Volume 37, Number 1 · February 1, 1990
Inventing Shakespeare
By Anne Barton
Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present
by Gary Taylor
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 461 pp., $29.95
Young Hamlet: Essays on Shakespeare's Tragedies
by Barbara Everett
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 232 pp., $39.95
Myriad-Minded Shakespeare: Essays, Chiefly on the Tragedies and Problem Comedies
by E.A.J. Honigmann
St. Martin's, 239 pp., $39.95
Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism, 1730–1830
by Jonathan Bate
Oxford University Press, (Clarendon Press), 234 pp., $55.00
In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, John Heminge and Henry Condell, friends and fellow shareholders in the acting company he had served for most of his working life, put together the first collected edition of his plays. They addressed it 'To the great Variety of Readers. From the most able, to him that can but spell.' Heminge and Condell not only expected, they positively welcomed readers of 'divers capacities' and, by implication, differing temperaments and social position. They were sure, however, that Shakespeare was an author 'whose wit can no more lie hid than it could be lost.' He is to be read 'againe, and againe,' and 'if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him.'
Review, 3975 words
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