"Booksellers were often publishers, and publishers were often printers" (435).
Publishers tended to specialize in the kinds of materials they published, but printers tended not to, although there were some notable exceptions. Thomas East was known for printing music, and William Jaggard for heraldry, although neither of these printers confined themselves strictly to their respective materials (435 - 436).
"Many authors did not prepare their manuscripts for the press, and, on several occasions, their texts were printed without their knowledge" (438).
The German medical student and sometime proofreader Hieronymus Hornshuch complained that "it is particularly bothersome if someone submits his writings to their press not neatly written" (439). Henry Chettle's explanation that Greene's handwriting in Groatsworth of Wit was difficult to read, and thus Chettle transcribed Greene's manuscript himself (439). Thomas Heywood asks the reader to excuse the compositor at the end of The Exemplary lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women for setting type from a manuscript "coppy in a difficult and unacquainted hand" (439). These three testimonials offer evidence that not every manuscript was perfected before being submitted to the printer.
Moxon's description of proof reading was a three stage process, and while he is to some extent describing an ideal printshop, Moxon was himself a printer, and his descriptions of this practice are ikely at least partially based in his experience (443).
Heywood complains in Exemplary Lives of having to include an errata list because the "corrector... could not bee always ready in regard of some necessary employment" (443).
Topsell admits in the introductory epistle to his History of Serpents that numerous errors in his previous book, Four-footed Beasts were present because he and the publisher "were not so thoroughly estated as to maintaine a sufficient scholler to attend only upon the presse" (443).
"That it was usual for authors to correct proofs is indicated by the apologies for their failure to do so" (443).
Proof reading is unquantifiable, but the evidence of printed texts suggests that it was common practice, and according to Moxon the print shop corrector was assisted by a reader who read aloud from the manuscript (444).
Proofreading was undertaken to correct mechanical errors, such as wide white spaces, unlinked white spaces, ink splotches, and misaligned type (444).
Citation
Maguire, Laurie E. "The Craft of Printing (1600)." A Companion to Shakespeare. David Scott Kastan Ed. Malden: Blackwell. 1999. p 434 - 449. Print.
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Notes on "Inventing Shakespeare"
"Every time an editor emends a text he is, to an extent, reconstructing its author in his own image" (124).
The foundation of modern editorial practice is in creating emendations that are "transparent" and "anonymous" in that they manage to correct the sense or the meter of a line without adding anything to the dramatic context (127).
"The principle of anonymity is a false principle. In the first place, anonymity must always yield to plausibility; in the second, when probabilities are equal, anonymity must yield to individuality" (128).
Much as eighteenth century editors emended Shakespeare's plays to conform to their own eighteenth century aesthetics, modern editors tend to emend Shakespeare in a way that anyone could have written the words. What an editor should attempt to do is create an emendation in keeping with the words Shakespeare wrote (128). Of course, creating an emendation that seems "Shakespearean" requires creating that emendation given the author's sense of their audience's interpretation of what is Shakespearean; i.e. exactly what the eighteenth century editors did.
W.W. Greg, Alice Walker, and Charlton Hinman all advanced studies of printshop, specifically compositorial practice that advocate for a greater degree of emendation to texts than most modern editors, who tend to follow the tradition of McKerrow and Bowers, would be comfortable making (131).
"When the fact which confronts you is an absence, you can offer no mechanical explanation for that absence until you have conjecturally filled it, and that conjecture is a work of pure imagination" (132).
"In general the more words that have been omitted the less confidence we can have in replacing them" (134).
Analytical bibliography is most useful when providing the tools to decide between two reasonable alternatives in a text, but it is less useful at the point where readers and actors most need assistance: where there are literal gaps in the text (142).
Summary
Taylor agrees with Greg in finding that the practice of textual emendation is an "art" rather than a science (141). He argues that gaps in the text should be filled with our best approximation of what Shakespeare would have filled those gaps with, and as his title implies, this is based purely on our conception of who Shakespeare is. By filling in the gaps left in the printed texts, editors invent Shakespeare for their readers.
Citation
Taylor, Gary. "Inventing Shakespeare" Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 124 - 142. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my
The foundation of modern editorial practice is in creating emendations that are "transparent" and "anonymous" in that they manage to correct the sense or the meter of a line without adding anything to the dramatic context (127).
"The principle of anonymity is a false principle. In the first place, anonymity must always yield to plausibility; in the second, when probabilities are equal, anonymity must yield to individuality" (128).
Much as eighteenth century editors emended Shakespeare's plays to conform to their own eighteenth century aesthetics, modern editors tend to emend Shakespeare in a way that anyone could have written the words. What an editor should attempt to do is create an emendation in keeping with the words Shakespeare wrote (128). Of course, creating an emendation that seems "Shakespearean" requires creating that emendation given the author's sense of their audience's interpretation of what is Shakespearean; i.e. exactly what the eighteenth century editors did.
W.W. Greg, Alice Walker, and Charlton Hinman all advanced studies of printshop, specifically compositorial practice that advocate for a greater degree of emendation to texts than most modern editors, who tend to follow the tradition of McKerrow and Bowers, would be comfortable making (131).
"When the fact which confronts you is an absence, you can offer no mechanical explanation for that absence until you have conjecturally filled it, and that conjecture is a work of pure imagination" (132).
"In general the more words that have been omitted the less confidence we can have in replacing them" (134).
Analytical bibliography is most useful when providing the tools to decide between two reasonable alternatives in a text, but it is less useful at the point where readers and actors most need assistance: where there are literal gaps in the text (142).
Summary
Taylor agrees with Greg in finding that the practice of textual emendation is an "art" rather than a science (141). He argues that gaps in the text should be filled with our best approximation of what Shakespeare would have filled those gaps with, and as his title implies, this is based purely on our conception of who Shakespeare is. By filling in the gaps left in the printed texts, editors invent Shakespeare for their readers.
Citation
Taylor, Gary. "Inventing Shakespeare" Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 124 - 142. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Notes on Shakespeare's Modern Collaborators -- Ch. 1
"The modern editor's most basic task is the accurate reproduction of the copy text on which subsequent, more complex editorial operations are based" (13).
There is a distinction between modernizing spelling and modernizing Shakespeare's language: the latter of these "is a travesty," but the former is common practice among all major editions of Shakespeare's works, and represents "a serious scholarly task" (13).
While early modern spellings, and perhaps pronunciations, could enable a single word to carry more than one meaning, both written and spoken English have become more distinct, and in most cases the duality of meaning is lost. While some critics suggest preserving original spellings to preserve this duality of meaning, modern readers are generally incapable of noticing dual meanings. The best practice for an editor of a modern spelling edition is therefore to choose the spelling and sense that seems more dominant, and gloss alternate meanings in a footnote (15 - 16).
"It seems clear that, contrary to modern punctuation, which is chiefly grammatical and logical, early modern punctuation was strongly rhetorical" (18).
While early modern punctuation clearly has meaning to its audiences, that meaning can be difficult to decipher. An editor's task in punctuating the text, therefore, is to try to communicate, as clearly as possible, the apparent intention of the original (18).
Following Gary Taylor's logic (c.f. "Inventing Shakespeare") that every editor reconstructs a text's author in his or her own image, every editor participates in the process of "authorial reconstruction" (20).
"When textual corruption of some kind seems beyond dispute, the exact form of emendation should take can be far from clear" (21).
Erne cites Mercutio's "We waste our lights in vaine, lights lights by day" as being a circumstance where emendation is necessary (21). I note this primarily because I disagree with it. Emendation may be possible, but the line, as printed carries with it performative possibilities for the actor, and the line as printed may therefore be exceptionally informative, although if left un-emended, it is worth a gloss.
"Clearly, it is hard to draw the line between what is and what is not desirable emendation, between legitimately fixing the text when it is broken and meddling with it in ways which seem unnecessary or downright harmful" (22).
Taylor opts for a more expansive and creative approach to emendation than most modern editors would take when he uses George Wilkins' The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre to help rewrite the text of Pericles in a number of places (23).
Peter Blayney examined copies of the Folio in the Folger and determined that, what Jeanne Addison Roberts argued was an 'f' in 1978 ("so rare a wondered father and a (wise|wife)") was actually a blot of ink on a long s, and so returned to the reading as "wise" (24 - 25). I kind of want to see his evidence; I wonder if he took any pictures while examining it under 200x magnification. See his Arden 3 Tempest for more info.
Setting short lines together into a metrically regular line is a practice that has precedent in Ben Jonson's treatment of his own collected works, and while this sometimes couples lines that metrically and syntactically go together, and editor must be careful to not force lines together by meter when they are divided by sense (28).
c.f. Patricia Parker's "Altering the Letter of Twelfth Night: 'Some Are Born Great' and the Missing Signature," Shakespeare Survey, 59 (2006), 49 - 62.
Act and scene divisions in modern editions are largely a matter of editorial fancy; none of the playbooks printed in Shakespeare's life time contain act and scene divisions (34 - 35). We have elsewhere seen that the act and scene divisions in the Folio text are not uniform.
Scenes seem to have been the basic measure of dramatic unity, but Henslowe's Diary records writing plays by acts as early as the 1590s (35). Although as I have said before, if to my cast if not here, I don't think it fair to even attempt a guess at where the original act divisions in Merry Devil may be since the text is cut.
The "dominant consideration" for modern editors in determining a speech prefix is clarity of meaning, and while normalizing speech prefixes can subvert layers of meaning that a variation reflects, normalizing and expanding them will tend to produce a more readable text (39 - 40).
Summary
I'll leave off with Erne's words: Editing is "a task which requires considerable discrimination and can have important critical repercussions. Editors modernize and punctuate, name characters, determine who is present on stage, print speeches in prose or verse, choose specific words at the expense of others, even decide when a character is no longer a king - and in the process determine what constitutes Shakespeare's works" (42).
Citation
Erne, Lukas. Shakespeare's Modern Collaborator's. London: Continuum. 2008. Print.
There is a distinction between modernizing spelling and modernizing Shakespeare's language: the latter of these "is a travesty," but the former is common practice among all major editions of Shakespeare's works, and represents "a serious scholarly task" (13).
While early modern spellings, and perhaps pronunciations, could enable a single word to carry more than one meaning, both written and spoken English have become more distinct, and in most cases the duality of meaning is lost. While some critics suggest preserving original spellings to preserve this duality of meaning, modern readers are generally incapable of noticing dual meanings. The best practice for an editor of a modern spelling edition is therefore to choose the spelling and sense that seems more dominant, and gloss alternate meanings in a footnote (15 - 16).
"It seems clear that, contrary to modern punctuation, which is chiefly grammatical and logical, early modern punctuation was strongly rhetorical" (18).
While early modern punctuation clearly has meaning to its audiences, that meaning can be difficult to decipher. An editor's task in punctuating the text, therefore, is to try to communicate, as clearly as possible, the apparent intention of the original (18).
Following Gary Taylor's logic (c.f. "Inventing Shakespeare") that every editor reconstructs a text's author in his or her own image, every editor participates in the process of "authorial reconstruction" (20).
"When textual corruption of some kind seems beyond dispute, the exact form of emendation should take can be far from clear" (21).
