Zachary Lesser

Early Modern Digital Scholarship & DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks

Zachary Lesser et al. — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:47:06 PST

This paper discusses recent trends in digital resources for early modern literary studies, as well as the implications of these resources for research and scholarship. In addition to comparing the use by scholars of print reference works and online databases, the essay analyzes the recent shift from 'first-generation' digital resources, such as the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) and Early English Books Online (EEBO), to newer 'second-generation' resources like DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Rather than strive for comprehensive coverage of early modern print culture, as ESTC and EEBO do, these 'second-generation' sites typically aim for in-depth coverage of a particular kind of text or document. DEEP, for example, is a searchable database of all extant plays printed in England to 1660, while the English Broadside Ballad Archive focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ballads. This shift in emphasis – from comprehensiveness to specialized subject matter – has resulted in, and been driven by, changes in thinking about the fundamental architecture of the databases, their searchability, and their analytical and editorial principles, all of which have significant ramifications for the type of research they enable.

The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Professional Plays

Zachary Lesser et al. — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:54:43 PST

Considers the first ("bad") quarto of Hamlet as Shakespeare's first literary drama, in the context of the use of marginal commas and italics to indicate sententiae in printed professional drama.

William Shakespeare - The Life

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:57:47 PDT

Encyclopedia entry on the life of William Shakespeare.

Copyright

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:56:36 PDT

Encyclopedia entry on the history of copyright.

Playbooks

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:31:37 PDT

The history of playbooks in early modern England, for a general readership.

Mystic Ciphers: Shakespeare and Intelligent Design: A Response to Nancy Glazener

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:25:55 PDT

A discussion of the Shakespeare "authorship controversy" in relation to the "debate" over evolution and intelligent design.

Canons and Classics: Publishing Drama in Caroline England

Zachary Lesser et al. — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:20:02 PDT

The publication of playbooks in the 1630s helped to shape a distinctive culture of Caroline drama and to give rise to the first canon of English professional drama.

Vile Arts: The Marketing of English Printed Drama, 1512–1660

Zachary Lesser et al. — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:15:47 PDT

Examines the marketing of drama through the use of title-page attributions of author, authorial status, theatrical venue, theatrical company, and the presence of Latin on the title page.

Walter Burre’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:13:22 PDT

A study of The Knight of the Burning Pestle in the context of the career of its publisher, Walter Burre, focusing especially on his use of the typographical technique of "continuous printing."

Mixed Government and Mixed Marriage in A King and No King: Sir Henry Neville Reads Beaumont and Fletcher

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:06:43 PDT

A reading of the 1619 edition of A King and No King through the eyes of its print dedicatee, Sir Henry Neville, this article examines the play's treatment of the political theory of mixed government in relation to its handling of gender, incest, and marriage.

Structures of Popularity in the Early Modern Book Trade

Zachary Lesser et al. — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:04:10 PDT

Continues the discussion in "The Popularity of Playbooks Revisited," with a rejoinder to Peter W.M. Blayney's reply to that article.

The Popularity of Playbooks Revisited

Zachary Lesser et al. — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:03:02 PDT

A revisionist study of the popularity of playbooks in the early modern book trade and a new theory of what "popularity" means in that trade. You can read our follow-up piece as well, "Structures of Popularity in the Early Modern Book Trade."

Typographic Nostalgia: Playreading, Popularity and the Meanings of Black Letter

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:00:47 PDT

Tragical-Comical-Pastoral-Colonial: Economic Sovereignty, Globalization, and the Form of Tragicomedy

Zachary Lesser — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:54:03 PDT

I examine the politics of tragicomedy by focusing on its 1620s shift from pastoral to proto-colonial settings. This formal transformation reveals the genre's connection to economic debates over England's coin shortage and to Thomas Mun's abstract, global model of trade, removed from monarchical authority and naturalized in self-regulating "laws of commerce." Like Mun's model, tragicomedy requires us to imagine the ability of past actions and distant causes to ramify across time and space. Set on a barren, inaccessible island, Fletcher and Massinger's Sea Voyage isolates the nature of money and demonstrates the dangers of transgressing the natural law of commerce.