Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Stephen Orgel is interested in books and plays. But throughout
The Invention of Shakespeare, Orgel is adamant that a/the book is not the play. These essays, written over thirty years, have an argumentative throughline...as he demonstrates the varied ways in which plays are mutable...The 'invention' of the book’s title is about the way editors, critics and eras give a fixed identity to a figure we confidently but misleadingly identify as 'Shakespeare'....Throughout these essays we are treated to Orgel’s brilliance as a literary critic and close reader. He moves not just effortlessly but analogously from material books – a study of blanks, lacunae, the empty parentheses." * Times Literary Supplement *
"Stephen Orgel is one of the greatest Shakespeare and early modern scholars of our time, and every single one of these pieces is engaging, exhilarating, revelatory, thought-provoking." * Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame *
