Description

John Jowett and Gary Taylor explore the ways in which Shakespeare's texts were reshaped in his lifetime and up until the publication of the First Folio, and the kinds of outside interference to which they were subjected. Political censorship of individual plays has already been studied in some depth: Shakespeare Reshaped concentrates on the forms of interference--expurgation, Act division, interpolation--that can usefully be examined across the whole canon, and that resulted in "late reshaping." These influences were at work between May 1606 and November 1623, and affected the texts years after they were first written. Included is a major central study of Measure for Measure, which underwent posthumous interpolation: the book makes a strong claim for this being at the hands of Thomas Middleton.