Shakespeare and Lost Plays
Reimagining Drama in Early Modern England

Explores Shakespeare's plays in their most immediate context: the hundreds of plays known to original audiences, but lost to us.

David McInnis (Author)

9781108843263, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 March 2021

234 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

'This is a productive and helpful enterprise, which McInnis reaches through a series of skillful, careful, and innovative readings … This refreshing book, which balances meticulous attention to detail with imagination and creativity, deserves to be widely read. That the book is relatively inexpensive for a new academic hardback should help it get the attention it deserves.' Eoin Price, Early Theatre

Shakespeare and Lost Plays returns Shakespeare's dramatic work to its most immediate and (arguably) pivotal context; by situating it alongside the hundreds of plays known to Shakespeare's original audiences, but lost to us. David McInnis reassesses the value of lost plays in relation to both the companies that originally performed them, and to contemporary scholars of early modern drama. This innovative study revisits key moments in Shakespeare's career and the development of his company and, by prioritising the immense volume of information we now possess about lost plays, provides a richer, more accurate picture of dramatic activity than has hitherto been possible. By considering a variety of ways to grapple with the problem of lost, imperceptible, or ignored texts, this volume presents a methodology for working with lacunae in archival evidence and the distorting effect of Shakespeare-centric narratives, thus reinterpreting our perception of the field of early modern drama.

Introduction
1. Charting the landscape of loss
2. Early Shakespeare: 1594-98
3. Shakespeare at the turn of the century, 1599-1603
4. Courting controversy: Shakespeare and the king's men, 1604-08
5. Late Shakespeare: 1609-13
6. Loose canons: the lost Shakespeare apocrypha
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Poetry [DC]