On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature

This book's chapters reproduce essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and — in a new piece — William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems, and his influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued from the 1580s to the late Restoration. The book reassesses the nature of early modern texts — their production and reconstruction by writers, printers, theatre companies, and readers — and their...

This book's chapters reproduce essays on such major figures as Sir Philip Sidney and John Milton, but also less celebrated writers, including Thomas Carew and — in a new piece — William Drummond, to reconfigure the familiar and help extend the canon. Shakespeare looms large; his plays and poems, and his influence on Keats, are the subject of half the book. But themes and issues are pursued from the 1580s to the late Restoration. The book reassesses the nature of early modern texts — their production and reconstruction by writers, printers, theatre companies, and readers — and their relationship with socio-political circumstance. This book shows what criticism can do when closely engaged with verbal fabric and form. It concentrates on drawing out the distinctive qualities of poems and plays.