Erne cites Mercutio's "We waste our lights in vaine, lights lights by day" as being a circumstance where emendation is necessary (21). I note this primarily because I disagree with it. Emendation may be possible, but the line, as printed carries with it performative possibilities for the actor, and the line as printed may therefore be exceptionally informative, although if left un-emended, it is worth a gloss.
"Clearly, it is hard to draw the line between what is and what is not desirable emendation, between legitimately fixing the text when it is broken and meddling with it in ways which seem unnecessary or downright harmful" (22).
Taylor opts for a more expansive and creative approach to emendation than most modern editors would take when he uses George Wilkins' The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre to help rewrite the text of Pericles in a number of places (23).
Peter Blayney examined copies of the Folio in the Folger and determined that, what Jeanne Addison Roberts argued was an 'f' in 1978 ("so rare a wondered father and a (wise|wife)") was actually a blot of ink on a long s, and so returned to the reading as "wise" (24 - 25). I kind of want to see his evidence; I wonder if he took any pictures while examining it under 200x magnification. See his Arden 3 Tempest for more info.
Setting short lines together into a metrically regular line is a practice that has precedent in Ben Jonson's treatment of his own collected works, and while this sometimes couples lines that metrically and syntactically go together, and editor must be careful to not force lines together by meter when they are divided by sense (28).
c.f. Patricia Parker's "Altering the Letter of Twelfth Night: 'Some Are Born Great' and the Missing Signature," Shakespeare Survey, 59 (2006), 49 - 62.
Act and scene divisions in modern editions are largely a matter of editorial fancy; none of the playbooks printed in Shakespeare's life time contain act and scene divisions (34 - 35). We have elsewhere seen that the act and scene divisions in the Folio text are not uniform.
Scenes seem to have been the basic measure of dramatic unity, but Henslowe's Diary records writing plays by acts as early as the 1590s (35). Although as I have said before, if to my cast if not here, I don't think it fair to even attempt a guess at where the original act divisions in Merry Devil may be since the text is cut.
The "dominant consideration" for modern editors in determining a speech prefix is clarity of meaning, and while normalizing speech prefixes can subvert layers of meaning that a variation reflects, normalizing and expanding them will tend to produce a more readable text (39 - 40).
Summary
I'll leave off with Erne's words: Editing is "a task which requires considerable discrimination and can have important critical repercussions. Editors modernize and punctuate, name characters, determine who is present on stage, print speeches in prose or verse, choose specific words at the expense of others, even decide when a character is no longer a king - and in the process determine what constitutes Shakespeare's works" (42).
Citation
Erne, Lukas. Shakespeare's Modern Collaborator's. London: Continuum. 2008. Print.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Notes on "(Dis)Embodied Letters"
c.f. Jerome McGann The Textual Condition.
Leah Marcus, in her article "Textual Indeterminacy and Ideological Difference: The Case of Dr. Faustus" (Renaissance Drama n.s. 20 (1989): 1-29), argues that both the A and B texts of Dr. Faustus can claim aesthetic integrity in their own right, and that neither comes any closer to "the absent authorial presence we call Marlowe" (284).
"post-structuralist theory has taught us [that] the idea of the original is not only misleading, but wholly illusory" (285).
Traditional textual critics typically attempt to link texts to an authorial agent as a way of authorizing their own interpretations of text, but while texts may be understood as the instruments of an authorial agent, they also bear traces of "nonagential" composition. Shakespearean texts are the product of collaborative intervention from agents of printshops, scriveners, and playhouses, and thus so-called "accidentals" form an essential part of a text (286).
"Texts -- like history -- exist in spite of us" (287).
The text of Antonio's letter to Bassanio is, in the folio text, clearly set off in italic text, and is otherwise unassigned: while Portia is given a speech prefix before and after the reading of the letter, no speech prefix is assigned to the letter itself (290). "[The letter] has no voice (that Portia or Bassanio voices the letter on stage is either purely conjectural or merely convenient)" (emphasis mine) (291). What a load of crap. It is conjectural in so far as a servant, or some other present person on stage may read the letter, but it is not "merely convenient," it is theatrically necessary. Stern has shown how letters were often separated from their surrounding texts, but if the letter was not meant to be read out loud, nothing at all would have been printed on it. There is an insignificant chance that anyone would have seen the text of the letter on the comparatively intimate Blackfriars stage, let alone at the Globe.
In his 1987 New Cambridge edition of Merchant, M. M. Mahood proposes that the distinction between Solanio, Salarino, and Salerio is one that can be resolved by a director in performance, which very likely was what would have happened in Shakespeare's company, but the three characters ought to be preserved in print because they were all present in the manuscript (295 - 296). This presumes that the manuscript can be reconstructed through print, and we should know better by now, but also "constitutes a performative version of the logocentrism described by Derrida: spoken language is imagined as prior to and more immediate than the written" (297). Ah.... I wasn't going to pull Derrida into this, but if someone else wants to, who am I to argue?
"It seems to me not much to matter how there came to be three characters with such names in the Hayes quarto, but simply that there came to be these three "letteral" configurations we have decided to call characters. The matter of the three Sallies is important here not because it stands as yet another site for our intervention in the attempt to solve a textual crux, but rather precisely because it marks the eruption -- inexplicable and yet undeniable -- of the accidental" (303).
"To clean up accidents in a text is to construct a narrativized world of total causality and accountability, a purely rational world in which everything is under control" (305 - 306). Such practice is untenable; it can only create texts within the historiographical framework of the editorial narrative. As Mahood demonstrates, there are no fewer than 16 "characters" (where each speech prefix and potential variant spelling represents its own unique character) in Merchant, and each are just as authorial as the other (306).
Citation
Marchitello, Howard. "(Dis)Embodied Letters and The Merchant of Venice: Writing, Editing, History." Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 283 - 311. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Leah Marcus, in her article "Textual Indeterminacy and Ideological Difference: The Case of Dr. Faustus" (Renaissance Drama n.s. 20 (1989): 1-29), argues that both the A and B texts of Dr. Faustus can claim aesthetic integrity in their own right, and that neither comes any closer to "the absent authorial presence we call Marlowe" (284).
"post-structuralist theory has taught us [that] the idea of the original is not only misleading, but wholly illusory" (285).
Traditional textual critics typically attempt to link texts to an authorial agent as a way of authorizing their own interpretations of text, but while texts may be understood as the instruments of an authorial agent, they also bear traces of "nonagential" composition. Shakespearean texts are the product of collaborative intervention from agents of printshops, scriveners, and playhouses, and thus so-called "accidentals" form an essential part of a text (286).
"Texts -- like history -- exist in spite of us" (287).
The text of Antonio's letter to Bassanio is, in the folio text, clearly set off in italic text, and is otherwise unassigned: while Portia is given a speech prefix before and after the reading of the letter, no speech prefix is assigned to the letter itself (290). "[The letter] has no voice (that Portia or Bassanio voices the letter on stage is either purely conjectural or merely convenient)" (emphasis mine) (291). What a load of crap. It is conjectural in so far as a servant, or some other present person on stage may read the letter, but it is not "merely convenient," it is theatrically necessary. Stern has shown how letters were often separated from their surrounding texts, but if the letter was not meant to be read out loud, nothing at all would have been printed on it. There is an insignificant chance that anyone would have seen the text of the letter on the comparatively intimate Blackfriars stage, let alone at the Globe.
In his 1987 New Cambridge edition of Merchant, M. M. Mahood proposes that the distinction between Solanio, Salarino, and Salerio is one that can be resolved by a director in performance, which very likely was what would have happened in Shakespeare's company, but the three characters ought to be preserved in print because they were all present in the manuscript (295 - 296). This presumes that the manuscript can be reconstructed through print, and we should know better by now, but also "constitutes a performative version of the logocentrism described by Derrida: spoken language is imagined as prior to and more immediate than the written" (297). Ah.... I wasn't going to pull Derrida into this, but if someone else wants to, who am I to argue?
"It seems to me not much to matter how there came to be three characters with such names in the Hayes quarto, but simply that there came to be these three "letteral" configurations we have decided to call characters. The matter of the three Sallies is important here not because it stands as yet another site for our intervention in the attempt to solve a textual crux, but rather precisely because it marks the eruption -- inexplicable and yet undeniable -- of the accidental" (303).
"To clean up accidents in a text is to construct a narrativized world of total causality and accountability, a purely rational world in which everything is under control" (305 - 306). Such practice is untenable; it can only create texts within the historiographical framework of the editorial narrative. As Mahood demonstrates, there are no fewer than 16 "characters" (where each speech prefix and potential variant spelling represents its own unique character) in Merchant, and each are just as authorial as the other (306).
Citation
Marchitello, Howard. "(Dis)Embodied Letters and The Merchant of Venice: Writing, Editing, History." Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 283 - 311. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Notes on "What is an Editor?"
"Textual practice for the past twenty years has been increasingly faced with the necessity of abandoning the notion that was basic to the bibliography practiced by Greg and Bowers, that by comparing texts we can arrive at a single, authentic, original, a reconstruction of the author's final manuscript" (117).
Playtexts are built with a fluidity that enabled them to change as the conditions of performance change, and thus the printed text represents only a single stage of an ongoing process. Writers complaining that players have altered their scripts in performance helps demonstrate this point (117).
Uuncorrected sheets were bound into books with corrected ones, and there was nothing in print technology that required this: it is merely reflective of a Renaissance mindset that saw printed books as a fluid medium (117). I disagree with this, partially based on some of the other notes in this journal: hiring a proofreader was an added expense, and wouldn't always be done, and since time was money, when a proof reader was employed, even if only checking for typographical errors, it would mean idle press time to stop the press for the ten minutes Orgel says would have been necessary.
The fundamental assumption of most editors is that there is a "perfect" text that the editor should be true to in creating new editions of that text (118).
Producing a modernized text is not the best way to preserve the print archeology of the originals, but it is necessary to make Shakespeare accessible to the majority of modern readers, and thus the two key tasks of an editor are irreconcilable (119).
"Every facsimile is identical to every other one, and in this respect facsimiles falsify the essential nature of the Renaissance book" (121).
Summary
Orgel observes the material instability of the printed book, and the material instability of text itself ("proud" vs "provd" in Sonnet 129). He never says what an editor is, or proscribes a practice for editing, but instead illustrates that editors will often seek two contradictory goals in creating their editions. Editorial logic will, of necessity, be left to the individual judgment of the editor and the needs of the editor's audience.
Citation
Orgel, Stephen. "What is an Editor?" Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 117 - 123. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Playtexts are built with a fluidity that enabled them to change as the conditions of performance change, and thus the printed text represents only a single stage of an ongoing process. Writers complaining that players have altered their scripts in performance helps demonstrate this point (117).
Uuncorrected sheets were bound into books with corrected ones, and there was nothing in print technology that required this: it is merely reflective of a Renaissance mindset that saw printed books as a fluid medium (117). I disagree with this, partially based on some of the other notes in this journal: hiring a proofreader was an added expense, and wouldn't always be done, and since time was money, when a proof reader was employed, even if only checking for typographical errors, it would mean idle press time to stop the press for the ten minutes Orgel says would have been necessary.
The fundamental assumption of most editors is that there is a "perfect" text that the editor should be true to in creating new editions of that text (118).
