This book simply would not exist without the generous financial assistance provided by three organizations: the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board, which awarded me a Major State Studentship and three supplementary grants for travel to libraries in Britain; a fellowship for a very rewarding one-month research period in California was provided by the Huntington Library, San Marino; and finally, the Arts and Humanities Research Institute of the University of Ulster gave me the necessary money for three periods of study at the British Library. The book is based on a thesis that was produced at Queen’s University, Belfast. The thesis supervisor was Mark Thornton Burnett: of him, I can say only that he was the ideal, attentive supervisor. Burnett has, over two decades, spearheaded the formation of a world-class legacy of Shakespearean research at Queen’s and, more generally, has contributed energetically and productively to the Ulster community as a whole. To him, I express many, many thanks. The thesis was examined by Richard Dutton and Ewan Fernie: I thank them hugely for their enthusiastic reading of my work and for the shrewd and forthright advice that they gave about changes that would be necessary to turn the thesis into a dependable book. I thank Professor Maurice Charney for his warm endorsement of the work as manuscript reader. I also thank the director of Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Harry Keyishian, for taking such a generous interest in my work. I particularly thank him for his indulgent patience when dealing with the diffidence of this first-time author. This book simply would not have appeared without him: so, with immense appreciation I dedicate the work to him.
I have heard people employed by publishers of scholarly books mutter darkly about the imminent demise of the intellectual monograph. Not enough people purchase scholarly single-authored books, it is alleged. It is understandable that monographs sell poorly: they tend to be prohibitively expensive, and, in these days of increased student numbers and intense administrative pressures, few academics enjoy the leisure to read around their subject. I have heard it rumored also that it is not uncommon for an academic monograph to sell to a smaller number of people than the number of people thanked in the “Acknowledgments.” Partly because of this alarming statistic, I wish to thank only a small number of individuals and institutions here. Anyway, I really wouldn’t have the space to thank adequately all of the academic colleagues, family members, library assistants, and personal friends who have helped in small ways with the production of this work.
The persons cited here know that they have contributed in very major and very practical ways: they are Katherine Byrne, Brian Caraher, Martin Condron, Joe De Ornellas, Rosemary De Ornellas, Sarah Hatchuel, Jan Jędrzejewski, Lucy Munro, Pól Ó Dochartaigh, the late Roger Prior, Frankie Sewell, Anoush Simon, James Ward, Rachel Willie, and Ramona Wray. High morale is a very important and underrated commodity in academia. My morale is kept consistently high at the University of Ulster: I thank all of my ever-positive colleagues in the English subject area for keeping me diverted and stimulated; I also thank all of the catering personnel, domestic assistants, gardeners, library assistants, media technicians, secretaries, and security guards who work so hard day-by-day to make our institution so organized and so pleasant a place to work. Finally, I owe a lot to the students at the three universities at which I have taught: Queen’s University, Belfast; the University of Wales, Bangor; and the University of Ulster. The students’ acceptance of my stress on the importance of animal imagery in early modern texts and their complementary concern for nonhuman species in the present day has convinced me even further that a consideration for other species is necessary both in our reading of historical texts and in our day-to-day activities in the twenty-first century.
Citations from and references to the Oxford English Dictionary all derive from the second edition, 20 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). This edition is always referred to as “OED” in this book. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison, is treated similarly: it is always referred to as “ODNB.” All citations from it are taken from the online edition published in September 2004 (www.oxforddnb.com). Early printed books are always afforded STC or Wing numbers. Books published before 1641 are identified with the numbers given in the second edition of A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, eds., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, 3 vols., revised by F. S. Ferguson and W. A. Jackson et al. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–1991). Wing numbers are taken from the second edition of Donald Wing, ed., Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Ireland, Wales, and British America, 3 vols., revised by T. J. Crist and J. M. Hansel et al. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982–1994).
A shorter version of chapter one, on the play Woodstock, has appeared in the Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker edited collection, The Kingdom of the Horse (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Some material from chapter three, on Banks’s horse, was used in an essay published in Richard Bradford, ed., Life Writing: Essays on Autobiography, Biography and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). I have presented material from the book at many conferences and seminars: I am very grateful to everyone who attended these talks and who made challenging remarks to me both publicly and privately. Thanks also to the relevant conference and seminar organizers at Vladimir University, Russia; the University of Central Lancashire; Shakespeare’s Globe, London; Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds; the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon; the University of Sheffield; Trinity Hall, Cambridge; University College, Dublin; King’s College, London; Collège de France, Paris; and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
The past, from our perspective, is different, other, strange. One manifestation of this otherness is the disparity between our orthographic and spelling habits and those of early modern writers. To maintain this sense of difference, I always retain original spellings and original orthographic techniques when quoting from primary texts. As part of this insistence on the otherness of the materials that are engaged with, virtually all pre-1660 quotations derive from early printed editions. I have tracked down and used a copy of the original printed book in every case. I use Early English Books Online only when checking a reference: I am very grateful to my institution for subscribing to this resource—but it offers no fulfilling substitute for the proper, hands-on study of early printed books. Stephen Greenblatt has written movingly about scholars “talking with the dead” when reading primary texts: this sentimental but appealing idea seems slightly plausible when one is literally cradling a four-hundred-year-old quarto; it seems somehow less compelling when one is squinting at a monitor showing a high-contrast, digital image of a microfilmed page. There is one major exception to my insistence on reading and citing original, contemporary texts. The manuscript of the play Woodstock has a very idiosyncratic and barely differentiated way of presenting prose and verse. This may distract a reader, so I have quoted relevant passages of Woodstock from A. P. Rossiter’s still-valuable 1946 edition of the play.
As a final clarification, when I write “animal,” I always mean “nonhuman animal.”