Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Summary from the Publisher:

Now in a new edition, Lukas Erne’s groundbreaking study argues that Shakespeare, apart from being a playwright who wrote theatrical texts for the stage, was also a literary dramatist who produced reading texts for the page. Examining the evidence from early published playbooks, Erne argues that Shakespeare wrote many of his plays with a readership in mind and that these “literary” texts would have been abridged for the stage because they were too long for performance. The variant early texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet are shown to reveal important insights into the different media for which Shakespeare designed his plays. This revised and updated edition includes a new and substantial preface that reviews and intervenes in the controversy the study has triggered and lists reviews, articles, and books which respond to or build on the first edition.

Table of Contents:

Preface to the second edition
Introduction

Part I. Publication:
1. The legitimation of printed playbooks in Shakespeare’s time
2. The making of ‘Shakespeare’
3. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (I): the late sixteenth century
4. Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (II): the early seventeenth century
5. The players’ alleged opposition to print

Part II. Texts:
6. Why size matters: ‘the two hours’ traffic of our stage’ and the length of Shakespeare’s plays
7. Editorial policy and the length of Shakespeare’s plays
8. ‘Bad quartos’ and their origins: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet
9. Theatricality, literariness, and the texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and Hamlet

Appendix A: The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in print, 1584–1623
Appendix B: Heminge and Condell’s ‘Stolne, and surreptitious copies’ and the Pavier quartos
Appendix C: Shakespeare and the circulation of dramatic manuscripts

Online:
Cambridge University Press (excerpts)
Amazon
Google Books