Shakespeare, Court Dramatist outlines the symbiotic relationship between Shakespeare and the court and shows how it affected his writing, forging plays like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet into the versions we know best today.

Richard Dutton was educated at King's College, Cambridge and the University of Nottingham. He taught for many years at Lancaster University. Since 2003 he has been Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where he served as chair of the English department from 2009 to 2013. He has published numerous monographs, scholarly editions, and edited collections relating to the early modern period, mostly focusing on the censorship of the drama, the authors Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and theatre history.

• Introduction


• Part 1: Playing and the Court


• 1: Shakespeare, Patronage, and the Court


• 2: Court Revels and Their Masters


• 3: Line Lengths, Playing Times, and Ben Jonson


• 4: The Revision of Early Modern Play Texts


• a: The Revision of Plays in Shakespeare's Day


• b: Thinking About the Revision of Shakespeare's Texts in Modern Times


• Part 2: Shakespeare's Multiple Texts


• 5: More Sophisticated Histories


• a: The Famous Victories of Shakespeare's Henry V


• b: 2 and 3 Henry VI -- A True Contention


• 6: Augmentations


• a: Romeo and Juliet


• b: Hamlet and Succession


• c: A Jacobean Merry Wives?


• 7: Last Thoughts


• a: Single Sequence Additions


• b: Jacobean Shakespeare


• Conclusions


• Bibliography