Shakespeare and Lost Plays Reimagining Drama in Early Modern England

Shakespeare and Lost Plays returns Shakespeare's dramatic work to its most immediate and (arguably) pivotal context; by situating it alongside the hundreds of plays known to Shakespeare's original audiences, but lost to us. David McInnis reassesses the value of lost plays in relation to both the companies that originally performed them, and to contemporary scholars of early modern drama. This innovative study revisits key moments in Shakespeare's career and the development of his company and, by prioritising the immense volume of information we now possess about lost plays, provides a richer, more accurate picture of dramatic activity than has hitherto been possible. By considering a variety of ways to grapple with the problem of lost, imperceptible, or ignored texts, this volume presents a methodology for working with lacunae in archival evidence and the distorting effect of Shakespeare-centric narratives, thus reinterpreting our perception of the field of early modern drama.

Introduction; 1. Charting the landscape of loss; 2. Early Shakespeare: 1594-98; 3. Shakespeare at the turn of the century, 1599-1603; 4. Courting controversy: Shakespeare and the king's men, 1604-08; 5. Late Shakespeare: 1609-13; 6. Loose canons: the lost Shakespeare apocrypha; Conclusion.

David McInnis is Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne. With Roslyn L. Knutson and Matthew Steggle, he founded and co-edits the Lost Plays Database. He is also co-editor of Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England (2014) and a sequel volume, Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare's Time (2020). His other books include Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (2013), Travel and Drama in Early Modern England: The Journeying Play (with Claire Jowitt, Cambridge, 2018), Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader (2020), and the Revels Plays edition of Dekker's Old Fortunatus (2020).