Pete, thank you for bringin up the messy quarto — it’s actually one of my favourite things about this play, and somehow I feel like the hot mess of its 1662 printing matches the wackiness of the play’s contents. I also like the confusion it creates around asides, and that Aurelius speech you’ve quoted is a great example. What’s everyone hearing?…[Read more]

Thanks for that important context, Dave — I was trying to figure out the best space to highlight the suspicious attribution on the title-page!

Really glad so many of you are as intrigued by Artesia and her epic entrance as I am. It feels like we get a lot more women and kinds of women in these first two scenes than in most plays I can think of?…[Read more]

Welcome all! This is shaping up to be a great crew 🙂

Just a quick update to say that Charlene has very kindly created a clean PDF copy of the transcription text, so that it’s MUCH easier to read. She’s a star! You can now find that under ‘Files’ above.

Looking forward to diving into Act 1 next week!

All the better… genre, magic AND dragons 🙂

Ooh Susanne, if you like genre, you’re going to have a LOT of fun with this play! XD

Hi everyone, I’m Susanne – another first-time reader of the play.

I specialise in (early modern) law and literature, and have a particular interest in genre (how do early modern genre politics/evolving genres influence the depiction of legal conflicts on the stage?), revenge, and non-Shakespearean drama. Oh, and pirates! Because the German…[Read more]