Venus and Adonis is Shakespeare's first printed work, it was printed in 1593 by Richard Field ad sold by John Harrison. Field entered the poem in the Stationer's register on 18 April 1593. Shakespeare's second printed work was The Rape of Lucrece, also printed by Field and sold by Harrison; first printed in 1594, Lucrece was entered in the Stationer's register by Harrison on 9 May 1594. While there is no evidence that Shakespeare personally oversaw their printing, both are cleanly printed and appear to be set from the author's holograph. This same care and attention was not devoted to the printing of any other of Shakespeare's works during his lifetime (73 - 75).
Williams calls the Pavier quarto arrangement "higgledy-piggldy" (87). Most of his assessment of Shakespeare in print is a standard trope of New Bibliography; there are "bad quartos" which are pirated, "good quartos" that are attempts to correct the work of the author in print, and the Folio. Especially in light of Massai's analysis of the Pavier Quartos, I found Williams' description amusing.
The printers of the First Folio seem to have been playhouse and printshop professionals, but a more 'editorial' hand guided the Second Folio, which makes considered corrections and improvements to the text over F1. The Third and Fourth Folios were printed by men who were more typographically sensitive, the result culminating in the Fourth Folio which, unlike its predecessors, is a "handsome" volume patterned after continental printings, the quality of which outpaced the English (90 - 92 quotation from 90).
"It is true that [Shakespeare] wrote many more lines to his play than could be spoken in a production" (92).
Shakespeare wrote plays "from the joy and agony of writing, not to see them appear printed on pages in a book" (93). Wow. In the same breath that Williams says Shakespeare wrote more lines than would actually be performed, he also says that Shakespeare wrote them because he was a Writer. Here we see the flaw of the New Bibliography in action: the understanding of Shakespeare as a writer in the purely artistic sense. Only a fictional character could be so dedicated to the production of words for the sake of words. Shakespeare was a man of the playhouse, and too prodigious a businessman to waste time writing words that he never expected to be read or performed.
Summary
The New Bibliographers have a rather consistent narrative of the history of William Shakespeare's plays in print, and a view of Shakespeare as a pure author who was interested in writing beautiful words for the sake of beauty. They are also persistent in ignoring or disregarding evidence to the contrary. Williams has clearly fixed himself in that tradition in this last chapter, and despite a book filled with otherwise interesting historical data about the rise of print, comes to a rather blase conclusion.
Citation
Williams, George Walton. The Craft of Printing and the Publication of Shakespeare's Works. Washington: Folger Books. 1985. Print.
Showing posts with label First Folio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Folio. Show all posts
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Chapter 5
And speaking of the Folio, Massai's 5th chapter treats on "The making of the First Folio (1623)," which Dr. Menzer convincingly argues in Textual Culture was the first modern English book. I like the way Massai's arguments are grounded in data, and her narrative of Pavier's quartos is quite convincing.
Heminge and Condell's preface that the Folio is set from the "true and original copies" of Shakespeare's plays has been a source of contention, as several of the plays are demonstrably set from the quarto copies they would seem to denigrate. This distinction was one of the principles behind Pollard's labeling of quartos as variously good and bad; this preserved the idea that Heminge and Condell were faithful executors of Shakespeare's artistic legacy. Yet it is worth considering that "original," in the early modern sense, did not necessarily mean "rough draft penned by the writer." (136 - 137).
Previous generations of editors have sought to see through "the veil of print" to Shakespeare's hand, and modern editors may be pursuing a similarly elusive phantom in their attempts to link the Folio text to the allowed book of the King's Men's repertory. Writers who saw their works go into print usually tried to separate them from the playhouse performance scripts, and the size and format of the Folio indicates it is designed for a more upscale market than quarto play books. In terms of simple economics, it is unlikely that either the playhouse or the print house would have been able to provide an individual to collate two texts that were already similar in search of minute variations (137 - 139). Despite Wells' assertion that Heminge and Condell attempted to represent the plays as performed, there is little evidence to support that.
Changes to texts for the Folio where the majority of changes affect stage directions also include changes to dialogue that are outside the prevue of the typical early modern annotator. It is more likely that variants in the Folio derive from emendations added by annotating readers than from theatrical annotations or sporadic consultation with performance texts (140).
