Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare
Stationers Shaping a Genre

Showing how overlooked publication agents constructed and read early modern history plays, this book fundamentally re-evaluates the genre.

Amy Lidster (Author)

9781316517253, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2022

280 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.568 kg

'Lidster's work is worthwhile for those studying the history play in its many forms. The prose throughout is lucid and helpful, and an appendix detailing various collections of plays in the period shows off the depth of Lidster's organized approach. … Ultimately, this is a remarkable book, one that finds surprising insights through those publisher names that lurk near the bottom of the title pages.' Kyle Pivetti, Shakespeare Quarterly

During the early modern period, the publication process decisively shaped the history play and its reception. Bringing together the methodologies of genre criticism and book history, this study argues that stationers have – through acts of selection and presentation – constructed some remarkably influential expectations and ideas surrounding genre. Amy Lidster boldly challenges the uncritical use of Shakespeare's Folio as a touchstone for the history play, exposing the harmful ways in which this has solidified its parameters as a genre exclusively interested in the lives of English kings. Reframing the Folio as a single example of participation in genre-making, this book illuminates the exciting and diverse range of historical pasts that were available to readers and audiences in the early modern period. Lidster invites us to reappraise the connection between plays on stage and in print, and to reposition playbooks within the historical culture and geopolitics of the book trade.

1. 'True' Histories: Thomas Creede's looking glasses and the print identity of Queen Elizabeth's men
2. Authorizing histories: Andrew Wise and Shakespeare's English history plays
3. United histories: Nathaniel Butter and his newsworthy playbooks
4. Collecting histories: The Jaggard-Pavier Collection (1619) and Shakespeare's First Folio (1623).

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Shakespeare plays [DDS]