Cover

Formal matters

List of illustrations

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Forming literature

1 The first English printed commonplace books and the rise of the common reader

2 Reading Shakespeare miscellaneously: Ben Jonson, Robert Chester, and the Vatum Chorus of Loves Martyr

3 ‘Divines into dry Vines’: forms of jesting in Renaissance England

4 Afterworlds: Thomas Middleton, the book, and the genre of continuation

Part II: Translations

5 Greek playbooks and dramatic forms in early modern England

6 Book, list, word: forms of translation in the work of Richard Hakluyt

Part III: The matters of writing

7 The forms of news from France in Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI

8 Writings and the problem of satisfaction in Michaelmas Term

9 Saving souls or selling (virtual) godliness? The ‘penny godlinesses’ of John Andrewes and the problem of ‘popular puritanism’ in early Stuart England

10 How to construct a poem: Descartes, Sidney

Part IV: Afterword

What’s the matter?

Index