How to Read a Shakespearean Play Text

Description

This is an invaluable introductory guide for the English student who needs to decipher a page from a play, or a facsimile equivalent, from the Shakespearean period. The original quartos and folios of early play texts are increasingly subject to editorial and critical scrutiny, and electronic facsimiles are making the originals accessible to undergraduate and graduate students. Giddens provides a practical 'how to' guide to the original printed texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He explains how the features of the play text came about, what the different elements mean, and who created them. The book provides that important first step towards bibliography and critical editing, presenting a detailed account of how to read these early texts and how they have been turned into the modern editions we are accustomed to.

Eugene Giddens is Skinner-Young Professor in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. He is an associate editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson and a general editor of The Complete Works of James Shirley.

'This book provides practical guidance on how to read specific bibliographical features of early modern printed playbooks, while constantly drawing attention to the larger question of how these features affect the reader's experience.' Sonia Massai, King's College London '... the clarity and resourcefulness of Eugene Giddens' How to Read a Shakespearean Playtext [is] for not only students of English and Renaissance Drama, but students of all literatures ... The key word with this new book is accessibility ... I wish to promote Eugene Giddens' book primarily for its ease of use as a resource, a reference book, and a colourful narrative of the stories that texts tell.' The Shakespeare Bookshop Newsletter