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Defining Shakespeare

Pericles as Test Case

MacDonald P Jackson author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:28th Aug '03

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Defining Shakespeare cover

'That very great play, Pericles', as T. S. Eliot called it, poses formidable problems of text and authorship. The first of the Late Romances, it was ascribed to Shakespeare when printed in a quarto of 1609, but was not included in the First Folio (1623) collection of his plays. This book examines rival theories about the quarto's origins and offers compelling evidence that Pericles is the product of collaboration between Shakespeare and the minor dramatist George Wilkins, who was responsible for the first two acts and for portions of the 'brothel scenes' in Act 4. Pericles serves as a test case for methodologies that seek to define the limits of the Shakespeare canon and to rdentify co-authors. A wide range of metrical, lexical, and other data is analysed. Computerized 'stylometric' texts are explained and their findings assessed. A concluding chapter introduces a new technique that has the potential to answer many of the remaining questions of attribution associated with Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This work exhaustively defends the case for the Oxford Shakespeare's editorial decision concerning Pericles.... Essential...to those concerned with textual scholarship. * Notes and Queries *

ISBN: 9780199260508

Dimensions: 242mm x 164mm x 27mm

Weight: 581g

268 pages