Shakespeare's Book: Essays in Reading, Writing and Reception

Richard Meek's fascinating contribution, '''Penn'd speech': Seeing and Not Seeing in King Lear,'' examines the relationship between the acts of seeing, hearing, and reading in Lear and asks how the dynamic among these three modes of reception could impact the efficacy of the play in performance and as a printed text. Jane Rickard's essay, ''The 'First' Folio in Context: The Folio Collections of Shakespeare, Jonson and King James,'' cites the First Folio's conspicuous separation of playtexts from their performance and historical contexts as evidence that its creators unconventionally placed the onus of interpretation on readers. [...]this book not only expands on but also qualifies and refines Erne's influential reassessment of Shakespeare's authorial standing.