A Certain Text: Close Readings and Textual Studies on Shakespeare and Others in Honor of Thomas Clayton

This collection in honor of Thomas Clayton takes its title from Romeo and Juliet (4.1.21). Meeting Paris in Friar Lawrence's cell, Juliet muses, "What must be shall be, " and the Friar completes her line with, "That's a certain text." Where "text" means a received truth, both Friar Lawrence and Clayton are interested skeptics. The essays gathered here reflect this attitude, questioning received ideas about the activities to which Clayton has devoted his professional life -- literary editing and the close reading of literary works. Essays on literary editing include Richard Proudfoot's on the early printing history of Mucedorus, David Haley's on "the most famous crux in Shakespeare, " and Janis Lull's on the "End of Editing Shakespeare, " Linda Anderson, Stephen Booth, Jay Halio, and Joyce Sutphen offer close readings of the Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, and The Sonnets, respectively. Achsah Guibbory writes about Robert Herrick and the Hebrew Bible, and Daniel Hooley treats Ben Jonson's classicism. Anatoly Liberman reexamines Germanic myths to solve a longstanding problem in etymology.A Certain Text: Close Readings and Textual Studies on Shakespeare and Others in Honor of Thomas Clayton, First Edition with ISBN 9780874137897 and ISBN 0874137896.