Error in Shakespeare

​'The question of error in Shakespeare – understood in its broadest senses – has never been so fully examined, and here the task is undertaken with real insight and intellectual vigour.' — Derek Attridge, Professor Emeritus of English Literature at York University, UK, and Fellow of the British Academy
'An illuminating and original approach to a subject of major importance' — Neil Rhodes, Professor at University of St. Andrews, UK

The traditional view of Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language is alive and well today. This is an effect of the eighteenth-century canonisation of his works, and subsequently Shakespeare has come to be perceived as the owner of the vernacular. These entrenched attitudes prevent us from seeing the actual substance of the text, and the various types of error that it contains and even constitute it. This book argues that we need to attend to error to interpret Shakespeare’s disputed material text, political-dramatic interventions and famous literariness. The consequences of ignoring error are especially significant in the study of Shakespeare, as he mobilises the rebellious, marginal, and digressive potential of error in the creation of literary drama.

Dr Alice Leonard is a Marie-Curie Co-Fund Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (UK). She has published on the opportunities for digital humanities and textual criticism in revising Shakespeare; on the female audience and Hamlet; and on European linguistic and cultural inclusion in early modern drama. She is Co-editor on the Notebooks volume of The Complete Works of Thomas Browne (OUP). Her new project investigates error in the seventeenth century history of science.