Title: His fellow dramatists and early collaborators
Abstract: Around the time that Shakespeare was putting a dog on stage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a contemporary was accusing him of being an animal. Though Ben Jonson would later call him the 'Sweet swan of Avon' (Oxford Shakespeare, p. lxxi) in a commendatory poem published in the First Folio, the first reference to Shakespeare in print called him a crow and a tiger. Alongside these animal references, Shakespeare also found himself called a puppet, an upstart and 'an absolute Johannes fac totum' (which means something like 'jack of all trades, master of none' or 'know-it-all') (Greene's Groatsworth 1592, pp. 83–5). This was not only the first recorded response to Shakespeare's work, but the first appearance of Shakespeare in print. Shakespeare had clearly been writing work for the theatre and his earliest sonnets may well have already circulated in manuscript, and much of this early work would later be printed for book readers. He nevertheless first appeared in a book as the subject of discussion, rather than its author. Though he would later come to be venerated by playgoers, readers and actors, this first appearance makes clear that he could be an object of vitriol to at least one of his contemporaries, an untrustworthy beast operating beyond his powers who should be avoided by other playwrights. Why might Shakespeare appear that way to his early contemporaries?
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-10-22
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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