Editing Shakespeare

by Jo Swenson In the 180 years following the first publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the famous poems underwent some major revisions. While most modern readers are unaware of this historical editing of the sonnets, much can be learned not just about the poems and their reception in the 17th and 18th centuries but also about…

by Jo Swenson While only 150 years separate, John Benson’s Poems VVritten By Wil. Shake-speare, gent. and Edmond Malone’s The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare these two versions of Shakespeare’s Sonnets came from vastly different worlds. In the years between these editions, England went through two revolutions, one that rid the country of the…

by Jo Swenson It was not until the 20th century that the editorial history of the Sonnets was revisited. This post deals mostly with Benson’s edition as it has caused greater debate amongst scholars but Malone’s edition is almost always present in critiques of Benson. Hyder Rollins and Lord Alfred Douglas Many cite Hyder Rollins’s…

by Jo Swenson I am incredibly grateful to all the libraries that have digitized the materials I used for this project. I spent a lot of time consulting the digitized copy of Poems VVritten By Wil. Shake-speare, gent. held at the Boston Public Library. A few weeks ago, I was able to go see the…