#hand d

He was friends with a PUBLISHER, ffs. From his literal hometown!!!! And he went to grammar school!!!!!

Apart from his patrons (Henry Carey, Southampton, KING JAMES I, William and Phillip Herbert), he also made friends with literal rich/wealthy/titled people with libraries and tons of resources, including:

The Combes (left 10 pounds and gave one his sword)

The Russells/Digges (made one overseer of his will)

The Davenants (also rumored to be banging the wife and siring an illegitimate son)

Also “couldn’t sign his own name” NOBODY COULD. There was no set universal standards for English spelling at the time. People could and did write their name however they damn pleased (Marlowe once wrote his name as Merlin! Good for him!). Their signatures also ranged from neat to chicken scratches, much like the modern signatures of today.

The New Norton Shakespeare and Theatre History

This is the most self-serving of posts.

This week, the new third edition of the Norton Shakespeare finally came out. It’s a total overhaul of this widely used text: unlike the first two editions, which were based on the Oxford Shakespeare, “Norton 3″ includes fully edited and annotated texts of all significant variant editions of Shakespeare’s plays, freshly edited from scratch by a large team…