Treating on the Folio text of Romeo and Juliet, Massai argues that the emendations made for the Folio would not require any specific familiarity with either a performance of the play or the text of the play governing performance; they supply no information that is not given in the immediate context, and are not beyond the ability of an "alert reader" to note (141).
While Folio Romeo and Juliet does remove some confusing or inaccurate stage directions, it sometimes does so in such a way that creates other points of confusion in the text, making consultation with a performance script to be unlikely (142).
Certain changes in speech prefixes from F Romeo and Juliet and Q3 that are not necessary for sense, and which are sometimes incorrect, indicate that neither a playhouse agent nor a print house agent was responsible for the emendation (142 - 143).
"Like recent scholars, including Reid, I believe that the annotator cannot have been a printing house agent intent on reproducing his copy as closely as possible. However, unlike the majority of scholars since Reid, I find no evidence in the Folio text of Romeo and Juliet to support the theory according to which the annotator sporadically consulted a theatrical manuscript or relied on personal memories of the play as staged (144).
Certain annotations in the Folio text of Love's Labour's Lost clarify confusing words and passages, but are unlikely to be authorial in nature, nor are they likely to have arisen from print house practice or consultation with theatrical text. Both Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's only partially succeed at correcting speech prefixes, and at providing "viable, if not satisfactory" alternative readings to obscure words and phrases. As both plays belonged to the same stationer, John Smethwick, these changes possible originated with him (149).
Bibliographic scholars tend to assume that the collection of individuals who prepared Shakespeare's texts for print in the Folio (known as the "Folio Editors") were of a single mind and objective. While the presentational uniformity of the Folio may speak volumes to the control that William and Isaac Jaggard exerted over the syndicate, the range of variants in Folio texts set from printed copy speaks more to the differences than the similarities in preparations for print (150 - 151).
"The Folio variants in plays set from printed copy show that their preparation for the press was not informed by a uniform set of principles or general rationale" (151).
"Generally speaking, variants in the speech prefixes used in the Folio text of Much Ado About Nothing suggest inaccurate recollection of the play as staged and a fussy literary sensitivity on the annotator's part" (157).
"Overall, the Folio variants in Much Ado About Nothing are more likely to have originated from the annotator's patchy recollection of the play in performance then from the annotator's sporadic consultation of a theatrical manuscript" (157).
One oath "O Iesu" is systematically removed from the Folio text of 1 Henry IV, but is allowed to stand in Romeo and Juliet. Again, this clearly demonstrates that a different emending rationale was at play in the different texts (158).
The New Bibliographic concept of "good" and "bad" quartos derives in significant part from Thomas Heywood's address to the reader in The Rape of Lucrece, and the prologue to the 1639 quarto of If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 1. Despite Heywood's claim that he never wanted to see his works in print, he had a long standing and successful relationship with the press. Early printed quartos of Heywood's plays show that unusual efforts were taken to guide their transmission into print (165 - 166). Heywood's claim about surreptitious copies of his plays making their way into print may have been a baseless marketing ploy.
Prefaces to printed works often included an apology that blamed the author's friends for insisting a work should be printed and shared, or that an unauthorized copy had mad its way to print already, and that the author only published as a corrective to a maimed edition. Some writers, however, notably committed their work to print because they believed print to be a more accurate and reliable method of conveying their texts than oral or manuscript means: notable among these instances are Gray's Inn preacher Roger Fenton and Thomas More more than a century earlier. The reliability of print transmission was dependent upon an author being able to rely on their printer's work, and for this task Fenton chose William Aspley, who also printed Much Ado About Nothing and 2 Henry IV (171 - 172).
William Burton's translation of Erasmus' Seven Dialogues contains a preface from "The Printer to the Reader," where the printer begs pardon for errors arising from an un-perfected copy text, and the unavailability of the author [translator]. This edition was, however, set from printed copy, and as the 'printer' cites the circumstances of publication and the whereabouts of the author, including his lack of involvement, it is likely that 'printer' should be taken to mean the stationer: John Smethwick (173 - 174).
Printers did not retain annotated copies for subsequent printings: these would be held by the stationers, who ultimately had the right to decide if and when to reprint the material, and which printer to hire (178 - 179).
"While consultation of theatrical manuscripts for plays which had not been altered in the theatre and were already available in print must have been costly and impractical, annotation of copy was a common and welcome practice (179).
