In this expanded and much revised new edition Professor Holderness
reassesses the Bard as a writer in the light of the most recent
"revolution" in bibliography and textual studies. This has shifted much
opinion about the playwright, how he worked, and with whom he
collaborated. Yet there remain many unsolved riddles. / This is a book
about unresolved (and unresolvable?) questions about Shakespeare, and
about writing, creativity and its study. / Professor Holderness reviews
the current debates in textual theory and practice. He concludes that
"Shakespeare" is not a writer but a collection of documents, none of
which can with any certainty be linked to whatever it was the author
wanted to say. He goes beyond both traditional and "materialist"
bibliography to show that texts are both physical media, made and remade
by a series of craftspeople; and rich repositories of changeable
meaning. / According to modern literary studies all texts are copies,
always already changed, and there are no "originals". Editors are
translators; and scholars and critics rewrite the writing they study.
The book advocates a recovery of ancient concepts such as creativity and
imagination, together with a recognition of the technical and
essentially collaborative nature of all writing. Shakespeare is then
situated within this theoretical context, via a brief history of the
plays' textual reproduction. / A series of chapters on individual plays
provides illustrative examples of such textual activities in practice.
The book concludes that all Shakespeare scholarship, editing and
criticism are devoted to a quest for something missing: not the lost
manuscript (which even if recovered would not in any case answer all our
questions), but rather the absence that writing always invokes.
