Question 33

Listen to the recording: We often take for granted that the Shakespearean texts we read are definitive. In reality, the path from the playwright's pen to the printed page was perilous. Shakespeare wrote scripts for actors to memorize, not books for the public to read, and he never published a collected edition himself. We rely heavily on the First Folio, assembled by his colleagues years after his death, which rescued eighteen plays that had never been printed before. If that book had not been published, our knowledge of his work would be ...