Una Ellis-Fermor - Shakespeare’s Drama

Routledge Library Editions

SHAKESPEARE

Routledge Library Editions Shakespeare

First published in 1980

Reprinted in 2005 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1961 Chapters IV and IX Elaine Weston and Elsie Brown;
1980 Methuen & Co Ltd

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Shakespeare's Drama
ISBN 0-415-35284-3
ISBN 0-415-33086-6 (set)

Miniset: Critical Studies

Series: Routledge Library Editions Shakespeare

METHUEN
LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 1980 by

Methuen & Co. Ltd

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by

Methuen & Co.

in association with Methuen, Inc.

733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

This collection1980 Methuen & Co. Ltd

Chapters IV and IX1961 Elaine Weston and Elsie Brown

Typeset by Red Lion Setters London WC1

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press Cambridge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ellis-Fermor, Una

Shakespeare's drama.

1. Shakespeare, William Criticism

and interpretation

I. Title II. Muir, Kenneth

822.33 PR2976 80-40726

ISBN 0-416-74090-1

ISBN 0-416-74100-2 pbk

(University paperbacks; 724)

Printed in Great Britain by

Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd,

Bungay, Suffolk

originally appeared in The Frontiers of Drama (1945, Methuen).

Una Ellis-Fermor, Hildred Carlisle Professor of English Literature at Bedford College, London, from 1947 until her death in 1958, although best known as a Shakespearian scholar, had wide interests in poetry and drama. She wrote a pioneer book on Marlowe, and standard works on Jacobean Drama and on the Irish Dramatic Movement. Towards the end of her life she translated six of Ibsen's plays and, as her writings reveal, she was acquainted with Greek drama, Racine and Corneille, and many modern European dramatists. One essay alone refers to twenty-five modern dramatists.

She was the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare and the series owes much of its success to her foresight and planning, and also to her willingness to change her mind when occasion arose. It was originally intended to print the New Arden from the Old, with only the most necessary corrections to the text and notes, but she soon became convinced that such a course was impossible.

In 1948, just as the New Arden Shakespeare was started, Una Ellis-Fermor delivered the Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, and this was intended to be the first chapter of a projected book on Shakespeare the Dramatist. When I edited under that title the chapters which had been drafted, I suggested that some of the gaps could be filled by chapters from