Lukas Christian Erne

Bio: Lukas Christian Erne is an academic researcher from University of Geneva. The author has contributed to research in topics: Hamlet (place) & Memorial reconstruction. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 44 publications receiving 502 citations. Previous affiliations of Lukas Christian Erne include University of Bristol.

Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

Abstract: In this study, Lukas Erne argues that Shakespeare, apart from being a playwright who wrote theatrical texts for the stage, was also a literary dramatist who produced reading texts for the page. The usual distinction that has been set up between Ben Jonson on the one hand, carefully preparing his manuscripts for publication, and Shakespeare the man of the theatre, writing for his actors and audience, indifferent to his plays as literature, is questioned in this book. Examining the evidence from early published playbooks, Erne argues that Shakespeare wrote many of his plays with a readership in mind and that these 'literary' texts would have been abridged for the stage because they were too long for performance. The variant early texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Hamlet are shown to reveal important insights into the different media for which Shakespeare designed his plays.

Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd

Abstract: This is the first book in more than thirty years on the playwright who is arguably Shakespeare's most important tragic predecessor. Brilliantly fusing the drama of the academic and popular traditions, Thomas Kyd's plays are of central importance for understanding how the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries came about. Called ‘an extraordinary dramatic... genius' by T. S. Eliot, Thomas Kyd invented the revenge tragedy genre that culminated in Shakespeare's Hamlet some twelve years later. In this book, The Spanish Tragedy—the most popular of all plays on the English Renaissance stage—receives the extensive scholarly and critical treatment it deserves, including a full reception and modern stage history. Yet as this study makes clear, Thomas Kyd is much more than the author of a single masterpiece. Don Horatio (partly extant in The First Part of Hieronimo), the lost early Hamlet, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia all belong to what emerges in this study for the first time as a coherent dramatic oeuvre.

Shakespeare and the Book Trade

Abstract: Introduction 1. Quantifying Shakespeare's presence in print 2. Shakespeare, publication and authorial misattribution 3. The bibliographic and paratextual makeup of Shakespeare's Quarto playbooks 4. Shakespeare's publishers 5. The reception of printed Shakespeare Appendix A. The publication of playbooks by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to 1660 Appendix B. Printed playbooks of professional plays, including reprints, 1583-1622 Appendix C. Shakespeare's publishers, 1593-1622.

Shakespeare and the Publication of His Plays

Abstract: Challenging the accepted view that Shakespeare was indifferent to the publication of his plays by focusing on the economics of the booktrade, examines the evidence that the playing companies resisted publishing their plays, reviews "the publication history of Shakespeare's plays, which suggests that the Lord Chamberlain's Men has a coherent strategy to try to get their playwright's plays into print," and "inquire[s] into what can or cannot be inferred from Shakespeare's alleged involvement (as with the narrative poems) or noninvolvement (as with the plays) in the publication of his writings." Concluding that publishers had little economic incentive to publish drama, calls for renewed attention to Shakespeare's attitude to his plays and their publication.

Attributing Authorship: An Introduction

Abstract: Abbreviations Illustrations Introduction Acknowledgements 1. Individuality and sameness 2. Historical survey 3. Defining authorship 4. External evidence 5. Internal evidence 6. Stylistic evidence 7. Gender and Authorship 8. Craft and science 9. Bibliographical evidence 10. Forgery and attribution 11. Shakespeare and Co. 12. Arguing attribution Bibliography Index.

Distributing Cognition in the Globe

Abstract: Lois Potter, Garrett Sullivan, John Sutton, Colin Gibson, Mark McGuire, and Jocelyn Harris. Thanks are also due to my research assistant, Sarah Entwistle, and to the Donald Collie Chair research fund at the University of Otago. 1 See Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1995). 2 See Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (New York: Oxford UP, 2000); John C. Meagher, Pursuing Shakespeare’s Dramaturgy: Some Contexts, Resources, and Strategies in His Playmaking (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP; London: Associated University Presses, 2003). Distributing Cognition in the Globe

Documents of Performance in Early Modern England

Abstract: Introduction: playwrights as play-patchers 1. Plot-scenarios 2. Playbills and title-pages 3. 'Arguments' in playhouse and book 4. Prologues, epilogues, interim entertainments 5. Songs and masques 6. Scrolls 7. Backstage plots 8 and 9. The approved 'book' and actors' parts Conclusion: repatching the play.

The role of women in the canonisation of Shakespeare : from Elizabethan theatre to the Shakespeare Jubilee

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to clarify the role that female interpreters in Britain played at an early stage in the canonisation of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, one of the popular playwrights in English Renaissance theatre, became increasingly famous during the first half of the eighteenth century, and the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769 marked the climax of the popularisation of his works. It is said that since then, he has maintained his position as the ‘national poet’ of England (or Britain). Although women had supported Shakespeare even before his works had established their canonical status, the extent to which female interpreters contributed to the canonisation of Shakespeare, how they participated in the process, and why they played the roles that they did have not yet been sufficiently visible. In this thesis, I illustrate women’s engagement in the process of the popularisation of Shakespeare by examining the early reception of his works, and to document how individual women’s pleasure of reading and playgoing relates to their intellectual activities. I adopt three approaches to provide answers to my research questions in this thesis: reading critical and fictional works by women; analysing the descriptions of female readers and playgoers by male writers; and conducting a large-scale survey of the ownership history of pre-mid-eighteenth-century printed books of Shakespeare’s plays. This thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I analyse women’s engagement with theatre in Renaissance England, and consider Shakespeare’s popularity amongst them based on records about female audiences. The second chapter discusses female readers and writers in Renaissance England and their responses to Shakespeare’s works. Chapter 3 focuses on Restoration Shakespeare and female interpreters from 1642 to 1714. The fourth chapter discusses women’s playgoing, play-reading, writings, and their participation from the early eighteenth century to the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769.