Shakespeare and the Poets' War

James Bednarz

"The first detailed study of the 'war of the theaters' for some time, and beyond the care and rigor of Bednarz's reading and reconstruction of the event, its real innovation is to position Shakespeare . . . along with Dekker, Marston, and Jonson in the most famous literary/theatrical controversy of the era. . . . Bednarz's imaginative and critical sophistication should renew attention to this central moment in the self-fashioning of the early modern stage." — W.B. Worthen, SEL

"Bednarz is a superb intertextual critic, delving into the details of the playtext to reveal its significance . . . For recreating the significance of this decisive moment in the theatrical competition over who would authorize English literary history, James P. Bednarz wins the palm." — Patrick Cheney, Shakespeare Quarterly

"Bednarz plunges into the thicket of controversy that drew the attention of the theatrical enterprise as London entered the seventeenth century and that has attracted the attention of literary scholars to this day . . . Bednarz develops a compelling timeline for each phase of the struggle. . . The book will be required reading for anyone who needs to explore the ramifications of the Poets' War." — Anne Jennalie Cook, Renaissance Quarterly

"Bednarz has written a very good, important, and useful book on what he claims correctly is one of the most neglected pieces of early modern dramatic history and criticism: the poetomachia or poets' war. Indeed, this should become the standard reference on the topic." — Ken Jackson, The Sixteenth Century Journal

"Bednarz distinguishes himself from earlier scholars of the Poets' War from the outset of the book with two particular arguments. First, he claims that during the Poetomachia Elizabethan playwrights themselves generated . . . the almost mythic distinction between scholarly Johnson and an inspired Shakespeare . . . Second, he recasts the development of the Poets' War into three discrete phases, . . . while making especially convincing the notion that the plays were in direct conversation with one another." — Heather Hirschfield, Shakespeare Studies

"I read James Bednarz’s Shakespeare and the Poets'War with great pleasure and profit. The writing is lucid, engaging, and polemical, the scholarship comprehensive and trustworthy. He offers one challenging and important thesis after another."" — David Bevington, editor of The Complete Works of Shakespeare

"An original and significant contribution to the field of Renaissance studies. . . . Bednarz revives the exciting subject of the Poets'War." — Maurice Charney, Distinguished Professor of English, Rutgers University

"Every student of Elizabethan drama has heard of the 'War of the Theaters.'Now, four hundred years after the event, James Bednarz for the first time provides a definitive scholarly account of the most famous controversy in English literature. From the microscopic level of his readings of individual plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, and Dekker to the macroscopic level of his exposition of the aesthetic, social, and philosophical issues at stake in their work, Bednarz reorients the critical landscape and brilliantly sets the record straight." — Peter L. Rudnytsky, University of Florida

"An illuminating study of what makes Shakespeare himself rather than one more Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatist guided by the supposed social energies of the age. Any reader who still understands that human beings write, act, and respond will find in the Shakespeare of this study the elusive person himself." — Harold Bloom, Harvard University

"Late twentieth-century scholarship finally (one hopes) put to rest the Romantic myth of Shakespeare as solitary genius. . . . But until this year we have lacked a state-of-the-art account of the pivotal 'dialogic' episode in his career: the so-called 'poetomachia' of the period around 1600. In Shakespeare and the Poets' War, James Bednarz powerfully demonstrates how Ben Jonson's arrival on the dramatic scene presented Shakespeare with his greatest challenge since the death of Marlowe." — Jonathan Bate, Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement

"Shakespeare and the Poets' War is a fascinating detective story." — Michael Wood, author ofIn Search of Shakespeare

Related Subjects

• European and British Literature

About the Author

James P. Bednarz is professor of English at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, where he has received the Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching. His articles on Elizabethan literary relations have appeared in a wide range of journals including ELH, Shakespeare Studies, Renaissance Drama, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, The Huntington Library Quarterly, and Spenser Studies.

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