Book by Faith Acker
For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and perso... more For more than four centuries, cultural preferences, literary values, critical contexts, and personal tastes have governed readers’ responses to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Early private readers often considered these poems in light of the religious, political, and humanist values by which they lived. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth- century readers, such as stationers and editors, balanced their personal literary preferences against the imagined or actual interests of the literate public to whom they marketed carefully curated editions of the sonnets, often successfully. Whether public or private, however, many disparate sonnet interpretations from the sonnets’ first two centuries in print have been overlooked by modern sonnet scholarship, with its emphasis on narrative and amorous readings of the 1609 sequence. First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets reintroduces many early readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets, arguing that studying the priorities and interpretations of these previous readers expands the modern critical applications of these poems, thereby affording them numerous future applications. This volume draws upon book history, manuscript studies, and editorial theory to recover four lost critical approaches to the sonnets, highlighting early readers’ interests in Shakespeare’s classical adaptations, political applicability, religious themes, and rhetorical skill during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Download link contains individual chapter abstracts.
Articles by Faith Acker
Shakespeare Quarterly, 2020
The influence of early printed poetical collections upon the oft-maligned second edition of Shake... more The influence of early printed poetical collections upon the oft-maligned second edition of Shakespeare’s collected sonnets (John Benson, 1640) has been convincingly argued in recent scholarship, but many structural elements found in Benson’s edition are also drawn from practices more common in early modern manuscript miscellanies, although these sources are often overlooked. This article argues for a wider recognition of manuscript compilation as a dominant influence upon John Benson’s edition of the poems, arguing that it is important to bear editorial precedents from seventeenth-century manuscripts in mind when evaluating textual approaches such as excluded poems, rearranged sequences, retitled poems, conflated texts, and omitted attributions. Given these parallels, the article contends that Benson and many Renaissance stationers should be considered not just publishers of Shakespeare's works, but readers, editors, and purveyors of popular taste in the early modern period.
Several principles introduced in this article benefited my recent monograph, First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790 (Routledge, 2020), which identifies numerous, disparate approaches that Shakespeare’s earliest private readers and more public connoisseurs used as they read, corrected, adapted, edited, and collected these poems. Like the two sonnet editions that preceded it, as well as several more that followed it, Benson’s Poems drew upon existing manuscript and print traditions and, in turn, influenced further manuscript collectors and textual editors. I would welcome opportunities to consult with colleagues or to speak to classes about the perceived disparities between print and manuscript (or public and private readership more generally) or to discuss poetical miscellanies from early modern England more broadly, particularly where these topics connect to larger debates about canonicity and the cultivation of popular culture.
Renaissance Papers 2019, 2020
Book Chapter by Faith Acker
Shakespeare and the Book Trade, eds. Emma Depledge and Peter Kirwan, CUP, 2017, 2017
John Benson’s 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets has frequently been criticized for its editor... more John Benson’s 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets has frequently been criticized for its editorial interventions and revisions, but this chapter argues that the volume as a whole reflects approaches to poetry and authorial rights that were typical of the time. In particular, the changes present in Benson’s edition are indicative of the degree to which Shakespeare’s poems were typical but not exalted works in the decades immediately following their author’s death, and many of the supplemental materials and paratextual features for which the volume is often criticized are also early and obvious attempts to build upon the recent canonisation of Shakespeare’s dramatic works in the folio editions of the poet’s plays. This chapter also explains the benefits of several textual features that made Shakespeare’s sonnets more accessible to their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century readers and briefly explores the volume’s influence upon the eighteenth-century scholars and editors whose scholarship would eventually render it largely insignificant.
Talks by Faith Acker
This course [lecture] surveys the early history of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, showcasing some of thei... more This course [lecture] surveys the early history of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, showcasing some of their earliest editions and introducing several differing ways in which readers and scholars have approached them over the centuries. We will look at the first complete edition, the second and greatly revised edition, and the first critical edition, closing our survey with a close reading of two separate sonnets and some recommended strategies for interpreting Renaissance poetry.
