The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Language. Lynne Magnusson and David Schalkwyk, eds. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xiv + 298 pp. $24.99

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 353 - 355
• Main Author: Bennett, Kristen Abbott
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Conversation; Cultural factors; English literature; Essays; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Language; Popular culture; Renaissance period; Rhetoric; Schalkwyk, David; Shakespeare plays; Text analysis
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2020.398
• ISSN: 0034-4338

Jonathan Hope's essay is the first of three in part 3, “New Technologies,” and offers an accessible how-to guide for performing text analysis using open-source tools, sample assignments, case studies, and an annotated list of digital resources useful for practitioners at any level of expertise. Next, Hugh Craig effectively demonstrates how one may put distant- and close-reading practices in conversation to examine variations and distinctions emerging throughout Shakespeare's language within the context of his claim that there is “no essential universal Shakespeare style” (185). Douglas M. Lanier deftly draws this collection to a close by reflecting on Shakespeare's language in the context of popular culture, suggesting that one view popular performances and readings of Shakespeare as alternative hermeneutics for recognizing how those outside the “Shakespeare industry process the poet's language” (261).