Table Of ContentShakespeare’s
Letters
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Shakespeare’s
Letters
(cid:1)
ALAN STEWART
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3
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acknowledgements
This book started out having nothing to do with Shakespeare. My
original interest was in how early modern letters worked, an issue
thatbecamecrucialwhenIwasworkingonthecorrespondenceof
Francis Bacon in 2000–2 at Birkbeck, University of London, with
Patricia Brewerton and Andrew Gordon. Virtually every day the
threeofuswouldabandonourdarkbasementofficeforanequally
dark basement coffee bar and ponder the strange and wonderful
quirksofthematerialsweweredealingwith.Whatinitiallyseemed
to be a straightforward subject—surely letters are just letters?—
became increasingly complex the closer we looked, and, to me,
increasinglyfascinating.
That conversation has continued since, and led naturally to fur-
ther, inspiring collaborations. Lisa Jardine and I worked on the
foundingin2002ofaCentreforEditingLivesandLettersinLondon,
whereIhadtheopportunitytoteachagraduatecourseon‘writing
livesfromletters’.PatriciaBrewertonandIconvenedtheunFamiliar
LettersconferenceatBirkbeckinJuly2002,whichbroughttogether
fortyscholarsallworkingonearlymodernepistles.HeatherWolfe
and I curated the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2004 exhibition Let-
terwritinginRenaissanceEngland, and edited its accompanying cata-
logue,duringwhichtimeHeathertaughtmemuchaboutthephys-
ical materials of letters. Lynne Magnusson and I led a seminar
on letter-writing at the 2007 Shakespeare Association of America
meeting, which furthered our discussion of all things epistolary.
Theseexperiences,andthesecolleagues,wereinvaluableinhelping
viii Acknowledgements
methinkaboutletters.ButitwasBarbaraMowatwhoinformedme
thatmyvagueideasforabookonletterswouldbebetterputtouse
on the plays of William Shakespeare, and I realised instantly that,
quite characteristically, she was right. And so I spent the summer
of2005inParisre-readingShakespeare,andthesummerof2006in
LondonresearchingShakespeare’suseofletters.Shakespeare’sLetters
istheresult.
IhavebeenincrediblyfortunatetowritethisbookatColumbia,
in the everyday company of a remarkable set of colleagues, all
of whom have read, listened to, debated and flayed various parts
of this project: Julie Crawford, Kathy Eden, Jean Howard, David
Scott Kastan, Molly Murray, and Anne Lake Prescott. I am par-
ticularly indebted to Jim Shapiro who has done more than any-
one else to encourage, cajole, and provoke me into writing about
Shakespeare’s letters. Among an inspiring graduate cohort, I am
especially indebted to András Kiséry and Adam Hooks, who com-
mented on drafts, and to Rebecca Calcagno, who tried to correct
my ignorance of the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries with a
stream of helpful references. Friends and colleagues further afield
read drafts of chapters, answered queries, or allowed me to read
their unpublished research: I thank Amanda Bailey, Diana Barnes,
DavidBergeron,PaulCannan,ChristopherEbert,DavidKathman,
Jerry Passannante, Chris Ross, Adam Smyth, Goran Stanivukovic,
and Matthew Steggle. I am particularly grateful to James Daybell,
whose own work has opened up the field of early modern letters,
and who has remained a generous and supportive fellow traveller.
I thank Rob Blackshaw and Hilary Fraser for making their homes
available to me; and especially Richard Schoch who has been a
gracious host and good company on the many occasions when I
returnedtoLondon.
Ideas were tried out on audiences at Queen Mary and Birkbeck,
both University of London; the Columbia Early Modern Semi-
nar; the Columbia University Shakespeare Seminar; the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Charlotte; the University of Southern
Acknowledgements ix
California’s Early Modern Studies Institute at the Huntington; the
annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America (2006)
and the Shakespeare Association of America (2006, 2008); and a
Folger Institute faculty seminar on The English Grammar School.
For invitations to speak, and for questions and challenges, I’m
grateful to Corey Abate, Michael Baron, Anston Bosman, Warren
Boutcher, Bianca Calabresi, Maurice Charney, Joanna Cheetham,
Cyndia Clegg, Stephen Clucas, Lynn Enterline, Gina Fitzmaurice,
Cora Fox, Elizabeth Goodland, Elizabeth Hanson, Deb Harkness,
Andrew Hartley, Tom Healy, Heather James, Jeffrey Kahan, Yvette
Khoury,MaryEllenLamb,RebeccaLemon,NaomiLiebler,Zoltan
Markus, Kirk Melnikoff, Margaret Mikesell, Jen Munroe, Curtis
Perry, June Schlueter, Bruce Smith, Tiffany Werth, Sue Wiseman,
SuzanneWoofford,andmanyothers.
ValuablehelpwassuppliedbytheFolgerShakespeareLibraryin
the form of a short-term fellowship to work on ‘the materiality of
early modern letters’ (2000), and by the UK’s Arts and Humanities
Research Council for postdoctoral research support on the Bacon
letters project (2000–2). I am grateful once again to the collections
and staff of the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library,
Columbia University’s Butler Library, and the Shakespeare Birth-
place Trust Record Office, especially Robert Bearman and Mairi
MacDonald. For their help in providing images I am indebted to
JoWong(ShakespeareBirthplaceTrust),WendyZieger(Bridgeman
Art Library), Stephen Tabor (Huntington Library), Bettina Smith
(Folger),CamilleLynch(NationalGalleryofIreland),andAnnavan
Lingen(RijksmuseumAmsterdam).
PartofChapter1ofthisbookhasappearedinShakespeareStudies;
aversionofChapter3waspublishedinShakespeareQuarterly;some
passages from the Introduction will appear in a different guise in
TextualPractice. I am grateful to these publications for the permis-
siontore-usematerial,andtotheireditorsforcommentsondrafts
ofthework:GarrettSullivanandSusanZimmerman;JonathanGil
Harris,GailKernPaster,andBillSherman;andAndrewHadfield.
