James VI of Scotland and I of England participated in the burgeoning literary culture of the Renaissance, not only as a monarch and patron, but as an author in his own right, publishing extensively in a number of different genres over four decades. As the first monograph devoted to James as an author, this book offers a fresh perspective on his reigns in Scotland and England, and also on the inter-relationship of authorship and authority, literature and politics in the Renaissance.
Beginning with the poetry he wrote in Scotland in the 1580s, it moves through a wide range of his writings,...

This collection of essays is part of a new phase in Shakespeare studies. The traditional view of Shakespeare is that he was a man of the theatre who showed no interest in the printing of his plays, producing works that are only fully realised in performance. This view has recently been challenged by critics arguing that Shakespeare was a literary 'poet-playwright', concerned with his readers as well as his audiences. Shakespeare's Book offers a vital contribution to this critical debate, and examines its wider implications for how we conceive of Shakespeare and his works. Bringing together an...

King James VI and I's extensive publications and the responses they met played a key role in the literary culture of Jacobean England. This book is the first sustained study of how James's subjects commented upon, appropriated and reworked these royal writings. Jane Rickard highlights the vitality of such responses across genres including poetry, court masque, sermon, polemic and drama and in the different media of performance, manuscript and print. The book focuses in particular on Jonson, Donne and Shakespeare, arguing that these major authors responded in illuminatingly contrasting ways to...