Margreta de Grazia investigates the emergence of Shakespeare as a modern author, focusing on eighteenth-century editorial practices and how the modern tradition of psychologizing Hamlet has effaced the play's and protagonist's preoccupation with land and entitlement. Her work explores Shakespeare as a historical and cultural phenomenon, early modern notions of subjectivity and authorship, and the production and ownership of early modern texts. De Grazia delves into the processes of chronologizing, periodizing, and secularizing Shakespeare, examining how these constructions have shaped his reception.
"Margreta de Grazia continues to change the course of Shakespeare studies in this book, where she focuses on four key terms: anachronism, chronology, periods, and the grand secular narrative. These 'unassailable' terms, once considered the bedrock of what we 'know' and how we study Shakespeare, are now under debate in our particular moment in the study of the past"--
For almost two centuries, Shakespeare had no biography. Neither did his life have a timeline, and historians and archivists did not have the materials to make one. Does this mean that Shakespeare was not valued or understood until after 1800? This book focuses on a critical absence in the unfolding of Shakespeare's story.