Conference Presentations by Faith Acker
Medieval and Early Modern Studies Festival, 2020
A largely overlooked subset of early modern English epitaphs can be categorized—as the compiler o... more A largely overlooked subset of early modern English epitaphs can be categorized—as the compiler of two seventeenth-century poetical miscellanies labeled a section of his commonplace book—as “Merry and Satirical.” These witty, heavily rhetorical verses contrasted dramatically with the “Laudatory” epitaphs usually written about prominent figures such as King James; Prince Henry; John Donne; and other political, religious, and even local figures. The rhetoric used in these two genres of epitaphs varies dramatically. While both genres showcase the writers’ rhetorical skills, laudatory epitaphs typically celebrate the virtue and positive character traits of the deceased, while the authors of many satirical epitaphs reduce their subjects to providers of liquor (or food), objects of sexual interest (or skill), or characters in mock
interactions with Death or the Devil. Consequently, these satirical epitaphs not only prioritize their authors’ wit above their subjects’ lives, but further marginalize the lives and contributions of valuable early modern individuals, including both specific and generic servants and local tradesmen. The repetition of certain jests and tropes across multiple epitaphs reinforced a series of racist, sexist, and classist stereotypes grounded in puns and classical rhetoric. This paper will use epitaphs marginalizing Oxfordshire maidservant Anne Greene and two butlers from Christ Church College, Oxford (John Dawson and the mononymous Owen) to demonstrate several early modern poets’ use of the satirical epitaph for self-promotion through socially relevant satire.
Shakespeare’s sonnets appeared in various configurations and with wildly differing paratexts duri... more Shakespeare’s sonnets appeared in various configurations and with wildly differing paratexts during their first two hundred years in print. By 1733, it was possible to buy the sonnets in quarto (1609, 1725), octavo (1599 [incomplete], 1640, 1709, 1710, 1714), and in duodecimo (1714, 1728). Some of these editions were folded to supplement and match multi-volume sets of Shakespeare’s plays, but the poems, in all three sizes, were available independently throughout this period. Constraints imposed by matching play editions, changing literary preferences, and various editorial priorities shaped the physical presentation of Shakespeare’s poems for more than two centuries. The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) afforded each sonnet its own page, lavishly decorated. Subsequent editions, beginning in 1609, broke sonnets across pages, sometimes even widowing single lines. In 1640, many sonnets were conflated into longer poems, and sonnets or conflations thereof were classified under descriptive titles in elegant italic text. These titles remained in most eighteenth-century editions, though the conflations were quickly abandoned. In 1780, the addition of critical commentary relegated the sonnet texts themselves to very small spaces, often leaving the most noteworthy sonnets sprawled across two, three, or even four separate pages to make room for
voluminous debates and explanations. This paper will explore the formatting of Shakespeare’s sonnets during their first hundred years, paying particular attention to variations in folds; line, poem, and page breaks; supplemental titles; and other elements added to or removed from the sonnets’ surroundings.
The significance of St. Paul's Churchyard in the Early Modern publishing world is established, bu... more The significance of St. Paul's Churchyard in the Early Modern publishing world is established, but the bookstalls in St Dunstan's Churchyard, just down Fleet Street, repeatedly featured significant authors and works from the English Renaissance. Jonson's Poetaster (1602), Erasmus' dialogues (1606), and plays by Dekker and Middleton were all sold in St Dunstan's in the early 1600s at the book-stalls of Matthew Lownes, Nicholas Ling, John Busby, and John Helmes, respectively, alongside epigrams, poems, and musical 'Ayres.' In the 1620s and 1630s, individual St Dunstan's stationers sold collections of poems by Francis Quarles, Michael Drayton, and John Donne; contributed to Shakespeare's Second Folio (while still selling individual quartos); and fought one another over the rights to the works of Ben Jonson. This paper studies the St Dunstan's stationers as competitive influences upon one another, exploring the possible motivations of visible vendibility and briefly addressing the effects of their cumulative output.
