Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama

"Encompassing nearly a century of drama, this is the first book to provide students and scholars with a truly comprehensive guide to the early modern soliloquy. Considering the antecedents of the form in Roman, late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century drama, it analyses its diversity, its theatrical functions and its socio-political significances. Containing detailed case-studies of the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Ford, Middleton and Davenant, this collection will equip students in their own close-readings of texts, providing them with an indepth knowledge of the verbal and dramaturgical aspects of the form. Informed by rich theatrical and historical understanding, the essays reveal the larger connections between Shakespeare's use of the soliloquy and its deployment by his fellow dramatists"-- "Beginning with an account of paradigmatic precedents in Roman drama (given its prominence in early modern English education), the book then proceeds to discuss the soliloquy's roles in English plays from the later fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. After those preparatory chapters, the book moves on to study the soliloquy from Marlowe to Davenant. The chapters on playwrights trace variations in theatrical conceptualizing of the soliloquy and in its use to represent individuated characterization (or, versions of selfhood). They also trace how, as indicated by a range of soliloquies, authors revisit and rewrite one another's texts in order to suggest authorial identity (for instance, how Davenant reworks Shakespeare)"--