Pleasant Conceited Historie, Called the Taming of a Shrew.

by Graham Holderness

This book is part of a controversial new series that raises fundamental questions about the authenticity of Shakespeare's texts as we know them today. In a radical departure from existing series, it presents the earliest known editions of Shakespeare's plays-which differ substantially from the present versions-and argues that these are the most authentic we have. The editors present the text in a form as close as possible to its first publication. It includes an introduction, notes and an appendix containing sample facsimile pages from the original printed texts. Throughout, the emphasis of the critical apparatus is on the theoretical and historical significance of the text and its contextual relationships with theatre, history and cultural politics. Published in 1594 under the title "The Taming of a Shrew", this play has always been regarded as an earlier version by another dramatist, or as a corrupt "memorial reconstruction" of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". Yet the version accepted as Shakespeare's was not published until the First Folio of 1623. The text of "A Shrew" differs from that of "The Shrew". It contains, for example, a complete theatrical "framing" device in the form of the Lord's practical joke on Christopher Sly, where the "Shakespearean" text drops Sly and the framing device early in the play. From the beginning of this century the "non-Shakespearean" text has been used in theatrical practice to complete the authorized but insufficient "Shakespearean" play. This new edition makes "The Taming of a Shrew" available in full, not as a source or analogue or memorial reconstruction of a Shakespearean original, but in its own right as a brilliantly inventive popular Elizabethan play.

112 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1992

About the author

Writer and critic Graham Holderness has published over 40 books, many on Shakespeare, and hundreds of chapters and articles of criticism, theory and theology. He was one of the founders of British cultural materialism, and is acknowledged as a formative contributor to a number of branches of Shakespeare criticism and theory. He has published pioneering studies in Arabic adaptations of Shakespeare, culminating in The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy by Sulayman Al Bassam (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, 2014).

His more recent work has pioneered methods of critical-creative writing, exemplified by his innovative factual-fictional biography Nine Lives of William Shakespeare (Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2011). Extending these methods, and published in 2014, are Tales from Shakespeare: Creative Collisions (Cambridge University Press, June 2014) and Re-writing Jesus: Christ in 20th Century Fiction and Film (Bloomsbury, November 2014). His latest book is The Faith of William Shakespeare (Lion Hudson, 2016).

He is also a novelist, poet and dramatist. Graham Holderness has published two Shakespearean novels: The Prince of Denmark (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001), and the historical fantasy novel Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare Vampire Hunter (Top Hat Books, 2015). His poetry collection Craeft: poems from the Anglo-Saxon received a Poetry Book Society award in 2002; and his play Wholly Writ was in 2011 performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, and by Royal Shakespeare Company actors in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Reviews

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not Shakespeare's play, but an alternate version that follows (or proceeds) the story with reasonable closeness, but in mostly different language. I suppose I really consider this to be a three star play, but it is a privilege to read an artifact this interesting and in an edition that does it right.