Rather than attempting to print texts that were as close as possible to either the author's original draft or the theatrical text, publishers in early modern London valued progressive improvements to the works they printed, and relied on collaboration with annotating readers to improve the quality of their texts (179).
Summary
Just as the editors of the New Bibliography attempted to see through the "veil of print" to the hand of the author, modern editors have a tendency to over-value the theatrical text as a standard for early modern publication. Stationers in the period viewed their printed works as texts to be read, and to this end sought as often as possible the assistance of readers who could correct and improve the copy they would send to the printer. Authors who brought their works into print needed to be able to rely on stationers and printers to faithfully transmit their works into that medium, and as such printers would have valued the accuracy of their work because their professional reputations depended on it. While errors were inevitable, publishers and printers of the period took pains to avoid them, which could mean normalizing a theatrical text and making it into a more literary object than its earlier incarnations.
Heminge and Condell's preface that the Folio is set from the "true and original copies" of Shakespeare's plays has been a source of contention, as several of the plays are demonstrably set from the quarto copies they would seem to denigrate. This distinction was one of the principles behind Pollard's labeling of quartos as variously good and bad; this preserved the idea that Heminge and Condell were faithful executors of Shakespeare's artistic legacy. Yet it is worth considering that "original," in the early modern sense, did not necessarily mean "rough draft penned by the writer." (136 - 137).
Previous generations of editors have sought to see through "the veil of print" to Shakespeare's hand, and modern editors may be pursuing a similarly elusive phantom in their attempts to link the Folio text to the allowed book of the King's Men's repertory. Writers who saw their works go into print usually tried to separate them from the playhouse performance scripts, and the size and format of the Folio indicates it is designed for a more upscale market than quarto play books. In terms of simple economics, it is unlikely that either the playhouse or the print house would have been able to provide an individual to collate two texts that were already similar in search of minute variations (137 - 139). Despite Wells' assertion that Heminge and Condell attempted to represent the plays as performed, there is little evidence to support that.
Changes to texts for the Folio where the majority of changes affect stage directions also include changes to dialogue that are outside the prevue of the typical early modern annotator. It is more likely that variants in the Folio derive from emendations added by annotating readers than from theatrical annotations or sporadic consultation with performance texts (140).
Treating on the Folio text of Romeo and Juliet, Massai argues that the emendations made for the Folio would not require any specific familiarity with either a performance of the play or the text of the play governing performance; they supply no information that is not given in the immediate context, and are not beyond the ability of an "alert reader" to note (141).
While Folio Romeo and Juliet does remove some confusing or inaccurate stage directions, it sometimes does so in such a way that creates other points of confusion in the text, making consultation with a performance script to be unlikely (142).
Certain changes in speech prefixes from F Romeo and Juliet and Q3 that are not necessary for sense, and which are sometimes incorrect, indicate that neither a playhouse agent nor a print house agent was responsible for the emendation (142 - 143).
"Like recent scholars, including Reid, I believe that the annotator cannot have been a printing house agent intent on reproducing his copy as closely as possible. However, unlike the majority of scholars since Reid, I find no evidence in the Folio text of Romeo and Juliet to support the theory according to which the annotator sporadically consulted a theatrical manuscript or relied on personal memories of the play as staged (144).
Certain annotations in the Folio text of Love's Labour's Lost clarify confusing words and passages, but are unlikely to be authorial in nature, nor are they likely to have arisen from print house practice or consultation with theatrical text. Both Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's only partially succeed at correcting speech prefixes, and at providing "viable, if not satisfactory" alternative readings to obscure words and phrases. As both plays belonged to the same stationer, John Smethwick, these changes possible originated with him (149).
Bibliographic scholars tend to assume that the collection of individuals who prepared Shakespeare's texts for print in the Folio (known as the "Folio Editors") were of a single mind and objective. While the presentational uniformity of the Folio may speak volumes to the control that William and Isaac Jaggard exerted over the syndicate, the range of variants in Folio texts set from printed copy speaks more to the differences than the similarities in preparations for print (150 - 151).
"The Folio variants in plays set from printed copy show that their preparation for the press was not informed by a uniform set of principles or general rationale" (151).
"Generally speaking, variants in the speech prefixes used in the Folio text of Much Ado About Nothing suggest inaccurate recollection of the play as staged and a fussy literary sensitivity on the annotator's part" (157).
