Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright

Description

Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright is an important book which reassesses Shakespeare as a poet and dramatist. Patrick Cheney contests critical preoccupation with Shakespeare as 'a man of the theatre' by recovering his original standing as an early modern author: he is a working dramatist who composes some of the most extraordinary poems in English. The book accounts for this form of authorship by reconstructing the historical preconditions for its emergence, in England as in Europe, including the building of the commercial theatres and the consolidation of the printing press. Cheney traces the literary origin to Shakespeare's favourite author, Ovid, who wrote the Amores and Metamorphoses alongside the tragedy Medea. Cheney also examines Shakespeare's literary relations with his contemporary authors Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe. The book concentrates on Shakespeare's freestanding poems, but makes frequent reference to the plays, and ranges widely through the work of other Renaissance writers.

Patrick Cheney is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Marlowe's Counterfeit Profession: Ovid, Spenser, Counter-Nationhood (1997) and Spenser's Famous Flight: A Renaissance Idea of a Literary Career (1993) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Marlowe (2004).

"Patrick Cheney's Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright is a remarkable book." Jeanne A. Roberts, The Spenser Review "Poet-Playwright introduces and illustrates the pertinence of the dyadic Ovidian model of authorship in the 'inter-textual intercourse' between Shakespeare's plays and poems. The author challenges the nearly 400 years of Shakespearean editing that has forced the poetry of England's national poet-playwright to the backs of numerous volumes. Cheney has lofty ambitions, but his goals are largely met." - Jacob Heil, Texas A&M University