Producing a modernized text is not the best way to preserve the print archeology of the originals, but it is necessary to make Shakespeare accessible to the majority of modern readers, and thus the two key tasks of an editor are irreconcilable (119).
"Every facsimile is identical to every other one, and in this respect facsimiles falsify the essential nature of the Renaissance book" (121).
Summary
Orgel observes the material instability of the printed book, and the material instability of text itself ("proud" vs "provd" in Sonnet 129). He never says what an editor is, or proscribes a practice for editing, but instead illustrates that editors will often seek two contradictory goals in creating their editions. Editorial logic will, of necessity, be left to the individual judgment of the editor and the needs of the editor's audience.
Citation
Orgel, Stephen. "What is an Editor?" Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 117 - 123. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Notes on "Back by Popular Demand"
The absence of the choruses from the quarto makes that text fundamentally different from the folio, and where critics like to point to the ambiguity of national politics and militarism that Henry V implies, the textual justification for those implications are found only in the folio text. The only reference to a contemporary event in the canon, the comparison to Essex's expedition, and the reminder that all of Henry's gains will be lost by his successor are both absent from the quarto text (315).
Despite the assumption that the folio text of Henry V is set from the "acting edition" of the play, there is no evidence to support this, and while we will never know what was actually acted on the London stages, it is quite probable that the quarto text actually represents a closer approximation to performance than the folio (316).
Greg's theory of memorially reconstructed texts does not adequately account for the gaps between the quarto and folio text: whole scenes and sense-changing speeches are completely left out, and the theory of an actor with a bad memory creating a transcription cannot account for the absence of such crucial material (317).
Wells and Taylor argue that the quarto of Henry V represents a memorial construction of a previously performed text cut for touring, and argue that the reduction in the quarto removes thirteen speaking parts (321 - 322). King, of course, disagrees.
Taylor himself admits problems with his theory: cast reduction cannot have been the motivation for the removal of the first scene, which casts a cynical eye on the military affair as the English Court tries to invent reasons to invade France, or of the Jamy/MacMorris scene, or of the substitution of Clarence for Bedford, or of some of the cuts in the Harfleur scene (322).
"No single hypothesis is likely to be able to explain all the instances of textual divergence; and... it is better to admit this in advance than be forced to introduce exceptions that shake the primary hypothesis at its roots" (322 - 323).
English monarchs were always interested in controlling the narrative of history, and Elizabeth was no exception. The printing of Q Henry V, coming as it did on the heels of the Essex rebellion, The LC's Men's involvement in the presentation of Henry IV the night before, and in the face of a 1 June 1599 Bishop's Order prohibiting the printing of histories, was likely to be censored if the LC's men did not censor the text themselves; removing the choruses and other controversial scenes turns the play into an unproblematic celebration of a popular monarch, whom audiences would have likely instinctively linked with Elizabeth (325 - 330).
Summary
Theatrical considerations may not be the only ones that lead to the abridgment of a text, whether for print, performance, or both. Patterson succinctly demonstrates how the quarto version of Henry V could represent an edition of the text made for political expediency, and creates an implicit warning about trying to understand the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries outside of the political and professional context of the late 16th/early 17th century professional London playhouses.
Citation
Patterson, Annabel. "Back by Popular Demand: The Two Versions of Henry V." Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. p. 313 - 346. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Notes on "The Mechanics of Culture"
Speaking of Shakespeare's originals, Kastan writes "no manuscripts survive to compare with and correct the printed editions, and an appeal to their existence can be no more than hypothetical and in fact seems disturbingly circular." A manuscript is imagined based on perceived defects in a printed text (other than purely typographical ones), but while the manuscript does not materially exist (as best as we now know), neither do the defects (147).
No "foul papers" from any author of the period survive, and Paul Werstine argues that the existence of these foul papers is a product of the desire of editors to possess Shakespeare's plays in some unmediated form. The good quartos derive their goodness from their proximity to a collection of papers that does not exist (147).
"Plays always register multiple intentions, often conflicting intentions, as actors, annotators, revisers, collaborators, scribes, compositors, printers, and proofreaders, in addition to the playright, all have a hand in shaping the play-text: but editions of plays tend to idealize the activity of authorship" (147).
The aim of eclectic editing, which seeks to recover authorial intentions by a collation and analysis of a play that he never actually wrote, isolates Shakespeare from the immediate historical context of the professional playhouses of Tudor-Stuart London (148).
"To recognize that authorial intentions not only operate alongside of but in fact demand nonauthorial intentions for their realization is to restore the text to its full historicity" (149).
Even facsimiles represent idealized forms of the printed text; given the printshop practice of binding both corrected and uncorrected sheets into books, it is extremely unlikely that any two copies of a single book would have been identical, but the creation of a facsimile shrouds that variation. It also shrouds the materiality of the printed form itself, occluding the quality of the paper, the ink, and other physical characteristics of the printed book (150).
"If edited versions, then, usually idealize the activity of authorship, facsimile versions work to idealize the printed text" (150).
"In reality there is no other way to engage the play [than in edited form], for from its very first appearance as text it has been edited, mediated by agents other than the author, and intended for the convenience of its readers" (151).
"The text is always constructed, and its making and remaking are not evidence of its contamination but are the enabling conditions of its being. This is not to say that it makes no difference in what form the play appears, only that no specific form of the play represents (what can only be a fantasy of) the true original" (151).
Summary
Kastan's argument seems to run along the lines of you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, so why worry about it? If the idea of recovering authorial intentions beyond the materiality of the printed texts we have is based more on wishful thinking than on fact, so is the idea of the purity of the material object. Far from encouraging an attitude of "can't win, don't try," Kastan seems to advocate the creation of text of the most utility to the intended audience, with the caution that we remember the ephemerality of the materials with which we work.
Citation
Kastan, David Scott. "The Mechanics of Culture: Editing Shakespeare Today." Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. . 144 - 151. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
No "foul papers" from any author of the period survive, and Paul Werstine argues that the existence of these foul papers is a product of the desire of editors to possess Shakespeare's plays in some unmediated form. The good quartos derive their goodness from their proximity to a collection of papers that does not exist (147).
"Plays always register multiple intentions, often conflicting intentions, as actors, annotators, revisers, collaborators, scribes, compositors, printers, and proofreaders, in addition to the playright, all have a hand in shaping the play-text: but editions of plays tend to idealize the activity of authorship" (147).
The aim of eclectic editing, which seeks to recover authorial intentions by a collation and analysis of a play that he never actually wrote, isolates Shakespeare from the immediate historical context of the professional playhouses of Tudor-Stuart London (148).
"To recognize that authorial intentions not only operate alongside of but in fact demand nonauthorial intentions for their realization is to restore the text to its full historicity" (149).
Even facsimiles represent idealized forms of the printed text; given the printshop practice of binding both corrected and uncorrected sheets into books, it is extremely unlikely that any two copies of a single book would have been identical, but the creation of a facsimile shrouds that variation. It also shrouds the materiality of the printed form itself, occluding the quality of the paper, the ink, and other physical characteristics of the printed book (150).
"If edited versions, then, usually idealize the activity of authorship, facsimile versions work to idealize the printed text" (150).
"In reality there is no other way to engage the play [than in edited form], for from its very first appearance as text it has been edited, mediated by agents other than the author, and intended for the convenience of its readers" (151).
"The text is always constructed, and its making and remaking are not evidence of its contamination but are the enabling conditions of its being. This is not to say that it makes no difference in what form the play appears, only that no specific form of the play represents (what can only be a fantasy of) the true original" (151).
Summary
Kastan's argument seems to run along the lines of you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, so why worry about it? If the idea of recovering authorial intentions beyond the materiality of the printed texts we have is based more on wishful thinking than on fact, so is the idea of the purity of the material object. Far from encouraging an attitude of "can't win, don't try," Kastan seems to advocate the creation of text of the most utility to the intended audience, with the caution that we remember the ephemerality of the materials with which we work.
Citation
Kastan, David Scott. "The Mechanics of Culture: Editing Shakespeare Today." Shakespeare: The Critical Context. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999. . 144 - 151. Print. Dual pagination is given for all works in this volume, but since the table of contents follows the pagination running at the bottom center of each page, this is the pagination that I have followed in my citations.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Notes on "Principles of Emendation in Shakespeare"
"The fact is that there is only one general principle of emendation, which is that emendation is in its essence devoid of principle" (1).
"Emendation is an art," and while there are no general principles of emendation that can guide great editors, there are some basic rules that will help lesser editors (1). Honestly, all of this double talk just doesn't make any sense to me.
Any editor would do well to remember two facts: even careful authors do not always write the most sensible phrases, and sometimes it will be impossible to trace the agency of corruption in a particular text (4).
"When we have satisfied ourselves that an emendation is acceptable, the next question we ought to ask is what it implies with respect to the history and origin of the text" (5).
"The central point at which I am aiming is this: that no emendation can, or ought to be, considered in vacuo, but that criticism must always proceed in relation to what we know, or what we surmise, respecting the history of the text" (6). I had initially paraphrased this in the manner that follows, but F.P. Wilson saw fit to quote this passage on p. 97 of Shakespeare and the New Bibliography, so I have included it in my notes after reading it there.
No single emendation can be made without considering the historical context of the work at hand, and when more than one emendation is made, they should not involve mutually contradictory origin theories (6).
When editing plays that exist in only one version, such as the plays that were first printed in F1, beyond the general suitability to the text, there are only two general guides that an editor has at their disposal: a knowledge of the kinds of errors a compositor is likely to make in reading a text, and of the kinds of errors he is likely to make in setting the text (8). Greg loves his binaries.
In cases where there are two texts from the period, one may be taken as a correction of the other, and where the texts have common errors, it is probable that the error stems from a misreading of authorial manuscript. In this cases, it is helpful to consider what interpretation was placed on this corruption, especially by the actors who probably used it (9).
By the same logic, when a reading is specifically preserved in two extant texts, it may be a sign that it is correct, and should be retained (10). Admittedly, this is one of the reasons that I preserved "the nun will soon at night turn lippit" instead of "tippet." Lippit is a nonsense word and a clear misreading, but it is preserved in all six quartos, and tippet is perfectly sensible, if a little obscure to a modern audience, that has performative implications (i.e. Miliscent wearing a monk's robe as part of her escape). Looking back on it, I made the wrong choice, and so will generally disagree with Greg's logic here.
When considering instances in the Folio where the Folio version was apparently set from an earlier quarto, Greg says "where the texts differ, one possesses vastly greater authority than the other: where they agree, we not only have direct transcriptional witness to what the author wrote, but we know, subject to certain exceptions, that this was what was actually spoken on stage" (14). Again, I find this claim to be dubious.
For those texts in which a "good" quarto corrected a "bad" quarto, and then was used to print the Folio, the bad Romeo and Juliet is better than the good text. Greg sees this as an opportunity for "critical exploration" (21).
Summary
It's kind of hard for me to honestly evaluate W.W. Greg. He certainly makes a great deal of sense at times, but his subscription to the New Bibliography's narrative colors his view of the evidence, but I am encouraged by his ability to see that the bad quarto of Romeo and Juliet, at least, isn't all that bad. I can't help but think there is more science to emendation than Greg lets on, even if it is a science that is particular to a text, or to a set of texts. As each text needs to be regarded on its own terms, the specifics of emendation are specific to the text(s) being edited, however similar governing principles to that process seem to apply.
