Stewart Alan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199549276
- eISBN:
- 9780191701504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549276.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book discusses the search for William Shakespeare's letters. However, Edmond Malone and Samuel Ireland were on a wild goosechase, this chapter states, on the trail of the kind of letters that ...
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This book discusses the search for William Shakespeare's letters. However, Edmond Malone and Samuel Ireland were on a wild goosechase, this chapter states, on the trail of the kind of letters that would make sense to the 1790s reader. Not only were they looking for the wrong letters, they were looking in the wrong place. For Shakespeare's letters survive in abundance — in his plays, or, more precisely, on his stage. At a conservative estimate, 111 letters appear on stage in the course of Shakespeare's plays, and his characters allude to many more, running through all the genres and his entire career — early plays and late plays, comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and histories all contain letters. In fact, Shakespeare depicts letters in all but five of the First Folio plays, so that their very absence in itself becomes telling.Less
This book discusses the search for William Shakespeare's letters. However, Edmond Malone and Samuel Ireland were on a wild goosechase, this chapter states, on the trail of the kind of letters that would make sense to the 1790s reader. Not only were they looking for the wrong letters, they were looking in the wrong place. For Shakespeare's letters survive in abundance — in his plays, or, more precisely, on his stage. At a conservative estimate, 111 letters appear on stage in the course of Shakespeare's plays, and his characters allude to many more, running through all the genres and his entire career — early plays and late plays, comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and histories all contain letters. In fact, Shakespeare depicts letters in all but five of the First Folio plays, so that their very absence in itself becomes telling.
