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[Review of] Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance / Terri Bourus. - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

ERNE, Lukas Christian

Reference

ERNE, Lukas Christian. [Review of] Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance / Terri Bourus. - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Around the Globe, 2015, vol. 60, p. 54

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and the hypothesis that it might have been by Shakespeare faces a number of problems, such as its absence from Francis Meres's list of Shakespeare plays in 1598 or the widely-held assumption that Shakespeare did not start writing plays for the London stage until 1590 or 1591. But the gravitational pull of Shakespeare's name has been such that a series of scholars have been tempted to relate ali Hamlets to Shakespeare. From there, it is only one step to argue that there is no razor like Occam's and that the first quarto is in fact the Hamlet referred to from 1589 to 1596. Among those who ND KYDDING have taken this line of argument are GRAHAM'S TALES Charles Knight (editor of The Pictorial Andrew Hadfield Lukas Erne Shakespeare) in the 19th century and Eric Young Shakespeare's Young Ham/et Sams (who also argued for Shakespeare's Tales from Shakespeare: Creative by Terri Bourus, Palgrave authorship of Edmund Ironside) in the late Collisions by Graham Holderness, Macmillan, 296pp, f57.50 20th. Cambridge University Press, In Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet, 245pp,f25 Terri Bourus revives this view and builds hen the first quarto edition of on it a series of other arguments: the Q2 Hamlet, originally published in text (usually dated c.1600) did not come hen he passed the old eleven W 1603, was rediscovered in the into existence until 1604 and constitutes plus to get into grammar early 19th century, it was at first assumed the last step in the play's evolution (pp. W school Graham Holderness's that its text - only about half as long as 185-96); Gabriel Harvey's famous proud father gave him a collection of that of the second quarto of 1604/5 and comment that Shakespeare's Ham let is books purchased through a subscription qui te different from it - constituted an stuff 'to please the wiser sort' refers to from The Daily Express. The most early version of the play Shakespeare the text of 1589 (pp. 138-40), and this influential of these was the Lambs' Tales later revised and expanded. What more version is an early 'Shakespeare-Burbage from Shakespeare. In a bold act of hamage natural than to assume that chronology collaboration' (p. 156); its language and to that work, as weil as to his parents, of publication corresponds to chronology verse, whose unevenness has often been the older Holderness has now returned of creation? But saon after, discordant commented upon, 'is typical of the best to his intellectual origins and fashioned voices started to make themselves heard, poems and playwrights of the late 1580s' his own version of the work that made arguing that the text of the first quarto (p. 172). Bourus does not leave a stone Shakespeare accessible for generations in fact derives from the longer versions unturned to try to justify her daims and of children. printed in the second quarto and the First put in their place the many scholars with One would have to be a hardened and Folio (1623). This became the majority whom she disagrees. Her association with humourless reader not to enjoy much opinion and has remained so ever since, Gary Taylor, who is working with her on of this engaging and interesting work. with scholars variously arguing that the a new Oxford edition of Shakespeare, There are four sections, each consisting first quarto reflects a theatrical who has written a preface to her book, of an essay and a creative retelling of abridgement (whence the many stage and whose revisionary rhetoric pervades an important historical moment in the directions), a short-hand report, the book, guarantees her arguments sorne history of Shakespeare or a Shakespeare a memorial reconstruction, or a time in the limelight. Once the dust will play. Part one provides an analysis of the combination or variation of these. have settled, the scholarly community performance of Hamlet on board the Red The early textual history of may weil rediscover the good sense of Dragon off the West African coast, Shakespeare's most famous play has what has long been the orthodox view. followed by a short story based on the remained contested though. What adds episode; part two explores the relationship to its complications is an allusion to a Lukas Erne is Professer of English at the between Shakespeare and the King James Hamletplay as early as 1589 (Thomas University of Geneva. Bible as the two great classics of English Nashe), which was performed in 1594 and writing, together with a play imagining 1596 (as recorded by Philip Henslowe and Shakespeare and Jonson discussing the Thomas Lodge). The evidence that this monarch's project before Shakespeare earlier play was by Thomas Kyd, author dies and seeks entrance into heaven; part of The Spanish Tragedy (1587), is strong, three examines adaptations of Coriolanus