Introduction

Abstract

The history of Shakespeare on the stage is very largely a record of abridgement and mutilation, sentimental prettification and its ‘realistic’ opposite. Though we know little or nothing of how Shakespeare was performed in his own time, the discrepancies between various versions of the same play, and all that we know of the relations between the playhouse and the printing house, indicate that there was nothing sacrosanct about the printed text of a play, Shakespearean or otherwise.*