Among the poems composed and transmitted in the seventeenth-century verse miscellanies of Christ ... more Among the poems composed and transmitted in the seventeenth-century verse miscellanies of Christ Church, Oxford are a number of humorous epitaphs in which the pangs of loss are lightened by the wit and irony of commemorative jests. The ballad of Owen, Butler of Christ Church—who, according to poetic legend, gave the devil some bad beer—was copied into several miscellanies, shrinking and changing each time to condense its humour into the fewest lines possible, and reaching—as the compiler of Folger MS V.a.103 remarks—even into the miscellanies of individuals who had never known Owen in life. Yet while the butler and his name lived on in numerous manuscripts, the bellows-maker of Oxford was not quite as unilaterally appreciated. First immortalised in a poem that emphasises the irony of the bellows-maker’s loss of breath, John Crooker (of ‘Here lyeth John Cruker a maker of bellowes’) kept his identity in a few manuscripts, but eventually became ‘John Potterell,’ ‘Will Crooker,’ ‘Sim Simcocks,’ and Mr. ‘Brown’ as the verse, spread beyond its Oxford audience, appealed to individuals who—by accident or intent—substituted the names of other, possibly more familiar, bellows-makers for that of John; by 1736 Henry Bourne was certain that his copy of ‘Here lies Robin Wallas . . . a maker of bellowes’ had been originally written about Wallas, a former church clerk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In this paper, the poems of the immortalised Owen and the oft-amended John serve as a case study for the ways in which satirical epitaphs of the seventeenth century were transformed in length, form, and content not only to fit the contents of each individual manuscript miscellany, but to appeal to a wider audience whose unfamiliarity with the poems’ subjects was balanced by adaptation, commentary, and appreciation of the humorous epitaph in general.
Christ Church, Oxford was a major centre for the composition and transmission of early modern poe... more Christ Church, Oxford was a major centre for the composition and transmission of early modern poetry in the first half of the seventeenth century. As its poets gained prominence and popularity through the widespread transmission of their compositions within Oxford and beyond, many formerly unknown subjects of their poems, including college butlers John Dawson and ‘honest’ Owen, gained a subtle and inexplicable notoriety through their frequent textual commemorations. At least one miscellany compiler found the widespread dissemination of the butlers’ poems amusing enough to follow Owen’s epitaph with a couplet concluding, ‘did you not know him? No more did I.’ Other copyists omitted such commentary, choosing instead to amend, adapt, and excise couplets, quatrains, and even entire stanzas as these poems passed into various manuscript miscellanies. The widespread transmission of the butlers’ poems, and the drastic excisions performed upon them both within and without Oxford, are not without precedent. Within this paper, the butler poems and the transmission thereof will serve as case studies for a discussion of early modern manuscript transmission in general, particularly that of poems that appear incongruous outside their initial coteries and those that were heavily and repeatedly revised by their numerous miscellany compilers.
Among the many popular poems transformed into song on the pages of New York Public Library Drexel... more Among the many popular poems transformed into song on the pages of New York Public Library Drexel MS 4257 (c.1630-60) is a setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 transformed into a lyrical ballad of three verses and attributed to Henry Lawes. The sonnet itself, stretched and supplemented into a text of no fewer than eighteen lines, has been carefully adapted and drastically modified to suit the melody of Lawes’ composition, which has, in this case, been given precedence over the original sonnet Shakespeare created. Three centuries later, and having endured a great deal of adaptation in the meantime, Shakespeare’s sonnets are still being adapted for the benefit of popular amusements, as can be seen from the excerpts of Sonnets 18, 29, and 57 that appear in four separate episodes of the Star Trek canon, and in a number of more oblique allusions to these poems in other episodes. A comparison of the Star Trek excerpts with the seventeenth-century musical revision will demonstrate that the loose ideas of authorship and adaptation in the seventeenth century are still imitated, to varying degrees, in popular culture of the twentieth century, and that for all the modern-day attentiveness to the ‘authentic’ Shakespearean canon, such appropriations of Shakespeare’s poetry have changed very little since the sonnets were first composed.
