how the works selected to exemplify the early modern era might change.' Amy Arden, Folger Magazine

For one hundred years the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries has been consistently represented in anthologies, edited texts, and the critical tradition by a familiar group of about two dozen plays running from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy to Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by way of Dekker, Jonson, Middleton and Webster. How was this canon created, and what ideological and institutional functions does it serve? What preceded it, and is it possible for it to become something else? Jeremy Lopez takes up these questions by tracing a history of anthologies of 'non-Shakespearean' drama from Robert Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays (1744) through those recently published by Blackwell, Norton, and Routledge. Containing dozens of short, provocative readings of unfamiliar plays, this book will benefit those who seek a broader sense of the period's dazzling array of forms.

Part I. Early Modern Dramatic Canons: Origins: 1. Excluding Shakespeare
2. Trollope's Dilke
3. What is an anthology? (Part 1)
4. Collecting early modern drama, 1744 to the present
5. Ejecta
6. How to use this book
7. Table of contents
8. Autogenesis: The Custom of The Country (Part 1)
9. Endless tragedy
10. Negative canon
Attachments: 11. Lamb in the library
12. Dodsley's Hog
13. Blunt instrument
14. Fragments
15. Comedy and tragedy
16. The Mermaid series
17. The Keltie exception
18. The ties that bind: The Custom of The Country (Part 2)
19. Hints of designs
20. What is an anthology? (Part 2)
Paradoxes: 21. Introductory
22. Bullen's Nero
23. Collier's Reed's Dodsley
24. Beaumont our contemporary
25. History in disguise
26. The aesthetic under erasure
27. The turn of the corkscrew
28. Return of the repressed: The Custom of The Country (Part 3)
29. The Changeling
30. The greatness of English Renaissance drama
Interlude: reading a bad play: The Fair Maid of Bristow
Part II. Early Modern Dramatic Forms: Bifurcation: 31. The Bowers Dekker
32. Fletcher's Shakespeare
33. Early modern dramatic form
34. The Bloody Brother
35. Early modern dramatic forms
36. What is an anthology? (Part 3)
37. Apples and oranges
38. The sleepwalker: Northward Ho (Part 1)
39. The war in The Shoemaker's Holiday
40. The Holaday Chapman
Opposition: 41. Laws of canon
42. Rowley's sow
43. Form in collaboration
44. Love's Labors Won
45. 'A sort of dramatic monster'
46. What should an anthology be?
47. The surviving image
48. Other voices: Northward Ho (Part 2)
49. Disappearing act
50. Anon., anon
Inheritance: 51. Voluminous Heywood
52. Ford's Webster
53. Labored forms
54. The Triumph of Time
55. Moral Massinger
56. No heir
57. Apocalypse now
58. Bedlam at Ware: Northward Ho (Part 3)
59. Modern times
60. Principles of selection and exclusion
Afterword
List of primary-text editions
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Plays, playscripts [DD], Theatre studies [AN]