THE ACTOR AS PLAYWRIGHT IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA

First edition. Publisher's original black cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. Illustrated with two black and white plates. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, mildly creased to the spine tips and extremities, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout, and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the better than very good original dustwrapper, which is rubbed and creased to the edges, and lightly faded to the spine.

'Nora Johnson's study uncovers important links between performance and authorship in early modern England. The book traces the careers of Robert Armin, Nathan Field, Anthony Munday, and Thomas Heywood, actors who were powerfully interested in marketing themselves as authors and celebrities; but Johnson argues that authorship as they constructed it had little to do with modern ideas of control and ownership. She considers Shakespeare's famous silence about his own work as one strategy among many available to writers for the stage. 'The Actor as Playwright' provides an alternative to the debate between traditional and materialist readers of dramatic authorship' (publisher's blurb).