Citation
Greg, W.W. "Principles of Emendation in Shakespeare." Proceedings of the British Academy. Annual Shakespeare Lecture. Read 23 May 1928. Print.
"Emendation is an art," and while there are no general principles of emendation that can guide great editors, there are some basic rules that will help lesser editors (1). Honestly, all of this double talk just doesn't make any sense to me.
Any editor would do well to remember two facts: even careful authors do not always write the most sensible phrases, and sometimes it will be impossible to trace the agency of corruption in a particular text (4).
"When we have satisfied ourselves that an emendation is acceptable, the next question we ought to ask is what it implies with respect to the history and origin of the text" (5).
"The central point at which I am aiming is this: that no emendation can, or ought to be, considered in vacuo, but that criticism must always proceed in relation to what we know, or what we surmise, respecting the history of the text" (6). I had initially paraphrased this in the manner that follows, but F.P. Wilson saw fit to quote this passage on p. 97 of Shakespeare and the New Bibliography, so I have included it in my notes after reading it there.
No single emendation can be made without considering the historical context of the work at hand, and when more than one emendation is made, they should not involve mutually contradictory origin theories (6).
When editing plays that exist in only one version, such as the plays that were first printed in F1, beyond the general suitability to the text, there are only two general guides that an editor has at their disposal: a knowledge of the kinds of errors a compositor is likely to make in reading a text, and of the kinds of errors he is likely to make in setting the text (8). Greg loves his binaries.
In cases where there are two texts from the period, one may be taken as a correction of the other, and where the texts have common errors, it is probable that the error stems from a misreading of authorial manuscript. In this cases, it is helpful to consider what interpretation was placed on this corruption, especially by the actors who probably used it (9).
By the same logic, when a reading is specifically preserved in two extant texts, it may be a sign that it is correct, and should be retained (10). Admittedly, this is one of the reasons that I preserved "the nun will soon at night turn lippit" instead of "tippet." Lippit is a nonsense word and a clear misreading, but it is preserved in all six quartos, and tippet is perfectly sensible, if a little obscure to a modern audience, that has performative implications (i.e. Miliscent wearing a monk's robe as part of her escape). Looking back on it, I made the wrong choice, and so will generally disagree with Greg's logic here.
When considering instances in the Folio where the Folio version was apparently set from an earlier quarto, Greg says "where the texts differ, one possesses vastly greater authority than the other: where they agree, we not only have direct transcriptional witness to what the author wrote, but we know, subject to certain exceptions, that this was what was actually spoken on stage" (14). Again, I find this claim to be dubious.
For those texts in which a "good" quarto corrected a "bad" quarto, and then was used to print the Folio, the bad Romeo and Juliet is better than the good text. Greg sees this as an opportunity for "critical exploration" (21).
Summary
It's kind of hard for me to honestly evaluate W.W. Greg. He certainly makes a great deal of sense at times, but his subscription to the New Bibliography's narrative colors his view of the evidence, but I am encouraged by his ability to see that the bad quarto of Romeo and Juliet, at least, isn't all that bad. I can't help but think there is more science to emendation than Greg lets on, even if it is a science that is particular to a text, or to a set of texts. As each text needs to be regarded on its own terms, the specifics of emendation are specific to the text(s) being edited, however similar governing principles to that process seem to apply.
Citation
Greg, W.W. "Principles of Emendation in Shakespeare." Proceedings of the British Academy. Annual Shakespeare Lecture. Read 23 May 1928. Print.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Conclusion
"What earlier chapters have not emphasized enough is the fact that the process of 'perfecting' a play text did not stop with its transmission into print but extended to its readers" (196).
See the address to the reader in Thomas Lodge's translation of Seneca's works (2nd ed: STC 22214, 1620): "If thou wilt Correct, bee considerate before thou attempt, lest in pretending to roote out one, thou commit many errors" (196).
Writers and publishers of the early modern period commonly begged pardon for the errors that had passed into the printed editions of their texts, and offered that the typographical errors could be either be ignored or corrected by any keen eyed readers of their texts (198).
Addresses to the reader apologizing for errors and inviting the reader to correct the text demonstrate that printers of early modern texts understood and treated their product as imperfect, and perfectable by the consumer of that text (199).
The preparation of copy text was function-specific rather than agent-specific; several agents, including annotating readers, correcting authors, printers, and typesetters would have corrected a text as it was committed and re-committed to print (201).
"While copy-text editors value and strive to recover the author's first or second thoughts imperfectly reproduced by the printed text, the un-editors idealize the material integrity of the early playbooks by arguing in favor of their presentation to the modern reader in photographic facsimiles or digital images. Neither approach considers the possibility that the early modern printed text was understood as a process, as opposed to a finite and definitive state anterior or immanent to the material witness itself" (204).
Since the early modern printed text was a process, it is less valuable to view a single printed book as a perfected artifact of the print process. Likewise, just because early modern readers would have viewed a perfected text, even by a non-authorial agent, as preferable to a non-perfected one does not mean that a 21st century editor necessarily should do the same. Editing is intrinsically linked to its broader cultural context (204).
Conclusion
I think Massai concludes her own work rather nicely with this: "However editors decide to carry out [their] task, a better understanding of ow early modern printed playbooks were produced seems vitally important to ensure that readers are not misled into thinking that what they are offered are texts which reflect stable authorial or theatrical intentions" (205).
Citation
Massai, Sonia. Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2007. Print.
See the address to the reader in Thomas Lodge's translation of Seneca's works (2nd ed: STC 22214, 1620): "If thou wilt Correct, bee considerate before thou attempt, lest in pretending to roote out one, thou commit many errors" (196).
Writers and publishers of the early modern period commonly begged pardon for the errors that had passed into the printed editions of their texts, and offered that the typographical errors could be either be ignored or corrected by any keen eyed readers of their texts (198).
Addresses to the reader apologizing for errors and inviting the reader to correct the text demonstrate that printers of early modern texts understood and treated their product as imperfect, and perfectable by the consumer of that text (199).
The preparation of copy text was function-specific rather than agent-specific; several agents, including annotating readers, correcting authors, printers, and typesetters would have corrected a text as it was committed and re-committed to print (201).
"While copy-text editors value and strive to recover the author's first or second thoughts imperfectly reproduced by the printed text, the un-editors idealize the material integrity of the early playbooks by arguing in favor of their presentation to the modern reader in photographic facsimiles or digital images. Neither approach considers the possibility that the early modern printed text was understood as a process, as opposed to a finite and definitive state anterior or immanent to the material witness itself" (204).
Since the early modern printed text was a process, it is less valuable to view a single printed book as a perfected artifact of the print process. Likewise, just because early modern readers would have viewed a perfected text, even by a non-authorial agent, as preferable to a non-perfected one does not mean that a 21st century editor necessarily should do the same. Editing is intrinsically linked to its broader cultural context (204).
Conclusion
I think Massai concludes her own work rather nicely with this: "However editors decide to carry out [their] task, a better understanding of ow early modern printed playbooks were produced seems vitally important to ensure that readers are not misled into thinking that what they are offered are texts which reflect stable authorial or theatrical intentions" (205).
Citation
Massai, Sonia. Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2007. Print.
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Chapter 6
While scholars have rightly paid a great deal of attention to the development of the First Folio, and to the editorial tradition of Shakespeare's texts that Nicholas Rowe initiated in 1709, other printings of the Folio are regarded with scorn and derision, despite the evidence of editorial revision evident in some of these Folio printings (180).
Rowe used the Fourth Folio (F4) as the basis for his edition, and other 18th century editors followed suite, until Dr. Johnson argued for the textual superiority of F1 over other editions of the 17th century (181).
Despite the fact that Rowe began an editorial tradition that held sway until the 1980s, his changes to his F4 copy text are largely cosmetic. Some of these changes in F4 are clearly not accidental or the result of compositorial tampering (181).
Perceptions of F4 as a corrupt reprint of F3 derive mostly from Black and Shaaber's Shakespeare's Seventeenth Century Editors, 1632 - 1685, wherein they argue that the printing of F4 was shared by three different printers, and thus 'some or all of the changes found in F4 may be the work of three different correctors of the press, each regularly employed in one of the three printing offices involved.' It is noteworthy, however, that even Black and Shaaber found fault with their own theories, recognizing that the Cambridge editors (some of their work was based on the Cambridge Shakespeare 2nd Ed.) 'collated [F4] somewhat negligently' (182).
Certain instances in progressive emendations to Corialanus from F1 to F4 show that F4, while presenting emendations to the text that are not as satisfactory as some more recent editions, does perfect the text of previous Folios to restore sense and meaning to the lines (183 - 184).
"Both the Statute of Anne and Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare's Works were issued in 1709. The trigger for the rise of the professional editor of Shakespeare, in other words, was not only the increasing literary status enjoyed by his works, but also a wider legal impulse towards the definition of intellectual property, including editorial activities" (190).
Annotators of copy for print in the 17th century were guided by an impulse to correct the text to determine the best possible reading, but the named editors of the 18th century attempted to correct the text in order to recover Shakespeare's original words. "The recognition of editorial labour as intellectual property implied the recognition of the primacy of authorial intentions in the interpretation of a literary work" (191).
Conclusion
There is a thin line between the editorial practice of Nicholas Rowe and those anonymous editors who prepared the second, third, and fourth Folios of Shakespeare's works for print. As editorial practice developed into the pursuit of biographical and bibliographic knowledge of the author and his circumstances, it grew distinct from the early modern practice of perfecting texts for print. The same criticisms some modern editors have levied at earlier ones could often be applied to the anonymous annotators of the early modern period, who were more concerned with crafting legible texts than with developing bibliographies.
While modern editors will often view F4 as corrupt because it is farther removed from what Shakespeare wrote than the other Folios, it has been carefully prepared from annotated copy to restore sense to several passages that were otherwise senseless, some from the very beginning. Modern bibliography may dismiss such endeavors, but they were seen as improvements by the first generation of named editors.
Rowe used the Fourth Folio (F4) as the basis for his edition, and other 18th century editors followed suite, until Dr. Johnson argued for the textual superiority of F1 over other editions of the 17th century (181).
Despite the fact that Rowe began an editorial tradition that held sway until the 1980s, his changes to his F4 copy text are largely cosmetic. Some of these changes in F4 are clearly not accidental or the result of compositorial tampering (181).
Perceptions of F4 as a corrupt reprint of F3 derive mostly from Black and Shaaber's Shakespeare's Seventeenth Century Editors, 1632 - 1685, wherein they argue that the printing of F4 was shared by three different printers, and thus 'some or all of the changes found in F4 may be the work of three different correctors of the press, each regularly employed in one of the three printing offices involved.' It is noteworthy, however, that even Black and Shaaber found fault with their own theories, recognizing that the Cambridge editors (some of their work was based on the Cambridge Shakespeare 2nd Ed.) 'collated [F4] somewhat negligently' (182).
Certain instances in progressive emendations to Corialanus from F1 to F4 show that F4, while presenting emendations to the text that are not as satisfactory as some more recent editions, does perfect the text of previous Folios to restore sense and meaning to the lines (183 - 184).