"Overall, the Folio variants in Much Ado About Nothing are more likely to have originated from the annotator's patchy recollection of the play in performance then from the annotator's sporadic consultation of a theatrical manuscript" (157).
One oath "O Iesu" is systematically removed from the Folio text of 1 Henry IV, but is allowed to stand in Romeo and Juliet. Again, this clearly demonstrates that a different emending rationale was at play in the different texts (158).
The New Bibliographic concept of "good" and "bad" quartos derives in significant part from Thomas Heywood's address to the reader in The Rape of Lucrece, and the prologue to the 1639 quarto of If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 1. Despite Heywood's claim that he never wanted to see his works in print, he had a long standing and successful relationship with the press. Early printed quartos of Heywood's plays show that unusual efforts were taken to guide their transmission into print (165 - 166). Heywood's claim about surreptitious copies of his plays making their way into print may have been a baseless marketing ploy.
Prefaces to printed works often included an apology that blamed the author's friends for insisting a work should be printed and shared, or that an unauthorized copy had mad its way to print already, and that the author only published as a corrective to a maimed edition. Some writers, however, notably committed their work to print because they believed print to be a more accurate and reliable method of conveying their texts than oral or manuscript means: notable among these instances are Gray's Inn preacher Roger Fenton and Thomas More more than a century earlier. The reliability of print transmission was dependent upon an author being able to rely on their printer's work, and for this task Fenton chose William Aspley, who also printed Much Ado About Nothing and 2 Henry IV (171 - 172).
William Burton's translation of Erasmus' Seven Dialogues contains a preface from "The Printer to the Reader," where the printer begs pardon for errors arising from an un-perfected copy text, and the unavailability of the author [translator]. This edition was, however, set from printed copy, and as the 'printer' cites the circumstances of publication and the whereabouts of the author, including his lack of involvement, it is likely that 'printer' should be taken to mean the stationer: John Smethwick (173 - 174).
Printers did not retain annotated copies for subsequent printings: these would be held by the stationers, who ultimately had the right to decide if and when to reprint the material, and which printer to hire (178 - 179).
"While consultation of theatrical manuscripts for plays which had not been altered in the theatre and were already available in print must have been costly and impractical, annotation of copy was a common and welcome practice (179).
Rather than attempting to print texts that were as close as possible to either the author's original draft or the theatrical text, publishers in early modern London valued progressive improvements to the works they printed, and relied on collaboration with annotating readers to improve the quality of their texts (179).
Summary
Just as the editors of the New Bibliography attempted to see through the "veil of print" to the hand of the author, modern editors have a tendency to over-value the theatrical text as a standard for early modern publication. Stationers in the period viewed their printed works as texts to be read, and to this end sought as often as possible the assistance of readers who could correct and improve the copy they would send to the printer. Authors who brought their works into print needed to be able to rely on stationers and printers to faithfully transmit their works into that medium, and as such printers would have valued the accuracy of their work because their professional reputations depended on it. While errors were inevitable, publishers and printers of the period took pains to avoid them, which could mean normalizing a theatrical text and making it into a more literary object than its earlier incarnations.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Notes on The Foundation of Shakespeare's Text
Alfred Pollard is one of those names you keep coming across in the annals of bibliographic study, and rightly so. He, along with EK Chambers and RB McKerrow were some of the pioneers of bibliographic studies early in the 20th century, without whom we might still live in an era of catch-as-catch-can textual construction. I stumbled across his lecture The Foundation of Shakespeare's Text, originally read on 23 April 1923, and decided to give it a look.
At the time Pollard offered this lecture, he acknowledged the incompleteness of the bibliographic work that had been done up to that point on the first folio. Any bibliographic answers he can offer must perforce be incomplete (1). It's worth asking the question of how far we've come in the last 80 years or so. Certainly we do know more, but do we know enough to posit anything but incomplete answers? Will we ever?
"The foundations of Shakespeare's text must have been laid in his study and in the playhouse" (2). Pollard goes from there to declare that any piece of text that can be demonstrably linked to Shakespeare or his theatre requires investigation, and that any text that cannot be so derived should not be considered; this immediately rules out any edition following the 1623 folio, as these represent mere reprints of that folio (2).
