Shakespeare in the Marketplace of Words

This book explores the words, forms, and styles Shakespeare used to interact with the verbal marketplace of early modern England.

Jonathan P. Lamb (Author)

9781316644140, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 June 2022

255 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.381 kg

'Shakespeare in the Marketplace of Words historicizes his work in valuable, original, and challenging ways. Lamb persuades us to use tools from the digital humanities to gloss words freshly in early modern English explanations and synonyms. … This is a Shakespeare monograph to challenge us as readers and critics.' Ian Lancashire, Modern Philology

Making innovative use of digital and library archives, this book explores how Shakespeare used language to interact with the verbal marketplace of early modern England. By also combining word history with book history, Jonathan P. Lamb demonstrates Shakespeare's response to the world of words around him, in and through the formal features of his works. In chapters that focus on particular rhetorical features in Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Hamlet, and Troilus and Cressida, Lamb argues that we can best understand Shakespeare's writing practice by scrutinizing how the formal features of his works circulated in an economy of imaginative writing. Shakespeare's interactions with this verbal market preceded and made possible his reputation as a playwright and dramatist. He was, in his time, a great buyer and seller of words.

1. Shakespeare's writing practice: value, exchange, and the work of form
2. The stylistic self in Richard II
3. Portia's laboratory: The Merchant of Venice and the new science
4. The medium and the message: As You Like It
5. Hamlet's parenthesis
6. Shakespeare rewords Chaucer: Troilus and Cressida
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Popular culture [JFCA], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Language: history & general works [CBX]