Darren Freebury-Jones

Robert Greene holds a significant place in our understanding of Elizabethan literature. This book offers the most rigorous attempt yet undertaken to determine the scope of the playwright’s canon through analyses of Greene’s verse style, vocabulary, rhyming habits, and the dramatist’s phraseology in his attested plays and in comparison to four plays that have long been on the margins of Greene’s corpus: Locrine, Selimus, George a Greene, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The book defines the ranges for Greene’s stylistic habits for the very first time and proceeds to identify parallels of thought, language, and overall dramaturgy that reveal a single author’s creative consciousness. This volume also casts light on Greene as a more collaborative dramatist than has hitherto been acknowledged. Through emphasizing the immediate surroundings in which Greene was writing – the flourishing of popular theatres in two compact areas of London, in which each theatre company and their dra-matists kept a close eye on what their competitors were producing – Greene emerges as an influential playwright, whose restored oeuvre enables us to establish new ways in which his dramatic methods impacted other writers of the period, including Shakespeare.

Robert Greene holds a significant place in our understanding of Elizabethan literature. This book offers the most rigorous attempt yet undertaken to determine the scope of the playwright’s canon through analyses of Greene’s verse style, vocabulary, rhyming habits, and the dramatist’s phraseology in his attested plays and in comparison to four plays that have long been on the margins of Greene’s corpus: Locrine, Selimus, George a Greene, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The book defines the ranges for Greene’s stylistic habits for the very first time and proceeds to identify parallels of thought, language, and overall dramaturgy that reveal a single author’s creative consciousness. This volume also casts light on Greene as a more collaborative dramatist than has hitherto been acknowledged. Through emphasizing the immediate surroundings in which Greene was writing – the flourishing of popular theatres in two compact areas of London, in which each theatre company and their dra-matists kept a close eye on what their competitors were producing – Greene emerges as an influential playwright, whose restored oeuvre enables us to establish new ways in which his dramatic methods impacted other writers of the period, including Shakespeare.

A fascinating exploration of the early modern authors who helped to shape Shakespeare’s beloved plays. Shakespeare’s plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him?Using the latest techniques in textual analysis, Darren Freebury-Jones offers a fresh look at William Shakespeare and reveals the influence of a community of playwrights that shaped his work. He makes a compelling case that we need to see early modern drama as a communal enterprise, with playwrights borrowing from and adapting one another's work. From John Lyly's wit to the collaborative genius of John Fletcher, to Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers fresh insights into Shakespeare’s artistic development and shows us new ways of looking at the masterpieces that have enchanted audiences for centuries.

Shakespeare’s tutor: The influence of Thomas Kyd adds to the critical and scholarly discussion that seeks to establish the early modern playwright Thomas Kyd’s dramatic canon, and indicates where and how Kyd contributed to the development of Shakespeare’s drama through influence, collaboration, revision and adaptation. A further, complementary aim of the book is to demonstrate various ways in which it is possible to combine statistical analysis with reading plays as literary and performative works. The book summarises, extends, and corrects all of the scholarship on Kyd’s authorship of anonymous plays, and reveals the remarkable extent to which Shakespeare was influenced by his dramatic predecessor. The book represents a significant intervention in the field of early modern authorship studies and aims to revolutionise our understanding of Shakespeare’s dramatic development.

A fascinating book exploring the early modern authors who helped to shape Shakespeare’s beloved plays.Shakespeare’s plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him? Using the latest techniques in textual analysis Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers a fresh look at William Shakespeare and reveals the influence of a community of playwrights that shaped his work. This compelling book argues that we need to see early modern drama as a communal enterprise, with playwrights borrowing from and adapting one another's work. From John Lyly's wit to the collaborative genius of John Fletcher, to Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers fresh insights into Shakespeare’s artistic development and shows us new ways of looking at the masterpieces that have enchanted audiences for centuries.

Darren Freebury-Jones's Rambling is a book of fragments exploring the topographies of love, grief, friendship, family, youth, and age in Wales. Ranging from anecdotal to linguistically complex and hauntingly intertextual, the poems in this collection chart a life from childhood to adulthood, its scenes bursting with light humour and heavy darkness. In Rambling we journey through the minutiae of everyday life, discovering the extraordinary potential for both the big and small dramas of living; love and loss, the familiar, the uncanny, and the in-between.

Shakespeare’s tutor: The influence of Thomas Kyd adds to the critical and scholarly discussion that seeks to establish the early modern playwright Thomas Kyd’s dramatic canon, and indicates where and how Kyd contributed to the development of Shakespeare’s drama through influence, collaboration, revision and adaptation. A further, complementary aim of the book is to demonstrate various ways in which it is possible to combine statistical analysis with reading plays as literary and performative works. The book summarises, extends, and corrects all of the scholarship on Kyd’s authorship of anonymous plays, and reveals the remarkable extent to which Shakespeare was influenced by his dramatic predecessor. The book represents a significant intervention in the field of early modern authorship studies and aims to revolutionise our understanding of Shakespeare’s dramatic development.