ABSTRACT
As the title indicates, this essay draws upon Lacanian theory with its central claim that ‘the unconscious is the discourse of the Other’ (with a capital O) (Lacan 1977: 171).1 The main objective is to use this theory in order to take a fresh look at the well-worked area of Jonson’s relationship to Shakespeare. In turning to the same topic recently, Richard Dutton acknowledges that the history of Shakespeare’s ascendancy at Jonson’s expense eludes easy explanation:
We need to steer round the very potent constructions that…later ages have placed upon their relationship. No one has chronicled the process of those constructions more scrupulously than Sam Schoenbaum, though he has usually fought shy of cultural explanations as to why they should have occurred.
