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COPYRIGHT 2006 www.wmich.edu/compdr
David M. Bergeron. Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570-1640. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Pp. x + 248. $89.95.
This challenging book explores the diverse commercial and cultural strategies through which dramatists and their stationers sought to disseminate printed texts of English plays between 1570 and 1640. Rather than assuming that the printing of play-texts was merely utilized as a means of eking a few more financial rewards from a drama no longer required for performance, David M. Bergeron demonstrates that during this period the publication of plays was increasingly focused upon the benefits to be derived from court, city, and personal patronage, in ways that endowed the dedicatory epistles, addresses, and other preliminaries preceding the texts of the plays with special importance. Following an informative introductory chapter on "The Printing House and Textual Patronage" (which should become required reading for all students of early modern English drama and bibliography), seven other chapters investigate a wide range of related topics, including the publication of pageants and masques, the patronage of drama by women, the printed circulation of the plays of John Marston,...
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