Pollard establishes the difference between a good quarto and a bad as one that can be demonstrably linked to revisions of Shakespeare's hand. Intermediary quartos typically contain the inclusion of new errors, and where they correct errors of previous quartos, these corrections tend to be simple and mechanical in nature, and would not require access to the author (3).
Intermediary quartos are useful for charting the printing of the folio. As a printer would have an easier time setting type from a printed source, they very likely would have used recent quartos as a base text, and sent those to the playhouse for any corrections that would have been needed: this would have been easier and less expensive than arranging a new fair copy to be made. The result is that some of the errors from intermediary editions of quartos have made their way into the folio (4). If this is true, and Stanley Wells is correct in his assertion that Heminges and Condell printed the plays in the folio as closely as possible to the way in which they were performed, than wouldn't that admit intermediary quartos as evidence for Shakepeare's (or at least the King's Men's) authorship?
Pollard answers my question in the negative, citing the example of punctuation differences in Midsummer; where the punctuation there differs from the first quarto, it tends to come from the 1619 quarto, and thus Pollard proposes that this edition of the play, since it derives from one of less authority than the original, should be regarded as less authentic (4). Clearly, he and Wells would have some words.
Pollard's list of bad quartos include the 1597 Romeo and Juliet, the 1600 Henry V, the 1602 Merry Wives of Windsor, and the 1603 Hamlet (4-5).
Discounting the aforementioned "bad quartos," the other first quartos of Shakespeare are to be regarded as useful sources of comparison and should carry an authority comparable to the folio (5-6).
Pollard notes that there was a thriving industry in manuscript copies of stage plays as early as 1605. The literary stage directions, which often describe locales in detail (i.e. characters enter "atop the walls of Rome" as opposed to "above") may come from these copies as opposed to the author's hand. We have no way of knowing how many of the play texts burned with the first Globe in 1613, or even if any were burnt at all, but we do know that several Beaumont and Fletcher plays were in private collections during the interregnum and had to be purchased for publication (8 - 9). We thus cannot say whether "literary" stage directions are certainly original.
"We have to face the fact that the producers of the Folio preferred the acting-version used in the playhouse, and if lines written by Shakespeare were omitted from that were content that they should perish" (10).
Pollard proposes that there is a distinction between short plays and long ones, and that those written of one category may have commonly be expanded (or cut) to suite the other category. This could plausibly have been for touring performances, court performances, private performances, public performances during the winter months (when they would have to have been shorter to accommodate fewer hours of day light), or Sunday performances. Though Pollard admits these are all purely conjectural circumstances, the presence of extant shorter and longer plays suggests that sometimes shorter performances were called for (10). Fascinating.
Pollard on Shakespeare's revision of other dramatists: "He took over other men's plots, other men's drafts, other men's completed plays, and did t them what he was told, transmuting copper and silver into gold with an alchemy all his own. We applaud what he did, and invent fine phrases to glorify that which, in modern dramatists, we should regard as monstrous" (13).
"It was taken for granted that the stage-manager knew his business, and that the form in which each play had survived at the theatre was the form in which it should be preserved in spirit" (16). This quote, taken with Pollard's earlier remarks about the policies of copying the work of other dramatists, and Shakespeare's contentment to do the same and then to let the same be done to his own works puts the question of authority into a different light (13 - 14).
"Somehow a text was produced which, however far short it falls of what specialists could wish, has yet been good enough to allow Shakespeare to become the most famous dramatist of Englishmen, and the delight of men and women all over the world" (16).
Summary
Pollard is not looking for plays of the theatre, indeed, he seems convinced that he has them available, he is looking for the specific words that Shakespeare wrote. This seems a paradox to me; Pollard acknowledges Shakespeare was a man of the theatre, and that he practiced the then common techniques of his craft (albeit remarkably well); why should we then pursue the written word of Shakespeare outside of this context? There is a paradox evident in the quest for the unaltered hand of Shakespeare on the one hand, and the ever present knowledge that his hand was altered (or should I say inspired?) by the works of others from the beginning. Pollard seems to know that Shakespeare's works in the folio were, to some extent, corruptions of his original work, but also acknowledges that they're still among the best work ever written in English.
Citation
Pollard, Alfred W. "The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text." Annual Shakespeare Lecture. The Proceedings of the British Academy. Read 23 April 1923.