"Both the Statute of Anne and Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare's Works were issued in 1709. The trigger for the rise of the professional editor of Shakespeare, in other words, was not only the increasing literary status enjoyed by his works, but also a wider legal impulse towards the definition of intellectual property, including editorial activities" (190).
Annotators of copy for print in the 17th century were guided by an impulse to correct the text to determine the best possible reading, but the named editors of the 18th century attempted to correct the text in order to recover Shakespeare's original words. "The recognition of editorial labour as intellectual property implied the recognition of the primacy of authorial intentions in the interpretation of a literary work" (191).
Conclusion
There is a thin line between the editorial practice of Nicholas Rowe and those anonymous editors who prepared the second, third, and fourth Folios of Shakespeare's works for print. As editorial practice developed into the pursuit of biographical and bibliographic knowledge of the author and his circumstances, it grew distinct from the early modern practice of perfecting texts for print. The same criticisms some modern editors have levied at earlier ones could often be applied to the anonymous annotators of the early modern period, who were more concerned with crafting legible texts than with developing bibliographies.
While modern editors will often view F4 as corrupt because it is farther removed from what Shakespeare wrote than the other Folios, it has been carefully prepared from annotated copy to restore sense to several passages that were otherwise senseless, some from the very beginning. Modern bibliography may dismiss such endeavors, but they were seen as improvements by the first generation of named editors.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Notes from "The Kindest Cut" Forum
Mary Baldwin College's Shakespeare and Performance Program hosted the second of their discussion forums on the theory and practice of cutting the texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries this past Sunday (Nov 14), and you better believe I was there with my keyboard clacking away. Between Merry Devil, the upcoming Second Shepherds' Play, and my Dramaturgy class, I've had to do more textual emendation than someone who isn't getting paid good money for it should have to in a semester, and lets face it, I'm not done yet. So here are some notes from the event. Please be advised that this was one of those situations where there was so much good stuff flying around the room that I couldn't keep up, so while representative of the discussion, these notes are far from complete, and I offer my advance apologies if I have mis-noted anywhere below as I very likely have done so.
Serving as our panelists were Lue Douthit, Director of Literary Production and Dramaturgy at the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Alan Armstrong, dramaturg at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Emeritus Professor of Humanities and Director of the Center for Shakespeare Studies, Southern Oregon University (and visiting professor here at Mary Baldwin), and John Harrell, one of the most long serving members of the resident acting company at the American Shakespeare Center.
Before beginning the question and answer session, Paul Menzer, who moderated, invited the panelists to share some opening remarks.
Lue Douthit
The answer to any question you ask anyone in the theatre is "it depends." Thus is her answer to the question of if you cut the text. The process of cutting the text as specific to the performance with the company of actors she is working on at the moment. Douthit recounts that she once cut the "double double toil and trouble lines" from Macbeth, and that she would not do so again.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival operates, with the exception of certain plays such as King Lear and Hamlet, under a three-hour rule as its primary principle of cutting the text. Likewise, different spaces will limit the availability of actors: the indoorspace, for example, has only twelve dressing room spaces, and so the cast size is limited.
Dramaturgy is the study of dramatic structure. Every play has structure or bones, and if you can determine the structure of the play you can best determine what is to be cut. You thus should not simply cut 20% of everyone's lines as a rule, as that will create a cut that will not necessarily conform to the structure of the play.
Different actors bring different skill sets, and changes in the cast should influence the cutting of the text. Cross gendered casting also plays into OSF performance, and there they must likewise make the decision as to whether it is a woman playing a man, or whether the role is amended to female.
"If you don't cut enough by the first day of rehearsal, it is a horrible bargaining process that happens." Actors will not necessarily deliver the lines at the pace the dramaturg/director anticipates, and once actors start working with the text it becomes difficult to get them to release lines. In a recent Love's Labour's Lost at OSF they have cut into the structure of the play, with the theory that they could be more generous to actors who wanted to put things back into the play.
Alan Armstrong
Echoes the idea that "it depends." For his recent production of Hamlet at the Bohmer, the director and the actor playing Hamlet had prepared a cut of the text before Armstrong got to it. At that point, the
approximate running time was close to four hours, and even following dramaturgical meetings, only an additional four minute s was cut.
Armstrong pursues the policy of dramaturg as "devil's advocate." Even if you agree with the cuts, the job of the dramaturg is to think through the logic of the cuts and the implication of those cuts on the play.
Armstrong offers the example of 4.4 of 1 Henry IV as an example of a big cut. The characters in the scene do not re-appear in the play, and they provide no new information. It is therefore a wonderful candidate for a cut. However, King Henry mentions the Archbishop of York at the end of the play, and also figured prominently in the rebellion of 2 Henry IV. The character "seems to be a trailer for part 2" in some ways, and while Shakespeare gives York some personal motivations for rebellion in the scene, he drops those for the second part. Thus the structure of the play itself, and its impact on the sequel (since
they're running it in rep with 2 Henry IV) is also negligible. Armstrong argues that this small, private scene, sandwiched between two war council scenes as it is, may have been written for variety in the play (like similar scenes in the canon), or may have been designed to allow for a costume change. Cutting the
scene did not create any problems.
"Tracking the consequences is one of the most important thing that dramaturgs do."
John Harrell
discusses the difference between his cut for The Alchemist for the last Ren Season, and Look About You for the next. The Alchemist was cut from a prepared edition, but Look About You was in need of basic emendation (such as entrances and exits for characters), and thus they both have a different starting point.
Harrell has developed some basic guidelines to help him cutting the plays that have been colloquially referred to as "John's Don't List" over the past few days. It's been much requested, and lets face it, is probably the reason why you're reading this if you went to the talk. Without further adue:
Douthit
There's a difference between the five most known Shakespeare plays and everything else. "No one really cares if you cut Love's Labour's Lost."
Menzer
Something we've discussed so far is to be careful about cutting "information," but what constitutes "information?"
Armstrong
The history plays feature several long speeches where a lot of information is repeated, and it is tempting to cut some of those speeches in favor of a punchier dialog, but as Harrell says, repetition is sometimes part of the point. The scene in 1 Henry IV where King Henry and Hal come together in the middle of the play is also odd for modern audiences, as most modern audiences will want the play to feel like a tennis match, but the scene is a series of long speeches to Hal. The task of the dramaturg is to ask what is to be gained from the King's rant.
Ralph Alan Cohen (ASC Co-founder and Director of Mission)
Beware of cutting things you're afraid the audience won't understand, even when you understand it.
Matt Davies (MBC MLitt/MFA Program Professor)
Asks if, when you're cutting blank verse, if you feel the need to stitch the meter back into your cut.
Harrell and Cohen both respond that they try to. Douthit argues that, the more you know the structure of what is happening, the better you'll be able to decide whether this is necessary or desirable. She has sutured the verse together at times, but at others she is content to leave a few empty feet. Armstrong argues that it's the meter not that penta that's important, and will work much harder to keep the iamb than the line.
MFA Candidate Casey Caldwell asks if, over repeated cuttings, there is enough of the structure present in the play to indicate that certain things will be kept across cuttings, even if cutting is always circumstantial. Armstrong thinks this is true. "It's like filet on your fish, you kind of know where to put the knife in and where to follow."
Menzer asks if there has ever been a point when the dramaturgs realized they screwed up and cut too much or ineffectively.
MFA Candidate Paul Rycik asks about cutting prose, and how it compares to verse.
Menzer asks about leaving the offensive lines in, and how the ugliness of the language can be left intact, or when it shouldn't be left intact.
Douthit argues that Ben Jonson made his published Folio more literary than his plays performed, and that Hemings and Condell likely did the same for Shakespeare. She compares this to textual ambiguity in modern texts as contracts will specify that a company must produce the published text of a play by Tennessee Williams, but there are sometimes multiple versions of that text (an acting edition, a reading edition, etc), and that the contract will not specify which of these is the more correct.
Caldwell asks if the panelists think the plays were written to be cut.
Serving as our panelists were Lue Douthit, Director of Literary Production and Dramaturgy at the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Alan Armstrong, dramaturg at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Emeritus Professor of Humanities and Director of the Center for Shakespeare Studies, Southern Oregon University (and visiting professor here at Mary Baldwin), and John Harrell, one of the most long serving members of the resident acting company at the American Shakespeare Center.
Before beginning the question and answer session, Paul Menzer, who moderated, invited the panelists to share some opening remarks.
Lue Douthit
The answer to any question you ask anyone in the theatre is "it depends." Thus is her answer to the question of if you cut the text. The process of cutting the text as specific to the performance with the company of actors she is working on at the moment. Douthit recounts that she once cut the "double double toil and trouble lines" from Macbeth, and that she would not do so again.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival operates, with the exception of certain plays such as King Lear and Hamlet, under a three-hour rule as its primary principle of cutting the text. Likewise, different spaces will limit the availability of actors: the indoorspace, for example, has only twelve dressing room spaces, and so the cast size is limited.
Dramaturgy is the study of dramatic structure. Every play has structure or bones, and if you can determine the structure of the play you can best determine what is to be cut. You thus should not simply cut 20% of everyone's lines as a rule, as that will create a cut that will not necessarily conform to the structure of the play.
Different actors bring different skill sets, and changes in the cast should influence the cutting of the text. Cross gendered casting also plays into OSF performance, and there they must likewise make the decision as to whether it is a woman playing a man, or whether the role is amended to female.
"If you don't cut enough by the first day of rehearsal, it is a horrible bargaining process that happens." Actors will not necessarily deliver the lines at the pace the dramaturg/director anticipates, and once actors start working with the text it becomes difficult to get them to release lines. In a recent Love's Labour's Lost at OSF they have cut into the structure of the play, with the theory that they could be more generous to actors who wanted to put things back into the play.
Alan Armstrong
Echoes the idea that "it depends." For his recent production of Hamlet at the Bohmer, the director and the actor playing Hamlet had prepared a cut of the text before Armstrong got to it. At that point, the
approximate running time was close to four hours, and even following dramaturgical meetings, only an additional four minute s was cut.
Armstrong pursues the policy of dramaturg as "devil's advocate." Even if you agree with the cuts, the job of the dramaturg is to think through the logic of the cuts and the implication of those cuts on the play.
Armstrong offers the example of 4.4 of 1 Henry IV as an example of a big cut. The characters in the scene do not re-appear in the play, and they provide no new information. It is therefore a wonderful candidate for a cut. However, King Henry mentions the Archbishop of York at the end of the play, and also figured prominently in the rebellion of 2 Henry IV. The character "seems to be a trailer for part 2" in some ways, and while Shakespeare gives York some personal motivations for rebellion in the scene, he drops those for the second part. Thus the structure of the play itself, and its impact on the sequel (since
they're running it in rep with 2 Henry IV) is also negligible. Armstrong argues that this small, private scene, sandwiched between two war council scenes as it is, may have been written for variety in the play (like similar scenes in the canon), or may have been designed to allow for a costume change. Cutting the
scene did not create any problems.
"Tracking the consequences is one of the most important thing that dramaturgs do."
