Abstract
From Charlotte Lennox to Geoffrey Bullough Shakespeare’s ‘narrative’ sources have been explored at the expense of discursive texts. This chapter argues critics should talk not of ‘Shakespeare’s sources’ but of his ‘authorities’, a wide range of texts including narrative works, rhetorical treatise, and works of philosophy, which could provide the contentious seeds of thought within Shakespearean drama. This chapter explores examples from 1 H IV, which shows how Shakespeare used Cicero’s De Oratore to enhance Prince Harry’s political and rhetorical authority. It ends by arguing that in Hamlet and King Lear a hybrid mingling of ‘authorities’, ranging from Cicero to Melanchthon, and from Seneca the dramatist and Seneca the philosopher, come to the fore in speeches by characters within the drama who are themselves suffering crises of authority.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Works Cited
Arber, E. (1875–1894). (Ed.), A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London. London: Privately Printed.
Bacon, F. (1597). Essayes. Religious meditations. Places of perswasion and disswasion. London: John Windet for Humfrey Hooper.
Baldwin, T. W. (1944). William Shakspeare’s small Latine and lesse Greeke. 2 Vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Braden, G. (1985). Renaissance tragedy and the Senecan tradition: Anger’s privilege. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Bullough, G. (1957–1975). Narrative and dramatic sources of Shakespeare. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Burrow, C. (2008). Reading Tudor writing politically: The case of 2 Henry IV. The Yearbook of English Studies, 38, 234–250.
Burrow, C. (2013). Shakespeare and classical antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burrow, C. (2015). Rare Accidents in 1 Henry IV and the Ad Herennium. Notes and Queries, 62(1), 107–109.
Burrow, C. (2016). Montaignian Moments: Shakespeare and the Essays. In R. Scholar, W. Williams, and N. Kenney (Eds.), Montaigne in Transit, pp. 239–252. London: Legenda.
Carruthers, M. J. (1990). The book of memory: A study of memory in medieval culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cicero, M. T. (1573). In P. Melanchthon (Ed.), Marci Tullii Ciceronis de oratore libri tres. Eiusdem de perfecto oratore ad M. Brutum liber. London: John Kingston.
Cooper, T. (1565). Thesaurus linguae Romanæ & Britannicæ. London: Henry Wykes.
De Grazia, M. (1991). Shakespeare verbatim: The reproduction of authenticity and the 1790 apparatus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
De Grazia, M. (2007). Hamlet without Hamlet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doody, M. A. (1987). Shakespeare’s novels: Charlotte Lennox illustrated. Studies in the Novel, 19(3), 296–310.
Dutton, R. (2009). The Famous Victories and the 1600 Quarto of Henry V. In H. Ostovich, H. S. Syme, and A. Griffin (Eds.), Locating the Queen’s Men, 1583–1603: Material practices and conditions of play, pp. 135–144. Farnham: Ashgate.
Eden, K. (2013). Liquid fortification and the law in King Lear. In M. C. Nussbaum, B. Cormack, & R. Strier (Eds.), Shakespeare and the law: A conversation among disciplines, pp. 203–221. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Grady, H. (2002). Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: Power and subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greenblatt, S. (1985). Shakespeare and the exorcists. In P. Parker and G. H. Hartman (Eds.), Shakespeare and the question of theory, pp. 163–186. New York: Methuen.
Harvey, G. (1913). In G. C. M. Smith (Ed.), Gabriel Harvey’s marginalia. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press.
Hutson, L. (2015). Circumstantial Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, E. (1977). The origins of Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Krammick, J. B. (1994). Reading Shakespeare’s novels: Literary history and cultural poetics in the Lennox-Johnson debate. Modern Language Quarterly, 55(4), 429–453.
Lennox, C. (1753–1754). Shakespear illustrated. London: A. Millar.
Lees-Jeffries, H. (2014). Shakespeare and memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, R. (2012). Hamlet, metaphor, and memory. Studies in Philology, 109 (Fall), 609–641.
Mack, P. (2010). Reading and rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Mack, P. (2011). A history of renaissance rhetoric, 1380–1620. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McMillin, S., & MacLean, S.-B. (1998). The Queen’s Men and their plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miola, R. S. (1987). Shakespeare and his sources: Observations on the critical history of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare Survey, 40, 69–76.
Miola, R. S. (1992). Shakespeare and classical tragedy: The influence of Seneca. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nashe, T. (1957). In R. B. McKerrow. The Works of Thomas Nashe, (5 Vols, 2nd ed). Oxford: Blackwell.
Ostovich, H., Syme, H. S., et al. (2009). Locating the Queen’s Men, 1583–1603: Material practices and conditions of playing. Farnham: Ashgate.
Potter, L. (1990). Nobody’s perfect: Actors’ memories and Shakespeare’s plays of the 1590s. Shakespeare Survey, 42, 85–98.
Quintilian (2001). The Orator’s Education. Loeb Classical Library, ed. and trans. D. A. Russell. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press.
Seneca, L. A. (1614). The Workes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Both Morrall and Naturall, trans. T. Lodge. London: Printed by William Stansby.
Seneca, L. A. (1928). Moral Essays, trans. J. W. Basore. Cambridge, MA, and London.
Seneca, L. A. (2002). Tragedies. Loeb Classical Library, ed and trans. J. G. Fitch. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Shakespeare, W. (1982). In H. Jenkins (Ed.), Hamlet. London: Thomson Learning.
Shakespeare, W. (1986a). In S. Wells and G. Taylor (Eds.), The complete works. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Shakespeare, W. (2002a). In C. Burrow (Ed.), The complete sonnets and poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shakespeare, W. (2002b). In D. S. Kastan (Ed.), King Henry IV part 1. London: Thomson Learning.
Shakespeare, W. (2006). In A. Thompson and N. Taylor (Eds.), Hamlet. London: Thomson Learning.
Shakespeare, W. (2007). In H. Weil and J. Weil (Eds.), The first part of King Henry IV. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sidney, P. (1593). The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. London: Printed for William Ponsonbie.
Skinner, Q. (2014). Forensic Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walsh, B. (2009). Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men, and the Elizabethan Performance of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Burrow, C. (2018). Shakespeare’s Authorities. In: Halsey, K., Vine, A. (eds) Shakespeare and Authority. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57853-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57853-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57852-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57853-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)