Shakespeare the Bodger: Ingenuity, Imitation and the Arts of The Winter’s Tale

Drawing inspiration from Robert Greene’s deathbed attack on Shakespeare as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers," The Bodger (Elizabethan variant of "botcher," "mender," "patcher") argues that Shakespeare’s dramas are compositions of "shreds and patches" pieced together by a mind of extraordinary synthetic acuity. Such patches include passages of dialogue that, as described in the sixteenth century, "lead objects before our eyes" by means of ekphrasis. The book offers substantial art-historical research into the only visual artist named by Shakespeare, Giulio Romano–who performs an important role in
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