Early Shakespeare, 1588–1594. Edited by Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power

Abstract

Although this recent Cambridge anthology surveying the playwright’s early career would seem to complement its Late Shakespeare, 1608–1613 (Cambridge, 2013), the resemblance is not entirely apparent. The phenomenon of The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016, hereafter NOS) has intervened, with its theories of attribution and collaboration based on computer programs. Several of its participants have provided material for the present collection. A reader, then, might expect it to be imbued with the agenda of defending the NOS and expanding on its claims. However, even the reader thus prejudiced could hardly dispute Rory Loughnane’s assurance that Early Shakespeare proffers “a plurality of opinion about the composition, transmission, and significance” of these productions (17). Such a reader will find the occasional chart, run of statistics, insistence that Shakespeare wrote a good share of Arden of Faversham, or declaration that he was merely one of several collaborators on the Henry VI histories. Yet much of the scholarship in the anthology seems, in a word, traditional, even as it addresses topics that are not necessarily so. One element common to all thirteen chapters and introduction is that the concept of “early Shakespeare” deserves, as the jargon runs, rigorous interrogation.