Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton

by Marcus,Leah S.

• ISBN13: 9780415099349
• ISBN10: 041509934X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-12-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Many readers do not recognize the extent to which modern standard editions of Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe and other Renaissance authors have been filtered through eighteenth-century and Victorian sensibilities. InUnediting the Renaissance,Leah Marcus reveals the vast array of possibilities opened up by "unediting" these texts. Showing how the texts of early modern authors have been altered and rigidified over time, Marcus demonstrates how interpretations and performances of these works can be revitalized by a review of the possibilities closed off by modern standard editions. A lively critique of current theoretical practices,Unediting the Renaissanceis a provocative work which will initiate much debate about what makes a text "definitive".

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Preface and acknowledgements	ix
List of abbreviations	xii
Introduction: The blue-eyed witch	1	(37)
Textual Instability and Ideological Difference: The Case of Doctor Faustus	38	(30)
Purity and Danger in The Modern Edition: The Merry Wives of Windsor	68	(33)
The Editor as Tamer: A Shrew and The Shrew	101	(31)
Bad Taste and Bad Hamlet	132	(45)
John Milton's Voice	177	(51)
Notes	228	(35)
Index	263