This book sets out to explore the ways in which Mary Wroth negotiated the discourses that are embedded in the Shakespearean canon in order to develop an understanding of her oeuvre based, not on influence and imitation, but on difference, originality and innovation.

Over the last twenty five years, scholarship on Early Modern women writers has produced editions and criticisms, both on various groups and individual authors. The work on Mary Wroth has been particularly impressive at integrating her poetry, prose and drama into the canon. This in turn has led to comparative studies that link Wroth to a number of male and female writers, including of course, William Shakespeare. At the same time no single volume has attempted a comprehensive comparative analysis. This book sets out to explore the ways in which Wroth negotiated the discourses that are embedded in the Shakespearean canon in order to develop an understanding of her oeuvre based, not on influence and imitation, but on difference, originality and innovation.

"The groundbreaking comparative analysis in the essays of this collection will change the way in which we read both Wroth and Shakespeare." - Rosalind Smith, English at University of Newcastle, Australia "The collection will serve as a useful teaching tool for an exploration of Wroth, who is now considered a canonical writer of the early modern period. The essays (with one exception) cover Wroth's sonnet sequence, her play, and her prose romance, focusing on the ways her writing departs from that of Shakespeare, the best known writer of this period...With an afterword by Mary Ellen Lamb, who has done groundbreaking work in the field of early modern women writers, this small volume is a valuable resource...Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." - M. Cole, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, CHOICE "Wroth and Shakespeare masterfully demonstrates the synergies between Wroth's writings and Shakespeare's. In so doing, it lays a valuable foundation for future research in the field, as well as for the development of new pedagogical approaches to these writers. Opening up vital questions about formal and generic structure, textual circulation, intertextuality, and the construction of gender and sexual identity, Wroth and Shakespeare pushes readers to see both Wroth and Shakespeare anew." - Katherine R. Larson, University of Toronto, Canada