Patrick Cheney: Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xv + 319. Cloth £ 45.00. Patrick Cheney: Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xxvi + 296. Cloth £ 55.00.
Patrick Cheney’s energetic and meticulously documented study Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright (2004) was greeted by the Arden editors of Shakespeare’s Poems as one of the welcome signs “that the time may be ripe for a full integration of Shakespeare’s non-dramatic verse within the canon.” It is a determined and persuasive plea for taking seriously the testimony of Frances Meres and other contemporary writers for whom Shakespeare was not just a playwright, but an “early modern author”, a view “largely lost since the early seventeenth century.” (p. 49) It was not until Edmond Malone’s scholarly concern with authenticity that the non-dramatic writings were definitely included in the canon; but even after Malone’s edition of 1790, the Bard was usually considered as above all a dramatist and man of the theatre, who merely wrote poetry in his spare time or when the theatres were closed due to the plague.
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