Edward Capell’s posthumous The School of Shakespeare is a problematic text in many ways. In it Ca... more Edward Capell’s posthumous The School of Shakespeare is a problematic text in many ways. In it Capell has collected hundreds of brief excerpts from significant works of early literature, yet where its full title claims that it was compiled to illuminate the beauties of Shakespeare’s language and style and its preface suggests that its contents might be useful to any eighteenth-century publisher of an early modern text, its actual contents are more varied and complicated than either of these descriptions implies. Capell’s School includes selections from some of Shakespeare’s actual sources, such as Plutarch and Holinshed, as well as excerpts from plays and poems by some of Shakespeare’s most highly esteemed contemporaries, including John Donne, Michael Drayton, and Ben Jonson. In addition to the pieces by Shakespeare’s sources and contemporaries, however, the volume also contains excerpts from dozens of texts published well after Shakespeare’s death. Furthermore, although he carefully identifies and cites the sources of each extract included in the School, Capell frequently assembles unrelated sentence fragmets from an author’s work into long, conglomerated sentences whose subjects and predicates are borrowed from entirely separate sections of the original texts. My paper will use Capell’s excerpts from Michael Drayton’s sonnet sequence Idea, one of the most carefully compiled sections in School, as a foundation for a brief analysis of some of Capell’s more problematic excisions. In particular, Capell’s logical treatment of Drayton’s sonnets seems incongruous with his abrupt and brief selections from the poems of John Donne, his slightly imbalanced treatment of the poems of Samuel Daniel, and his unexpected excerpts from a few of Shakespeare’s own works, including Venus and Adonis and Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ultimately, Capell’s School is a demonstration of Capell’s literary preferences on several levels: his selections show his overarching fascination with early modern dramas, reflect his understanding of seventeenth-century language, and anticipate, in many ways, the canon of seventeenth-century literature that would be adopted by literary critics and scholars in the nineteenth century and beyond. Capell’s collection as a whole shows scholars today how the early modern canon was understood in the middle of the eighteenth century, and also illuminates one way in which that same canon was assembled and shaped by an influential eighteenth-century critic.
Towards the end of his academic career, the great Shakespearean editor Edward Capell compiled a t... more Towards the end of his academic career, the great Shakespearean editor Edward Capell compiled a three-volume supplement to his edition of Shakespeare’s plays. While the first two volumes of his supplement consisted primarily of detailed notes upon his carefully edited texts, the third, titled The School of Shakespeare, promised, on its title page, ‘Extracts . . . which contribute to a due Understanding of his [Shakespeare’s] Writings, or give Light to the History of his Life, as to the dramatic History of his Time.’ Over the course of its compilation, however, Capell’s School was transformed from a book containing sources for Shakespearean and other early dramas to a tome showcasing the elegance of early modern language, and even the excerpts taken from Shakespeare’s actual sources, such as Plutarch and Holinshed, focus more on the unusual words or lovely turns of phrase contained in these early texts than upon the phrases and incidents Shakespeare later borrowed. In the process of highlighting the linguistic beauties displayed in these histories, Capell also reshaped both texts into pre-Bowdler bowdlerisations, excising passages not for inappropriate content, but for linguistic dullness or, occasionally, their irrelevancy in the early modern period. Capell’s finished abridgements are composed of numerous sentence fragments and predicates conflated into long paragraphs with insufficient antecedents, and although each excerpt is carefully cited, any reader who approached these historical passages in School without the original texts from which Capell borrowed his extracts would have left his reading experience with a completely garbled and incoherent mental picture of these histories and the stories they tell. Over the course of my paper, I will be discussing some of Capell’s more problematic excisions and juxtapositions, and then exploring a few of the ways in which these approaches to the original texts force Capell’s readers, particularly scholars, to approach the School as well as its sources.
The flourishing print culture of the seventeenth century facilitated a substantial growth in the ... more The flourishing print culture of the seventeenth century facilitated a substantial growth in the number of poetical miscellanies compiled and printed by early modern stationers. These early precursors to today’s anthologies borrowed poems from manuscripts and printed books alike. As Adam Smyth has noted in his index to poems printed in miscellanies between 1640-1682, the poems included in these texts indicate the poetic styles and authors that were popular among the stationers, if not the bookbuyers, of early modern England. In addition, the verses selected and lines omitted by editors of these texts offer a good look at the preferences and values held by the compilers of these miscellanies and their censors. My paper will briefly examine the authors and types of poems compilers chose to print, and also address the editorial changes and omissions made to specific poems within these compilations. In particular, I will look at poems that appeared in more several miscellanies and were abridged or altered by later editors, but previously published poems adapted to better reflect the interests and ideals of their compilers and readers will also be of interest.
