This book chapter was published in the book, The Struggle for Shakespeare's Text
Twentieth-Century Editorial Theory and Practice [© Cambridge University Press]. The publisher's website is at: http://www.cambridge.org/

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The Struggle for Shakespeare's Text: Twentieth-Century Editorial Theory and Practice

Henslowe's Diary and the Economics of Play Revision for Revival, 1592–1603

Shakespeare's tragedies are usually remembered for the central characters for whom they are named. However, the fact that all of their heroes are what in the period were termed 'princes', occupying the power centres of their realms, means that these narratives of usurpation and death are also anatomies of political crises. In setting out contexts for his tales of woe or wonder Shakespeare reveals himself to have been as curious about the make-up of courts and kingdoms as he was about the psychology of individuals. The sufferings of great men and women in Shakespearean tragedy derive from conflicts, the analysis of which inevitably entails a consideration of 'the properties of government' – its characteristics and its proprieties. In 1589, at about the time Shakespeare was beginning to write, George Puttenham observed that ‘poets . . . were the first lawmakers to the people, and the first politicians, devising all expedient means for th’establishment of commonwealth’. Although in his tragedies Shakespeare may concentrate far more on rulers than on the ruled, ‘commonwealth’ interests are inevitably invoked by the fact that any act on the part of a king is de facto what, in Hamlet, Claudius terms ‘sovereign process’ (4.3.65).

Tragedy and political authority

(1994). Uncanny spectacles: Psychoanalysis and the texts of King Lear. Textual Practice: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 414-434.

Uncanny spectacles: Psychoanalysis and the texts of King Lear

Why think about Shakespearean tragedy today

Shakespeare's Revision of 'King Lear'@@@The Textual History of 'King Lear'

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Shakespeare's Revision of 'King Lear'@@@The Textual History of 'King Lear'