John Harrell
discusses the difference between his cut for The Alchemist for the last Ren Season, and Look About You for the next. The Alchemist was cut from a prepared edition, but Look About You was in need of basic emendation (such as entrances and exits for characters), and thus they both have a different starting point.
Harrell has developed some basic guidelines to help him cutting the plays that have been colloquially referred to as "John's Don't List" over the past few days. It's been much requested, and lets face it, is probably the reason why you're reading this if you went to the talk. Without further adue:
- Beware low hanging fruit: i.e. anything that seems too easy to cut. If you instinctively think it should go, that might be a good reason for keeping it. Songs are really easy to cut half of, and certain scenes may only be present because Shakespeare's audiences are familiar with the source material. Also people who talk too much (i.e. Epicure Mamon or Palonius) are sometimes supposed to talk to much.
- Things that are highly repetitive. There is something to be gained from repetitive things in the plays.
- Don't have a pencil in your hand the first time you read the play.
- Things you don't understand: you may cut things that will work out on stage, or even things that actors will enjoy playing.
Douthit
There's a difference between the five most known Shakespeare plays and everything else. "No one really cares if you cut Love's Labour's Lost."
Menzer
Something we've discussed so far is to be careful about cutting "information," but what constitutes "information?"
Armstrong
The history plays feature several long speeches where a lot of information is repeated, and it is tempting to cut some of those speeches in favor of a punchier dialog, but as Harrell says, repetition is sometimes part of the point. The scene in 1 Henry IV where King Henry and Hal come together in the middle of the play is also odd for modern audiences, as most modern audiences will want the play to feel like a tennis match, but the scene is a series of long speeches to Hal. The task of the dramaturg is to ask what is to be gained from the King's rant.
Ralph Alan Cohen (ASC Co-founder and Director of Mission)
Beware of cutting things you're afraid the audience won't understand, even when you understand it.
Matt Davies (MBC MLitt/MFA Program Professor)
Asks if, when you're cutting blank verse, if you feel the need to stitch the meter back into your cut.
Harrell and Cohen both respond that they try to. Douthit argues that, the more you know the structure of what is happening, the better you'll be able to decide whether this is necessary or desirable. She has sutured the verse together at times, but at others she is content to leave a few empty feet. Armstrong argues that it's the meter not that penta that's important, and will work much harder to keep the iamb than the line.
MFA Candidate Casey Caldwell asks if, over repeated cuttings, there is enough of the structure present in the play to indicate that certain things will be kept across cuttings, even if cutting is always circumstantial. Armstrong thinks this is true. "It's like filet on your fish, you kind of know where to put the knife in and where to follow."
Douthit argues that certain repetitions are exciseable, but not the themes that land on the audience emotionally. She goes on to suggest front-loading information on the audience, and then cutting away from it. For contemporary audiences, it's the accumulation of data that starts to bog down the play. She argues starting cuts in the 5th act so the dramaturg (and ultimately the audience) is able to track where everything goes.ASC Actor Bob Jones asks if we might be cutting the wrong way: it's possible that some things would play quite nicely on the stage that are cut by the dramaturg. No one likes having a line cut, but Jones argues it might make more sense to start with the entire play in rehearsal and then cut back from there.
Douthit agrees that the process of rehearsal can create some interesting possibilities, and one of the things they've started doing at OSF is doing a read through with as much of the cast as possible before the season for which it rehearses.
Menzer asks if there has ever been a point when the dramaturgs realized they screwed up and cut too much or ineffectively.
Harrell recounts the story of someone cutting Cymbeline to the bare essentials and then adding lines back to get the line count up to about 2400, and that was not so effective a way of cutting.
Douthit points out that is more often the opposite case: the dramaturg realizes they have not cut enough. Information accumulates in such a way that it feels repetitive to the modern audience.
Harrell notes that actors will sometimes cling to peculiar lines that make the scenes make sense for them. Actors will frequently want easy jokes and offensive material, and things where they refer to relationships with other characters. Even if you don't need the latter of these, it tends to help them understand their characters.
"The more you get actors involved," Douthit says, presenting your cuts as a first draft and then asking for help, "the better the esprit du corp you get in the room." Actors will begin arguing against cuts they see as essential, even when they're not their own lines.
Armstrong agues against combining multiple "marginal" characters into a single, all purpose character.
Douthit argues that, to keep alive the theatricality of transformational acting, doubling is essential. It may have been a simple matter of finding another actor who was backstage and available to put on a crown and come back on as a king. Such doubling can create meaning for audiences even accidentally.
MFA Candidate Paul Rycik asks about cutting prose, and how it compares to verse.
Armstrong answers that by cutting large sections of prose, you begin to lose the character of the language. It won't kill the audience to hear unfamiliar words, in fact it will often help them. Having the "slimy" contemporary language of the period helps color the performance.
Menzer asks about leaving the offensive lines in, and how the ugliness of the language can be left intact, or when it shouldn't be left intact.
Douthit answers that it depends (and gets a laugh). She argues that, in every production, there are moments that take you out of the play, and sometimes consciously. The audiences who watched these plays were much more homogenous than our own, and every dramaturg/director must decide how much slander an audience will be able to absorb.Menzer proposes that may more of a directorial function, and Douthit agrees. Cohen notes that there was much discussion about cutting the line "be not a niggard of your speech" from the ASC's current production of 2 Henry IV (which Cohen directed) because it has the potential to be offend.
Douthit argues that Ben Jonson made his published Folio more literary than his plays performed, and that Hemings and Condell likely did the same for Shakespeare. She compares this to textual ambiguity in modern texts as contracts will specify that a company must produce the published text of a play by Tennessee Williams, but there are sometimes multiple versions of that text (an acting edition, a reading edition, etc), and that the contract will not specify which of these is the more correct.
Caldwell asks if the panelists think the plays were written to be cut.
Douthit thinks so. She argues that the plays are probably performed more times in 1 year at OSF than in Shakespeare's lifetime, and thus it is quite possible that we know the plays better than the Chamberlain's/King's men ever could. She notes that he wrote roughly two plays a year, which is a lot, and that not everything he wrote is gold. "There is always something in every one of them that takes your breath away," she says, arguing that maybe 70% of what Shakespeare wrote is very good, but there's lots of it that doesn't work in terms of dramatic action. She concludes by quoting Bertolt Brecht "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Those were all the notes I could manage to get from a very fascinating, at least from the point of view of this lit & phil nerd, of reasons and methods for cutting Shakespeare's text. Since it's my blog, I get to editorialize a bit that textual emendation and cutting is a very general thing that maybe applies more to the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries than other playwrights, but Douthit's citation of the problem of Tennessee Williams' plays very nicely drives home the point that these problems aren't going away. Cast sizes and running times keep shrinking, and the attention span of YouTube is becoming the new normal. It's a criterion that we're all going to need to work with.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Notes on A New Theatre Historicism
It is impossible to place early modern texts in their original contexts because too little information about both is available. Thus, it is impossible to achieve the goals of both New Historicism and early modern performance study (71).
"Almost no play texts survive from Shakespearean time in a form that represents with much precision what was actually staged" (71).
Given that less than 2% of the licensed copies of plays, or "allowed books," are extant, modern editors who attempt to edit their plays with the goal of presenting the edition that was staged are reaching for an unattainable goal (71 - 72).
"We need to recognize the evidence that even the 'allowed books' were routinely cut in performance to fit the two hours traffic of the stage that the prologue to Romeo and Juliet advertises" (72).
The range of variation between authors and playing companies, and their relations with one another, are too great to allow for a single set of editorial principles to be applicable to all texts of the period (73).
Leah Marcus argues that the quarto text of Merry Wives is distinct in its design from the text available in the Folio, and that the quarto probably represents something more closely resembling the text that was used for performance (74).
The theatrically performed versions of plays of the period made their way to the print shop less regularly than did author's draft copies (74).
"Almost none of the surviving repertory of 167 King's Company plays in print or in manuscript do more than roughly approximate to the words the players spoke on stage, and they say almost nothing about their actions (75).
The Q1 Henry V likely represents a cut version of the play, not an incomplete one, as all the longer speeches have lines missing in the middle sections, so as not to affect cue lines (75). c.f. with Stern's work on this topic.
Allowed books will almost never be found in print because they were one of the company's most valuable assets, and they could not afford to send the book with the Master of the Revels' signature to the printer lest it be lost, damaged, or stolen (76).
"[the allowed book's] peculiar value was that it contained the maximum words that the company was licensed to perform anywhere in the country" (76).
Very often the performance would be a cut version of the allowed book, as cutting was an easy process. The book keeper would hold the book to give players their cues, and would use it to prepare properties. These books were heavily used backstage, and Henry Herbert had to re-license some older plays when the original allowed books had been worn out (76 - 77).
"Any written text produced from the long and fiddly process of preparation and rehearsal will be frozen into a quite unnatural form, and we read it as a fixity only because 400 years of respecting print and its fixity above the transience of the spoken word have habituated us to doing so" (77).
Herbert at least twice charged half of his usual fee for licensing plays when companies wanted to add new material to old plays, which indicates the readiness of playing companies to alter the written text of the play based on their experience performing it (77 - 78).
From the extant manuscript allowed book of The Two Noble Ladies, we can observe that someone (most likely the book-keeper) substituted the names of actors in the company for certain of the supernums in the text of the play, and substituted properties in the company's stock for those called for in the script (84 - 85).
cf Thomson, Leslie. "A Quarto 'Marked for Performance': Evidence of What?" Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England. Vol. 8. 1996. 176 - 210.
Citation
Gurr, Andrew. "A New Theatre Historicism." From Script to Stage in Early Modern England. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgell Ed. Houndmills. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. 71 - 88.
"Almost no play texts survive from Shakespearean time in a form that represents with much precision what was actually staged" (71).
Given that less than 2% of the licensed copies of plays, or "allowed books," are extant, modern editors who attempt to edit their plays with the goal of presenting the edition that was staged are reaching for an unattainable goal (71 - 72).
"We need to recognize the evidence that even the 'allowed books' were routinely cut in performance to fit the two hours traffic of the stage that the prologue to Romeo and Juliet advertises" (72).
The range of variation between authors and playing companies, and their relations with one another, are too great to allow for a single set of editorial principles to be applicable to all texts of the period (73).
Leah Marcus argues that the quarto text of Merry Wives is distinct in its design from the text available in the Folio, and that the quarto probably represents something more closely resembling the text that was used for performance (74).
The theatrically performed versions of plays of the period made their way to the print shop less regularly than did author's draft copies (74).
"Almost none of the surviving repertory of 167 King's Company plays in print or in manuscript do more than roughly approximate to the words the players spoke on stage, and they say almost nothing about their actions (75).
The Q1 Henry V likely represents a cut version of the play, not an incomplete one, as all the longer speeches have lines missing in the middle sections, so as not to affect cue lines (75). c.f. with Stern's work on this topic.
Allowed books will almost never be found in print because they were one of the company's most valuable assets, and they could not afford to send the book with the Master of the Revels' signature to the printer lest it be lost, damaged, or stolen (76).
"[the allowed book's] peculiar value was that it contained the maximum words that the company was licensed to perform anywhere in the country" (76).
