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Shakespeare in the Restoration Royal Libraries: Drama, Collecting, and Continuity in Late Seventeenth-Century Library Catalogues
Sally Barnden 
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Volume: 159
Swansea University Author:
Sally Barnden
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Abstract
This essay introduces two royal library catalogues from the late seventeenth century and uses them to examine the holdings of Shakespeare and other English drama in the royal collection after the Restoration. The catalogues allow us to reconstruct a set of twenty-eight Sammelband volumes of play qua...
| Published in: | Shakespeare Jahrbuch |
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| Published: |
Kröner Verlag (Stuttgart)
2024
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65146 |
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| Abstract: |
This essay introduces two royal library catalogues from the late seventeenth century and uses them to examine the holdings of Shakespeare and other English drama in the royal collection after the Restoration. The catalogues allow us to reconstruct a set of twenty-eight Sammelband volumes of play quartos which were in Charles II’s possession in the 1670s, including a volume of Shakespeare apocrypha which has previously attracted critical attention, but which is here put in its seventeenth-century context for the first time. The essay uses the evidence in the library catalogues to draw tentative conclusions about the process and priorities of royal collecting, and to propose that the library offered one way for the post-Restoration monarchy to efface the interruption to both royal and dramatic continuity during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |