Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of the Transmission of his Text (Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies)
Cambridge University Press, 7/22/2010
EAN 9781108015349, ISBN10: 1108015344
Paperback, 144 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 0.9 cm
Language: English
Originally delivered in November 1915 as a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge, this close textual analysis of Shakespeare overturned the conventional methods of Shakespearean bibliography. In this careful study, Pollard, a bibliographer and literary scholar, called into question the long-held assumption that the early Quartos were of little bibliographical value because of the errors, mis-spellings and mis-lineations. By emphasizing the efforts made to impede printing piracy in early modern England, Pollard argued that the Quartos are much closer to Shakespeare's manuscripts than previous scholarship had allowed. Pollard, along with J. Dover Wilson, W. W. Greg and R. B. McKerrow, was instrumental in establishing the theoretical framework of New Bibliography, and on its publication the book was greeted with what is described in the introduction as 'friendly controversy'. First published in 1915, the book was revised for republication in 1920. This reissue is of the 1967 reprint.
Introduction
The regulation of the book trade in the sixteenth century
Authors, players and pirates in Shakespeare's day
The manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays
The improvers of Shakespeare
Index.