Chapter 2 - Old Shakespeare

Summary

Focuses on Shakespeare’s Interregnum reception in print and wider culture, arguing he was more popular in theory than in practice because, although much was (mis)attributed to him, few of his plays were reprinted during the 1640s and 1650s. Systematically examines the stationers who together held the rights to the thirty-eight plays in the modern Shakespeare canon but who, for various reasons, did not publish them. Describes the importance of dramatic novelty for the Interregnum playbook market, and the consequent neglect of "old" Shakespeare, whose texts were frequently printed and reprinted before the Interregnum. Argues that stationers’ interest in new plays ensured the survival of many plays in the early modern dramatic corpus. Also explains the timing and appearance of full-length Interregnum Shakespeare editions (The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, Lucrece), and the significance of Shakespeare’s continued circulation in the abbreviated forms of commonplace books, drolls, book list catalogues, and other printed allusions to Shakespeare’s name, his characters and play titles. Demonstrates Shakespeare’s elastic cultural associations in this period, and how "Shakespeare" came to be a dramatic category in its own right.