G. K. Hunter - English Drama 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare

G. K. HUNTER

CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD

1997

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Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

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Oxford University Press 1997

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TO SHELAGH

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LEWIS. I'm working on 'English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama', for OHEL. JOY. Oh hell? LEWIS. The Oxford History of English Literature. JOY. Sixteenth century. You got the easy one. LEWIS. You think so? William Nicholson, Shadowlands ( 1989) Act I, pp. -3

Of the difficulties that lie in the way of an editor [of Elizabethan dramatic records] -- at least if he regards his work as historical rather than romantic -- not the least is to avoid writing a general history of the Elizabethan stage. There is no such thing as a clearly defined historical field; facts are linked to other facts in all directions, and investigation merely leads to further and further questions. Every custom and every institution at once rises the problem of its own origin; every corporation and every social fact is influenced by other corporations or reacts on other social facts. Thus to treat intelligibly any of the several dramatic companies at the end of the [sixteenth] century, or any series of events in the dramatic history of the time demands a knowledge of the constitution of other companies and of the sequence of other events such as at present can hardly be said to exist. W. W. Greg, Preface to Henslowe's Diary, Part II ( 1908)

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