Constructing the canon of early modern drama

Includes bibliographical references (pages 212-225) and index.

Machine generated contents note: Part I. Early Modern Dramatic Canons: Origins: 1. Excluding Shakespeare; 2. Trollope's Dilke; 3. What is an anthology? (Part 1); 4. Collecting early modern drama, 1744 to the present; 5. Ejecta; 6. How to use this book; 7. Table of contents; 8. Autogenesis: The Custom of The Country (Part 1); 9. Endless tragedy; 10. Negative canon; Attachments: 11. Lamb in the library; 12. Dodsley's Hog; 13. Blunt instrument; 14. Fragments; 15. Comedy and tragedy; 16. The Mermaid series; 17. The Keltie exception; 18. The ties that bind: The Custom of The Country (Part 2); 19. Hints of designs; 20. What is an anthology? (Part 2); Paradoxes: 21. Introductory; 22. Bullen's Nero; 23. Collier's Reed's Dodsley; 24. Beaumont our contemporary; 25. History in disguise; 26. The aesthetic under erasure; 27. The turn of the corkscrew; 28. Return of the repressed: The Custom of The Country (Part 3); 29. The Changeling; 30. The greatness of English Renaissance drama; Interlude: Reading a bad play: The Fair Maid of Bristow; Part II. Early Modern Dramatic Forms: Bifurcation: 31. The Bowers Dekker; 32. Fletcher's Shakespeare; 33. Early modern dramatic form; 34. The Bloody Brother; 35. Early modern dramatic forms; 36. What is an anthology? (Part 3); 37. Apples and oranges; 38. The sleepwalker: Northward Ho (Part 1); 39. The war in The Shoemaker's Holiday; 40. The Holaday Chapman; Opposition: 41. Laws of canon; 42. Rowley's sow; 43. Form in collaboration; 44. Love's Labors Won; 45. 'A sort of dramatic monster'; 46. What should an anthology be?; 47. The surviving image; 48. Other voices: Northward Ho (Part 2); 49. Disappearing act; 50. Anon., anon; Inheritance: 51. Voluminous Heywood; 52. Ford's Webster; 53. Labored forms; 54. The Triumph of Time; 55. Moral Massinger; 56. No heir; 57. Apocalypse now; 58. Bedlam at Ware: Northward Ho (Part 3); 59. Modern times; 60. Principles of selection and exclusion; Afterword; List of primary-text editions; Bibliography.

"For one hundred years the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries has been consistently represented in anthologies, edited texts, and the critical tradition by a familiar group of about two dozen plays running from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy to Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by way of Dekker, Jonson, Middleton and Webster. How was this canon created, and what ideological and institutional functions does it serve? What preceded it, and is it possible for it to become something else? Jeremy Lopez takes up these questions by tracing a history of anthologies of 'non-Shakespearean' drama from Robert Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays (1744) through those recently published by Blackwell, Norton, and Routledge. Containing dozens of short, provocative readings of unfamiliar plays, this book will benefit those who seek a broader sense of the period's dazzling array of forms"--