At the time Pollard offered this lecture, he acknowledged the incompleteness of the bibliographic work that had been done up to that point on the first folio. Any bibliographic answers he can offer must perforce be incomplete (1). It's worth asking the question of how far we've come in the last 80 years or so. Certainly we do know more, but do we know enough to posit anything but incomplete answers? Will we ever?
"The foundations of Shakespeare's text must have been laid in his study and in the playhouse" (2). Pollard goes from there to declare that any piece of text that can be demonstrably linked to Shakespeare or his theatre requires investigation, and that any text that cannot be so derived should not be considered; this immediately rules out any edition following the 1623 folio, as these represent mere reprints of that folio (2).
Pollard establishes the difference between a good quarto and a bad as one that can be demonstrably linked to revisions of Shakespeare's hand. Intermediary quartos typically contain the inclusion of new errors, and where they correct errors of previous quartos, these corrections tend to be simple and mechanical in nature, and would not require access to the author (3).
Intermediary quartos are useful for charting the printing of the folio. As a printer would have an easier time setting type from a printed source, they very likely would have used recent quartos as a base text, and sent those to the playhouse for any corrections that would have been needed: this would have been easier and less expensive than arranging a new fair copy to be made. The result is that some of the errors from intermediary editions of quartos have made their way into the folio (4). If this is true, and Stanley Wells is correct in his assertion that Heminges and Condell printed the plays in the folio as closely as possible to the way in which they were performed, than wouldn't that admit intermediary quartos as evidence for Shakepeare's (or at least the King's Men's) authorship?
Pollard answers my question in the negative, citing the example of punctuation differences in Midsummer; where the punctuation there differs from the first quarto, it tends to come from the 1619 quarto, and thus Pollard proposes that this edition of the play, since it derives from one of less authority than the original, should be regarded as less authentic (4). Clearly, he and Wells would have some words.
Pollard's list of bad quartos include the 1597 Romeo and Juliet, the 1600 Henry V, the 1602 Merry Wives of Windsor, and the 1603 Hamlet (4-5).
Discounting the aforementioned "bad quartos," the other first quartos of Shakespeare are to be regarded as useful sources of comparison and should carry an authority comparable to the folio (5-6).
Pollard notes that there was a thriving industry in manuscript copies of stage plays as early as 1605. The literary stage directions, which often describe locales in detail (i.e. characters enter "atop the walls of Rome" as opposed to "above") may come from these copies as opposed to the author's hand. We have no way of knowing how many of the play texts burned with the first Globe in 1613, or even if any were burnt at all, but we do know that several Beaumont and Fletcher plays were in private collections during the interregnum and had to be purchased for publication (8 - 9). We thus cannot say whether "literary" stage directions are certainly original.
"We have to face the fact that the producers of the Folio preferred the acting-version used in the playhouse, and if lines written by Shakespeare were omitted from that were content that they should perish" (10).
Pollard proposes that there is a distinction between short plays and long ones, and that those written of one category may have commonly be expanded (or cut) to suite the other category. This could plausibly have been for touring performances, court performances, private performances, public performances during the winter months (when they would have to have been shorter to accommodate fewer hours of day light), or Sunday performances. Though Pollard admits these are all purely conjectural circumstances, the presence of extant shorter and longer plays suggests that sometimes shorter performances were called for (10). Fascinating.
Pollard on Shakespeare's revision of other dramatists: "He took over other men's plots, other men's drafts, other men's completed plays, and did t them what he was told, transmuting copper and silver into gold with an alchemy all his own. We applaud what he did, and invent fine phrases to glorify that which, in modern dramatists, we should regard as monstrous" (13).
"It was taken for granted that the stage-manager knew his business, and that the form in which each play had survived at the theatre was the form in which it should be preserved in spirit" (16). This quote, taken with Pollard's earlier remarks about the policies of copying the work of other dramatists, and Shakespeare's contentment to do the same and then to let the same be done to his own works puts the question of authority into a different light (13 - 14).
"Somehow a text was produced which, however far short it falls of what specialists could wish, has yet been good enough to allow Shakespeare to become the most famous dramatist of Englishmen, and the delight of men and women all over the world" (16).