Conference Papers by Faith Acker
For the majority of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare’s plays—usually titled ‘Works’—were print... more For the majority of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare’s plays—usually titled ‘Works’—were printed as complete sets; the sonnets and narrative poems often followed in what Patrick Cheney calls ‘response volumes,’ which were often advertised as volumes that would match similarly-sized editions of the plays and complete an owner’s collection of Shakespeare’s works. In general, the responsive qualities of these volumes have given scholars a sense that the volumes themselves were supplemental: existing to enrich or complete extant collections of Shakespeare’s works. In this paper, however, I intend to show that while the producers of these poetical volumes may have intended them as supplements, eighteenth-century book-buyers collected Shakespeare’s plays and poems in every conceivable construction. Some owned the plays but ignored the supplemental poems, others carefully assembled matching sets of plays and poems together, and a few ‘rogue readers’ seem to have ignored the plays altogether and collected only Shakespeare’s poems. In some instances, the choice of poems without plays is clearly a deliberate and moral one, as evinced by the absence of plays within an individual’s complete library. In other instances, library catalogues reveal that an owner of Shakespeare’s poems but not his plays nevertheless owned plays by several other authors, and thus was unlikely to have been morally opposed to works of the stage. Overall, these three configurations of Shakespeare’s plays and poems suggest that our modern conception of eighteenth-century tastes, largely drawn from the critical apparati of play-editors such as Pope, Johnson, Steevens, and Theobald, is limited in its scope and does not thoroughly account for the preferences of the educated book collectors or readers in the eighteenth century.
In the mid-seventeenth century, a manuscript compiler loosely affiliated with Cambridge Universit... more In the mid-seventeenth century, a manuscript compiler loosely affiliated with Cambridge University assembled a collection of notes and poems on politics, theology, and (briefly) romance. The volume’s poetical contents are largely indicative of the compiler’s university associations and also his political and theological convictions. Dozens of poems have been included in the collection, including numerous long (and complete) poems from The Card of Courtship (1653) and from the printed poetical collections of Edward Benlowes, Richard Crashaw, Edward Sherburne, and others. In stark contrast to these, the manuscript also includes two separate sequences of poetical extracts taken from Nicholas Hookes’ Amanda (1653) and from the 1640 edition of William Shakespeare’s Poems. The extracts themselves range from four words in length to full poems of up to thirty lines, but the compiler has excised most classical allusions, privileged religious and regal imagery, and drastically shifted the connotations and tones of many poems to reflect his specific interests more closely, often to the complete dismissal of the themes and contexts of the original poems and entire poetical collections. In addition, the methodology behind the treatment of these selected poems by Shakespeare and Hookes in a volume that predominantly prefers entire poems raises numerous questions about the volume and its function. Overall, these two collections of extracts, especially taken in tandem, elegantly demonstrate one early modern scholar’s approaches to texts, to verse collection, to reading in general, and to the practice of finding—and transcribing—short passages relevant to his own personal interests even as he read through sequences of poems that covered far more diverse topics overall.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous pithy extracts from Shakespeare’s plays and ... more In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous pithy extracts from Shakespeare’s plays and poems were extracted, copied, shared, and re-copied in commonplace books and literary miscellanies that, consequently, adapted passages and phrases to fit new contexts and audiences and allowed readers and transcribers to experience Shakespearean quotations in a wide variety of differing guises. Indubitably, some of the early transcribers of these passages must have enjoyed the decontextualized words not because they were Shakespeare’s, and not because they came from famous plays or historical tales, but because relevant phrases and messages reached their new audiences in fresh and culturally specific contexts that appealed to popular cultural ideals even as the contexts of their original plays or collections were overlooked. Furthermore, and significantly, while the contexts and receptions of these passages in the early modern period are mainly speculative, many of the same or similar passages now experience similar, secondary lives as internet memes, in which—as in the early modern era—famous and popular passages of Shakespeare’s are borrowed, adapted, copied, revised, recontextualized, and even reworded to fit the demands of modern internet readers, some of whom still, presumably, enjoy the memes not only because they are Shakespearean, but also because of their larger cultural connections. This paper explores the connection between the early modern miscellany and the twenty-first century meme, arguing that the contemporary transmission and influence of the Shakespearean meme can inform and benefit our study of early modern commonplaces and miscellanies containing Shakespearean excerpts.
