The Invention of Shakespeare, and Other Essays

In The Invention of Shakespeare, and Other Essays Stephen Orgel brings together twelve essays that consider the complex nature of Shakespearean texts, often including errors or confusions, and the editorial and interpretive strategies for dealing with them in commentary or performance. 'There is always some underlying claim that we are getting back to 'what Shakespeare actually wrote,' Orgel writes, 'but obviously that is not true: we clarify, we modernize, we undo muddles, we correct or explain (or explain away) errors, all in the interests of getting a clear, readable, unproblematic text. In short, we produce the text that we want him to, or think he must have written. But one thing we really do know about Shakespeare's original text is that it was hard to read.--