Very often the performance would be a cut version of the allowed book, as cutting was an easy process. The book keeper would hold the book to give players their cues, and would use it to prepare properties. These books were heavily used backstage, and Henry Herbert had to re-license some older plays when the original allowed books had been worn out (76 - 77).
"Any written text produced from the long and fiddly process of preparation and rehearsal will be frozen into a quite unnatural form, and we read it as a fixity only because 400 years of respecting print and its fixity above the transience of the spoken word have habituated us to doing so" (77).
Herbert at least twice charged half of his usual fee for licensing plays when companies wanted to add new material to old plays, which indicates the readiness of playing companies to alter the written text of the play based on their experience performing it (77 - 78).
From the extant manuscript allowed book of The Two Noble Ladies, we can observe that someone (most likely the book-keeper) substituted the names of actors in the company for certain of the supernums in the text of the play, and substituted properties in the company's stock for those called for in the script (84 - 85).
cf Thomson, Leslie. "A Quarto 'Marked for Performance': Evidence of What?" Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England. Vol. 8. 1996. 176 - 210.
Citation
Gurr, Andrew. "A New Theatre Historicism." From Script to Stage in Early Modern England. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgell Ed. Houndmills. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. 71 - 88.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Conclusions
There is commonly a disparity between what directors will say in response to interviewers' questions and what they are able to manifest under the constraints of limited time and budget, and Dessen has therefore cited examples mostly from his own notes (236).
Despite what any theatre historian may say about original practices or conditions, there is actually very little that can be said about either with great certainty (237).
cf Wells, Stanley. "Shakespeare's Text on the Modern Stage." Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 1967. West. p. 189
"On a spectrum that ranges from the Second Quarto of Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story at what point does one move from interpretation to rewrighting?" (238)
"Staging Shakespeare's scripts on a reconstituted Globe stage certainly does not serve as The Answer to All Problems, with or without strictures from the Authority Police" (239).
cf Berry, Ralph. On Directing Shakespeare. London. 1989. esp p 79 - 80.
Analysis
Dessen is spot on when he says that it is ultimately the ticket buying public who will determine how much rescripting is needed to make the works of the early modern stage accessible to modern audiences (240). It is important to remember that too much rescripting can also be a bad thing. How much custom music, Indian boys, and cutting can Midsummer take before it becomes both alien and inane from Shakespeare's text? If a one person Hamlet can work in 90 minutes, why should a 15 person Hamlet take more than thrice as long? Ultimately, if directors rescript too much, they run the risk of trying to fix something that isn't broken. There is a reason that, despite 400 years of linguistic and cultural static, these plays are still performed.
Citation
Dessen, Alan C. Rescripting Shakespeare: The Text, the Director, and Modern Productions. Cambridge. Cambridge UP. 2002.
Despite what any theatre historian may say about original practices or conditions, there is actually very little that can be said about either with great certainty (237).
cf Wells, Stanley. "Shakespeare's Text on the Modern Stage." Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 1967. West. p. 189
"On a spectrum that ranges from the Second Quarto of Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story at what point does one move from interpretation to rewrighting?" (238)
"Staging Shakespeare's scripts on a reconstituted Globe stage certainly does not serve as The Answer to All Problems, with or without strictures from the Authority Police" (239).
cf Berry, Ralph. On Directing Shakespeare. London. 1989. esp p 79 - 80.
Analysis
Dessen is spot on when he says that it is ultimately the ticket buying public who will determine how much rescripting is needed to make the works of the early modern stage accessible to modern audiences (240). It is important to remember that too much rescripting can also be a bad thing. How much custom music, Indian boys, and cutting can Midsummer take before it becomes both alien and inane from Shakespeare's text? If a one person Hamlet can work in 90 minutes, why should a 15 person Hamlet take more than thrice as long? Ultimately, if directors rescript too much, they run the risk of trying to fix something that isn't broken. There is a reason that, despite 400 years of linguistic and cultural static, these plays are still performed.
Citation
Dessen, Alan C. Rescripting Shakespeare: The Text, the Director, and Modern Productions. Cambridge. Cambridge UP. 2002.
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Chapter 9
Dessen has a chapter devoted to "Compressing Henry VI" and to the Taming of the Shrew, but those sound a little bit too specific in their focus to be of much interest to me at the moment, so I'm skipping over them to Chapter 9: The Editor as Rescripter.
"In the process of rescripting directors often take on the role of editors... conversely, an editor wrestling with a problematic passage or stage direction may consciously or inadvertently take on the role of a director and make choices according to a sense of how X could be, should be, or would have been staged" (209). That's particularly useful, as a central part of the argument of my developing thesis is that the role of the editor and director should be combined.
Editors need to make decisions to help clarify plays for a first time reader, but in so doing they run the risk of limiting the options available when using the text for performance (209).
cf Honigmann, E A J. Myriad-minded Shakespeare. 2nd Ed. London. 1998. esp p 187.
cf Cambridge UP's Shakespeare in Production series, esp Christine Dymkowski's 2000 edition of The Tempest and Trevor Griffiths 1996 edition of Midsummer.
As Folio Facsimiles and other "original texts" become increasingly available to theatre professionals, the role of the editor can more closely resemble "unscripting," the process of adapting a play text to more closely resemble a text designed for readers of books than for producers of plays (209 - 210).
An individual theatrical choice will not undo three centuries of theatrical tradition (211).
Signs of emendations of stage directions should not provoke the question of which choice is correct, but what is the function of the signal of the stage direction, and whom is it intended for (217).
cf Wells, Stanley. "The Editor and the Theatre: Editorial Treatment of Stage Directions." Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader. Oxford. Oxford UP. 1984. p76, 68. This for Wells' justification to edit texts without resorting to editorial precedent.
cf Kidnie, Margaret Jane. "Text, Performance, and the Editors: Staging Shakespeare's Drama." Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 51. 2000. p 464. -- "the responsible editor of modernized editions will necessarily adopt an interventionalist approach to staging."
cf Thomson, Leslie. "Broken Brackets and 'Mended Texts: Stage Directions in the Oxford Shakespeare." Renaissance Drama. Vol. 19. 1988. 175-193.
"Once the editors assumptions about performance are encoded into the script, it becomes difficult to historicize this intervention for the reader as a matter of debate and contested interpretation" (468). (qtd. in Dessen 218).
Wells and Taylor, in their Oxford Complete Works, adopted a policy of not indicating where stage directions were editorial in nature where the action was indisputable, but the question has remained: indisputable to whom? Dessen cites the example of "they kiss" in Taming of the Shrew; by not indicating the editorial nature of the stage direction, they present an event that is not fixed in sequence by the author as being authorial (219). Yes. Agreed. This context helps clarify some questions for my presentation of the edition.
Where there is a disagreement between a clearly articulated stage direction in the Folio text and editorial tradition, as is the case with the entrance of Malvolio cross gartered, which occurs in the Folio two lines before most editors place his entrance, it is better to field test the options in a theatrical environment than it is to cut off possible directorial interpretation (221). Yes. Agreed. I want to produce an edition of Merry Devil that both enabled interpretation and provides potential solutions to problems. My edits have been conservative enough that I think I can pull it off.
Massed entrances at the tops of scenes in some of the plays have been attributed to the scribe Ralph Crane, and editors have commonly shifted these into individual entrances just before they first speak their lines. It is perhaps significant that Merry Wives is among the plays where this happens (Two Gentleman and Winters Tale being the others) (224). There are a couple of these in Merry Devil, and we had to pare back on one to allow Victoria and Rachel to change from Smug and Banks into Dorcas and Harry. Hmm....
Speaking about Titus Andronicus: "Given the range of options in the Quarto, the user of these modern editions should ask: is making such a choice - on the page, without the benefit of the trial-and-error of rehearsal - the function of the editor? Where does "editing" end and interpretation or rescripting begin? (233)
Again on Titus: "do students, critics, actors, an directors want from their editions (that are to serve as playscripts) a plausible but iffy decision that may in turn close down equally valid or theatrically interesting options of which the reader is no longer aware? For me, the most fruitful answers will arise not from editors working on the page but rather from "field-testing" the script that survives in the 1594 Quarto" (234).
Dessen continues to question the editorial practices of Wells, Honingmann, and Pafford: why is it the place of an editor, who might be a brilliant bibliographic scholar but ignorant about theatrical practice, modern or early modern, to determine what is theatrically obvious or effective? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (234).
Analysis
Dessen really drives the point home here: editors will often make interpretive gestures in preparing their texts just as directors will in preparing their productions, but this is a role that is not necessarily best suited to the editor. Directors should be cautious about subverting literary possibilities with their own interpretations, but editors should be more so. A director risks failing to communicate something in a single production, but an editor who goes too far will limit the dramatic possibilities for many productions.
"In the process of rescripting directors often take on the role of editors... conversely, an editor wrestling with a problematic passage or stage direction may consciously or inadvertently take on the role of a director and make choices according to a sense of how X could be, should be, or would have been staged" (209). That's particularly useful, as a central part of the argument of my developing thesis is that the role of the editor and director should be combined.
Editors need to make decisions to help clarify plays for a first time reader, but in so doing they run the risk of limiting the options available when using the text for performance (209).
cf Honigmann, E A J. Myriad-minded Shakespeare. 2nd Ed. London. 1998. esp p 187.
cf Cambridge UP's Shakespeare in Production series, esp Christine Dymkowski's 2000 edition of The Tempest and Trevor Griffiths 1996 edition of Midsummer.
As Folio Facsimiles and other "original texts" become increasingly available to theatre professionals, the role of the editor can more closely resemble "unscripting," the process of adapting a play text to more closely resemble a text designed for readers of books than for producers of plays (209 - 210).
An individual theatrical choice will not undo three centuries of theatrical tradition (211).
Signs of emendations of stage directions should not provoke the question of which choice is correct, but what is the function of the signal of the stage direction, and whom is it intended for (217).
cf Wells, Stanley. "The Editor and the Theatre: Editorial Treatment of Stage Directions." Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader. Oxford. Oxford UP. 1984. p76, 68. This for Wells' justification to edit texts without resorting to editorial precedent.
cf Kidnie, Margaret Jane. "Text, Performance, and the Editors: Staging Shakespeare's Drama." Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 51. 2000. p 464. -- "the responsible editor of modernized editions will necessarily adopt an interventionalist approach to staging."
cf Thomson, Leslie. "Broken Brackets and 'Mended Texts: Stage Directions in the Oxford Shakespeare." Renaissance Drama. Vol. 19. 1988. 175-193.
"Once the editors assumptions about performance are encoded into the script, it becomes difficult to historicize this intervention for the reader as a matter of debate and contested interpretation" (468). (qtd. in Dessen 218).
Wells and Taylor, in their Oxford Complete Works, adopted a policy of not indicating where stage directions were editorial in nature where the action was indisputable, but the question has remained: indisputable to whom? Dessen cites the example of "they kiss" in Taming of the Shrew; by not indicating the editorial nature of the stage direction, they present an event that is not fixed in sequence by the author as being authorial (219). Yes. Agreed. This context helps clarify some questions for my presentation of the edition.