Summary
Pollard is not looking for plays of the theatre, indeed, he seems convinced that he has them available, he is looking for the specific words that Shakespeare wrote. This seems a paradox to me; Pollard acknowledges Shakespeare was a man of the theatre, and that he practiced the then common techniques of his craft (albeit remarkably well); why should we then pursue the written word of Shakespeare outside of this context? There is a paradox evident in the quest for the unaltered hand of Shakespeare on the one hand, and the ever present knowledge that his hand was altered (or should I say inspired?) by the works of others from the beginning. Pollard seems to know that Shakespeare's works in the folio were, to some extent, corruptions of his original work, but also acknowledges that they're still among the best work ever written in English.
Citation
Pollard, Alfred W. "The Foundations of Shakespeare's Text." Annual Shakespeare Lecture. The Proceedings of the British Academy. Read 23 April 1923.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Merry Devil on the Caroline Stage
In "Marlowe on the Caroline Stage," Lucy Munro argues that by the time of the Caroline Period (1625 - 1642) there was already a developing tradition of classical English plays, hearkening back to the late Elizabethan/early Jacobean period. She further argues that the active publishing of these "modern classics" (contrasted with the classics of Greece and Rome) saw parallel revivals on the London stages. You may recall that Merry Devil was published in its fourth quarto in 1626 and then in its fifth in 1631, which may argue for its performances during the Caroline period.
I don't have a hard time believing that Merry Devil would have been revived, but that will come as little surprise. As Munro states, a direct parallel between a works life in print and its parallel life on the stage is hard to calculate, but it seems to make sense that, even if a precise calculus cannot be established, the general availability of a play in print argues for that plays general availability in performance. It's a simple fact of the modern theatre industry that more widely published plays get performed more often than less widely published ones, although it would likewise be difficult to create a precise calculus linking publications to performances.
What intrigues me most of all is her argument that, in attempting to create what is essentially a series of modern classics, Caroline actors invoked the authors of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, sometimes as characters within their play texts, and sometimes using a style of performance that was thought to more closely match the "original practices" of the earlier stage. Of course, as a student of The American Shakespeare Center, I am greatly intrigued by the idea that a pursuit of original practices in performance may date to the decades following Shakespeare's death.
A very close second is that this might help fill in the gap linking Merry Devil to Shakespeare in its sixth quarto (1655) by Mosley. Dr. Menzer has argued in our textual culture class that Heminges and Condell were creating the first English Author (in the modern sense) with their publication of the first folio of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. If the figure of the "poet" (aka playwright) was regularly invoked on the stage for modern classics in revival, than Merry Devil comes with the serious disadvantage of not having a clear author. Mosley, knowing the play was a product of the King's Men, was of course trying to take advantage of the most revered English author in linking the play to Shakespeare, but his doing so might have had the practical purpose of linking a play that had been established as a modern classic to a writer of the period, the only one to whom he could plausibly attribute the play.
I don't have a hard time believing that Merry Devil would have been revived, but that will come as little surprise. As Munro states, a direct parallel between a works life in print and its parallel life on the stage is hard to calculate, but it seems to make sense that, even if a precise calculus cannot be established, the general availability of a play in print argues for that plays general availability in performance. It's a simple fact of the modern theatre industry that more widely published plays get performed more often than less widely published ones, although it would likewise be difficult to create a precise calculus linking publications to performances.
What intrigues me most of all is her argument that, in attempting to create what is essentially a series of modern classics, Caroline actors invoked the authors of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, sometimes as characters within their play texts, and sometimes using a style of performance that was thought to more closely match the "original practices" of the earlier stage. Of course, as a student of The American Shakespeare Center, I am greatly intrigued by the idea that a pursuit of original practices in performance may date to the decades following Shakespeare's death.
A very close second is that this might help fill in the gap linking Merry Devil to Shakespeare in its sixth quarto (1655) by Mosley. Dr. Menzer has argued in our textual culture class that Heminges and Condell were creating the first English Author (in the modern sense) with their publication of the first folio of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. If the figure of the "poet" (aka playwright) was regularly invoked on the stage for modern classics in revival, than Merry Devil comes with the serious disadvantage of not having a clear author. Mosley, knowing the play was a product of the King's Men, was of course trying to take advantage of the most revered English author in linking the play to Shakespeare, but his doing so might have had the practical purpose of linking a play that had been established as a modern classic to a writer of the period, the only one to whom he could plausibly attribute the play.
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