Locrine Mucedorus

Shakespeare (spurious and doubtful works), 1564-16Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 178K words
Chapters: 18

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Locrine; Mucedorus by ShakespeareAuthor: Shakespeare (spurious and doubtful works), 1564-1616,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 1, 1998

Editor's review

Locrine and Mucedorus are usually grouped among the "spurious and doubtful works" in Shakespeare complete editions, and this Project Gutenberg volume brings the two plays together in one book, aptly revealing the blurred lines of attribution and authorship in the early seventeenth-century English theater market. Locrine is a tragedy based on ancient British legend, showing the influence of Senecan tragedy; Mucedorus is a comedy with pastoral and romantic elements that long remained popular on the stage. Neither play is an acknowledged masterpiece of Shakespeare, but for readers studying the theatrical ecology, textual transmission, and attribution practices of Shakespeare's age, they are valuable primary material. They need not be measured against the standard of Shakespeare's masterpieces; read instead in the specific context of collaboration, adaptation, and publication of the time, they yield more authentic historical information.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars studying Shakespearean apocrypha and questions of play attribution
Graduate students taking courses on English Renaissance drama
Readers interested in the history of the early seventeenth-century English stage
Seasoned Shakespeare fans seeking to broaden their reading of peripheral Shakespearean texts

Not a good fit for

Readers new to Shakespeare who want to start with his major works
General theater lovers expecting tight plots and classic lines
Readers with limited experience reading English originals

Reading tips

Begin with the introduction or relevant background material on the textual transmission and attribution debates of the two plays.
Read the two plays alongside Shakespeare's plays of the same period, noting similarities and differences in plot structure and language style.
Record passages that feel "like" or "unlike" Shakespeare as material for discussion.
Use histories of the theater to learn how plays of the time were adapted and staged.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Are these two plays definitely not by Shakespeare?

Scholars generally classify Locrine and Mucedorus as spurious or doubtful works, but attribution is not definitively settled. They were included in some early Shakespeare complete editions and later scholarship has mostly attributed them to other hands or to collaboration and adaptation; the specifics remain open to discussion.

Why publish the two plays in one volume?

Both plays belong to the doubtful Shakespeare canon and are relatively short, so a single volume makes it easy for readers to grasp this category as a whole. This arrangement also reflects the tradition in early complete editions of appending doubtful works after the authentic ones.

How does reading these two plays help in understanding Shakespeare?

They provide a frame of reference for dramatic writing of the same era, helping readers see Shakespeare's choices and transcendence in subject matter, style, and stagecraft. Only by knowing the surrounding texts can one more accurately assess what makes Shakespeare distinctive.

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About the author

Shakespeare (spurious and doubtful works), 1564-16 Author

Shakespeare (spurious and doubtful works), 1564-16, is a designation for a special category of texts: plays traditionally attributed to Shakespeare but of doubtful or disputed authorship. Ten such works are held here, including King Edward III, A Yorkshire Tragedy, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Sir Thomas More, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, and The Life and Death of the Lord Cromwell. Their subjects range from English chronicle history to family tragedy and citizen comedy; many were written with other dramatists of the period or revised by later hands. Their style has points of contact with the accepted Shakespeare canon while bearing clear marks of their age. Scholarship on these plays has long advanced the debate over the Shakespeare canon and the history of early modern English drama. Given the limited public record, the author's life and the exact attribution of these works cannot be set out in detail.