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- Author: Andrew Murphy x
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Scotland was something of a power-house of British publishing in the nineteenth century. Peter Alexander's edition was a thoroughly Scottish William Shakespeare, in that it was edited by a native Glaswegian who served as Regius Professor at the city's university, and it was produced by a Glasgow-based publisher. The Foulis brothers were key figures in the Glasgow of the Scottish Enlightenment and they set very high standards in the work that they produced. Alexander Donaldson had been a member of the consortium that had issued the first Edinburgh edition of Shakespeare in 1753 and he was also involved in several other Shakespeare publishing projects. The surviving correspondence makes it clear that Alexander Macmillan was the guiding spirit behind the Cambridge Shakespeare and its Globe spinoff. John Dover Wilson himself served as editor for what might be described as the first Shakespeare edition undertaken on New Bibliographic principles.
This book explores, from a variety of critical perspectives, the playwright's place in Scotland and the place of Scotland in his work. The influence of Scotland on William Shakespeare's writing, and later on his reception, is set alongside the dramatic effects that Shakespeare's work had on the development of Scottish literature. The Shakespeare's work of Scottish literature stretches from the Globe to globalisation, and from Captain Jamy and King James to radical productions at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow. Shakespeare have strong Scottish connections by virtue of his theatre company's being brought under the sponsorship of the Scottish king James VI immediately after his accession to the English throne in 1603. Jonathan Goldberg and Alvin Kernan have traced the impact of royal patronage on Shakespeare's work after the Union, finding Scottish themes at play not just in Macbeth, but also in Cymbeline, King Lear, Hamlet, and in other plays. Then, the book outlines some of the issues and problems raised by Scotland and Scottish history for English readers in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. Shakespeare wrote his English plays in Elizabeth's reign and his British plays after 1603, though Henry V, first performed in 1599, might be regarded as a proto-British play. Unlike Henry V, Shakespeare's most English play, where national identity is of the essence, in Macbeth, Scotland is a blot on the landscape. Shakespeare's political drama moves from a sense of England and Scotland as independent kingdoms into an alignment with the views of Unionist King James.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the relationship between the personal and the political in King James I's promotion of the Union and shows how this is echoed by William Shakespeare both before and after 1603. It looks at the language question and the Scottishness of a play whose national context is complicated by the downplaying of dialect in its dramatic diction. The book also looks at the text through the lens of the language of law and order, namely the feudal topoi of military service, royal progress, and the need for counsel to be taken by monarchs and husbands. It examines Scottish adaptations of Shakespeare in a vital theatrical location at a moment of radical experimentation, made possible by an innovative and outward-looking company.