The English dictionaries produced in the eighteenth century boasted an impressive array of defini... more The English dictionaries produced in the eighteenth century boasted an impressive array of definitions, roots and origins, and even sample sentences culled from classical literature and from the developing genre of classical English literature. Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) focused primarily on definitions and some classical sources, but later scholars’ linguistic interests incorporated sample sentences that drew specific attention to the English canon and, especially, Shakespeare. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), for instance, is well known both for its definitions and for its impressive array of quotations. Edward Capell, in the later eighteenth century, created both a “Glossary to Shakespeare” (1774) that defined less common Shakespearean terms and a later, supplemental volume titled Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare (1783) that avoided definitions but included sentences and extracts from Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) as linguistic exemplars. This paper briefly compares and contrasts the changing definitions, uses, and contexts of key Shakespearean terms in these eighteenth-century reference texts, from the early dictionaries in which he played little part to the later glossaries and indices that were partially or wholly created in homage to Shakespeare’s word use.
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Book by Faith Acker
Download link contains individual chapter abstracts.
Articles by Faith Acker
Several principles introduced in this article benefited my recent monograph, First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790 (Routledge, 2020), which identifies numerous, disparate approaches that Shakespeare’s earliest private readers and more public connoisseurs used as they read, corrected, adapted, edited, and collected these poems. Like the two sonnet editions that preceded it, as well as several more that followed it, Benson’s Poems drew upon existing manuscript and print traditions and, in turn, influenced further manuscript collectors and textual editors. I would welcome opportunities to consult with colleagues or to speak to classes about the perceived disparities between print and manuscript (or public and private readership more generally) or to discuss poetical miscellanies from early modern England more broadly, particularly where these topics connect to larger debates about canonicity and the cultivation of popular culture.
Book Chapter by Faith Acker
Talks by Faith Acker
Conference Presentations by Faith Acker
interactions with Death or the Devil. Consequently, these satirical epitaphs not only prioritize their authors’ wit above their subjects’ lives, but further marginalize the lives and contributions of valuable early modern individuals, including both specific and generic servants and local tradesmen. The repetition of certain jests and tropes across multiple epitaphs reinforced a series of racist, sexist, and classist stereotypes grounded in puns and classical rhetoric. This paper will use epitaphs marginalizing Oxfordshire maidservant Anne Greene and two butlers from Christ Church College, Oxford (John Dawson and the mononymous Owen) to demonstrate several early modern poets’ use of the satirical epitaph for self-promotion through socially relevant satire.
voluminous debates and explanations. This paper will explore the formatting of Shakespeare’s sonnets during their first hundred years, paying particular attention to variations in folds; line, poem, and page breaks; supplemental titles; and other elements added to or removed from the sonnets’ surroundings.
Conference Papers by Faith Acker
Download link contains individual chapter abstracts.
Several principles introduced in this article benefited my recent monograph, First Readers of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1590-1790 (Routledge, 2020), which identifies numerous, disparate approaches that Shakespeare’s earliest private readers and more public connoisseurs used as they read, corrected, adapted, edited, and collected these poems. Like the two sonnet editions that preceded it, as well as several more that followed it, Benson’s Poems drew upon existing manuscript and print traditions and, in turn, influenced further manuscript collectors and textual editors. I would welcome opportunities to consult with colleagues or to speak to classes about the perceived disparities between print and manuscript (or public and private readership more generally) or to discuss poetical miscellanies from early modern England more broadly, particularly where these topics connect to larger debates about canonicity and the cultivation of popular culture.
interactions with Death or the Devil. Consequently, these satirical epitaphs not only prioritize their authors’ wit above their subjects’ lives, but further marginalize the lives and contributions of valuable early modern individuals, including both specific and generic servants and local tradesmen. The repetition of certain jests and tropes across multiple epitaphs reinforced a series of racist, sexist, and classist stereotypes grounded in puns and classical rhetoric. This paper will use epitaphs marginalizing Oxfordshire maidservant Anne Greene and two butlers from Christ Church College, Oxford (John Dawson and the mononymous Owen) to demonstrate several early modern poets’ use of the satirical epitaph for self-promotion through socially relevant satire.
voluminous debates and explanations. This paper will explore the formatting of Shakespeare’s sonnets during their first hundred years, paying particular attention to variations in folds; line, poem, and page breaks; supplemental titles; and other elements added to or removed from the sonnets’ surroundings.