Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640 - Hardcover

Bergeron, David M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815397380 ISBN 13: 9780815397380

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Through an investigation of the dedications and addresses from various printed plays of the English Renaissance, the author recuperates the richness of these prefaces and connects them to the practice of patronage. The prefatory matter discussed ranges from the printer John Day's address to readers (the first of its kind) in the 1570 edition of Gorboduc to Richard Brome's dedication to William Seymour and address to readers in his 1640 play, Antipodes. The study includes discussion of prefaces in plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as Shakespeare himself, among them Marston, Jonson, and Heywood.  The author uses these prefaces to show that English playwrights, printers and publishers looked in two directions, toward aristocrats and toward a reading public, in order to secure status for and dissemination of dramatic texts. The author points out that dedications and addresses to readers constitute obvious signs that printers, publishers and playwrights in the period increasingly saw these dramatic texts as occupying a rightful place in the humanistic and commercial endeavor of book production.

About this title

About the Author

David M. Bergeron is Professor of English at Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Kansas.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0815397380
• ISBN 13: 9780815397380
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 257