Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History, from the Restoration to the Present

A rising young textual critic and co-editor of the new Oxford Shakespeare --a Catholic University of America professor notorious for attributing a hitherto little-known manuscript poem to Shakespeare--here defines what ``Shakespeare'' meant in and to six periods in the past 350 years: the 17th-century English Restoration, the early 18th century, the Romantic period, the Victorian and post-Edwardian eras and the very recent past. Taylor discourses on how Shakespeare's works were edited, criticized, quoted, translated, performed and filmed, how his name and words were spelled, how he was graphically depicted. Although it focuses on the poet-dramatist's evolving reputation--which Taylor calls ``Shakesperotics''--this lively survey also examines developments in publishing, journalism, theater, censorship, morality, education, sex, economics, politics, ideology, social and material culture. Among the enormous cast of characters engagingly presented are not only Garrick, Kean and Gordon Craig, but also Burke, Keats and Coleridge, Dowden, Bradley and Chambers, Shaw, Joyce and Cleanth Brooks. (Sept.)