Where there is a disagreement between a clearly articulated stage direction in the Folio text and editorial tradition, as is the case with the entrance of Malvolio cross gartered, which occurs in the Folio two lines before most editors place his entrance, it is better to field test the options in a theatrical environment than it is to cut off possible directorial interpretation (221). Yes. Agreed. I want to produce an edition of Merry Devil that both enabled interpretation and provides potential solutions to problems. My edits have been conservative enough that I think I can pull it off.
Massed entrances at the tops of scenes in some of the plays have been attributed to the scribe Ralph Crane, and editors have commonly shifted these into individual entrances just before they first speak their lines. It is perhaps significant that Merry Wives is among the plays where this happens (Two Gentleman and Winters Tale being the others) (224). There are a couple of these in Merry Devil, and we had to pare back on one to allow Victoria and Rachel to change from Smug and Banks into Dorcas and Harry. Hmm....
Speaking about Titus Andronicus: "Given the range of options in the Quarto, the user of these modern editions should ask: is making such a choice - on the page, without the benefit of the trial-and-error of rehearsal - the function of the editor? Where does "editing" end and interpretation or rescripting begin? (233)
Again on Titus: "do students, critics, actors, an directors want from their editions (that are to serve as playscripts) a plausible but iffy decision that may in turn close down equally valid or theatrically interesting options of which the reader is no longer aware? For me, the most fruitful answers will arise not from editors working on the page but rather from "field-testing" the script that survives in the 1594 Quarto" (234).
Dessen continues to question the editorial practices of Wells, Honingmann, and Pafford: why is it the place of an editor, who might be a brilliant bibliographic scholar but ignorant about theatrical practice, modern or early modern, to determine what is theatrically obvious or effective? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" (234).
Analysis
Dessen really drives the point home here: editors will often make interpretive gestures in preparing their texts just as directors will in preparing their productions, but this is a role that is not necessarily best suited to the editor. Directors should be cautious about subverting literary possibilities with their own interpretations, but editors should be more so. A director risks failing to communicate something in a single production, but an editor who goes too far will limit the dramatic possibilities for many productions.
Notes on Re-patching the Play
I thought I would take a brake from Dessen for a little bit to examine Tiffany Stern's essay "Notes on Re-patching the Play," which sounds like it might be right up my alley for this project.
Stern notes that while primary documents of the period can be an important source of evidence, the push to find new primary sources has led to a push away from close examinations of secondary sources, such as joke books, travel journals, poems, pamphlets, and the like, which can be equally useful in determining Renaissance staging practices (151). Of course, Life and Death is one such secondary source, so Dr. Stern's got my attention.
Stern cites 50,350 being printed between the years of 1580 and 1660, and further notes that only about 700 of those are plays. Theatre historians have not yet comprehensively examined the other 49,450 books printed in the period for theatrical references that might illuminate theatrical practice of the period. This is especially true as many of these books were written be authors who were known playwrights, or who were regular play goers (153).
A pejorative term for a playwright, then more commonly and neutrally referred to as a "poet," was a "play-patcher." In this sense, someone who patches together disparate pieces of text from their commonplace book, as opposed to a poet who presumably would be more dedicated to the construction of a single work (154 - 155).
If plays were the product of a poet patching together pieces from their common place books, those text fragments would routinely find their way into the commonplace books of others. Lawyers and lovers alike were known to attend plays and write down pieces that appealed to them for later use (155).
"Beyond the commonplace-book aspect, a look at the printed layout of surviving texts raises the suggestion that some plays were transcribed, kept, learned, revised, and even written, not as wholes, but as a collection of separate units to be patched together in performance" (156). That sounds like a not wholly inaccurate description of Merry Devil.
Stern discusses songs being separate textual objects from the rest of the printed text in much the same way she argues in Making Shakespeare, but here she quotes William Percy telling the "Master of children of Powles" that he may cut the songs from the production if any of the plays "overreach in length" (158). That has implications. Clearly dramatists were aware that their plays would sometimes need to be shortened, and while we here have an explicit reference to cutting down on songs, I wonder if there is anything comparable to cutting scenes.
Stern notes that the 1600 "bad" quarto of Henry V, printed within a year if its performance, lacks the prologue, epilogue, and the choruses. It is an open question as to whether they were left out of the printing of hadn't been written yet (159).
Prologues and Epilogues were detachable from their play texts because they were sometimes written for specific occasions, and thus might not be attached to the playbook proper (160 - 161). I know Stern has said this before, but only now does it occur to me that perhaps the prologue to a probably cut play could be viewed in this light.
A play might be longer and rougher at its first performance than at subsequent ones, with the disapproval of the audience leading to certain cuts. Stern references Gurr's concept of the "maximal" and "minimal" text and offers that the first night performance was the "maximal" one (163). Is Merry Devil therefore a minimal text?
cf Gurr's "Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe." Shakespeare Survey. Vol 52. 1999. p 68 - 87.
Plays were given to actors in individual parts, and were revised, and perhaps written in this way too. Thus, between prologues, epilogues, songs, choruses, and even individual parts, the picture of a play as written in separable threads begins to emerge (168 - 169).
"Plays, then, should not always be regarded like epic poems in which each bit of text has the same worth" (170).
Citation
Stern, Tiffany. "Re-patching the Play." From Script to Stage in Early Modern England. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgell Ed. Houndmills. Macmillan. 2004. p 151 - 177
Stern notes that while primary documents of the period can be an important source of evidence, the push to find new primary sources has led to a push away from close examinations of secondary sources, such as joke books, travel journals, poems, pamphlets, and the like, which can be equally useful in determining Renaissance staging practices (151). Of course, Life and Death is one such secondary source, so Dr. Stern's got my attention.
Stern cites 50,350 being printed between the years of 1580 and 1660, and further notes that only about 700 of those are plays. Theatre historians have not yet comprehensively examined the other 49,450 books printed in the period for theatrical references that might illuminate theatrical practice of the period. This is especially true as many of these books were written be authors who were known playwrights, or who were regular play goers (153).
A pejorative term for a playwright, then more commonly and neutrally referred to as a "poet," was a "play-patcher." In this sense, someone who patches together disparate pieces of text from their commonplace book, as opposed to a poet who presumably would be more dedicated to the construction of a single work (154 - 155).
If plays were the product of a poet patching together pieces from their common place books, those text fragments would routinely find their way into the commonplace books of others. Lawyers and lovers alike were known to attend plays and write down pieces that appealed to them for later use (155).
"Beyond the commonplace-book aspect, a look at the printed layout of surviving texts raises the suggestion that some plays were transcribed, kept, learned, revised, and even written, not as wholes, but as a collection of separate units to be patched together in performance" (156). That sounds like a not wholly inaccurate description of Merry Devil.
Stern discusses songs being separate textual objects from the rest of the printed text in much the same way she argues in Making Shakespeare, but here she quotes William Percy telling the "Master of children of Powles" that he may cut the songs from the production if any of the plays "overreach in length" (158). That has implications. Clearly dramatists were aware that their plays would sometimes need to be shortened, and while we here have an explicit reference to cutting down on songs, I wonder if there is anything comparable to cutting scenes.
Stern notes that the 1600 "bad" quarto of Henry V, printed within a year if its performance, lacks the prologue, epilogue, and the choruses. It is an open question as to whether they were left out of the printing of hadn't been written yet (159).
Prologues and Epilogues were detachable from their play texts because they were sometimes written for specific occasions, and thus might not be attached to the playbook proper (160 - 161). I know Stern has said this before, but only now does it occur to me that perhaps the prologue to a probably cut play could be viewed in this light.
A play might be longer and rougher at its first performance than at subsequent ones, with the disapproval of the audience leading to certain cuts. Stern references Gurr's concept of the "maximal" and "minimal" text and offers that the first night performance was the "maximal" one (163). Is Merry Devil therefore a minimal text?
cf Gurr's "Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe." Shakespeare Survey. Vol 52. 1999. p 68 - 87.
Plays were given to actors in individual parts, and were revised, and perhaps written in this way too. Thus, between prologues, epilogues, songs, choruses, and even individual parts, the picture of a play as written in separable threads begins to emerge (168 - 169).
"Plays, then, should not always be regarded like epic poems in which each bit of text has the same worth" (170).
Citation
Stern, Tiffany. "Re-patching the Play." From Script to Stage in Early Modern England. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgell Ed. Houndmills. Macmillan. 2004. p 151 - 177
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Chapter 6
In this chapter Dessen treats on stage directions. As a director, I have tended to treat stage directions as almost wholly disposable. They are sometimes good and useful, but sometimes will inhibit the action or character choices available; very rarely have I worked with a play that was written specifically for the circumstances for which I was directing, and if our recent adventure touring to Philly was any indication, Shakespeare & Co would have to remain flexible in their staging. Performance at the royal court or on tour would mean having to adapt their performances, if not their texts, to the spaces they found. That said, Professor Cohen believes that something can be learned from the stage directions that we have received, and as such, I have tried to use them as much as possible in my work here.
Dessen begins by noting the history of editors considering the stage directions as non-authorial, and therefore more dispensable than the dialog portions of the text. Malone and Honingmann were both particularly eloquent in their dismissal of stage directions (136).
Modern productions will tend to treat stage directions as flexible, especially in the case of weaponry, which may be inconsistent with the weaponry of a new period or setting of the production (136). Often times, a desired effect or production concept will take precedence over received stage directions, as will more modern sensibilities of the spiritual or of psychological realism (137). Also, let's not forget that a frightening and impressive effect in one generation is ridiculous in the next. I seem to recall Garrick having a pneumatic wig fashioned for his portrayal of Hamlet, to show appropriate fright at the appearance of the ghost. Today, that would likely garner a laugh.
Changing the period will make certain elements, such as Richard's entrance in "rotten armor" in 3.5 of Richard III irrelevant or anomalous (137).
A powerful rescripting of stag directions occurs in the Shakespeare Santa Cruz 1984 modern dress of 1 Henry IV, where, instead of throwing the bottle back to Falstaff during the battle, Hal takes it with him, depriving Falstaff of refreshment. He then stops to drink it, and is discovered by Hotspur, who trains a pistol on him. Hal coolly takes another drink and offers the rest to Hotspur, who accepts it and puts aside the pistol to engage the prince in single combat. A clearly scripted original stage direction, and originally intended symbol, was excised in favor of one that would create a chivalric bond between Hal and Hotspur for a modern audience (138 - 140). On the last page of this description, Dessen notes that he wouldn't want to lose the new image for the old one, and I agree: consider that stolen.
Rescripting stage directions linked to imagery that is signaled in the received texts but either contradictory to concepts envisions by modern directors or contrary to modern sensibilities is some of the most common (140).
For Katie Mitchell's 1994 production of 3 Henry VI at The Other Place, the intimate size of the stage did not allow for the son to bring in the body of his death father and the father to bring in the dead body of his son for 2.5, so the direction was rescripted so that each brought in, in place of a body, a rose wrapped in a handkerchief, which was then deposited upstage in keeping with a motif of accumulating roses on crosses (142 - 143). Dealing with rescriptings due to reduced size in performance space is, of course, particularly interesting to me. At the Globe, it would be perfectly plausible for characters to not be able to see each other at night because of the distance, but then be able to see each other when they were close. We didn't have that luxury at Studio 1831, so had to provide physical obstacles in addition to the darkness.
Certain images, such as Titus dressed like a cook, can provided valuable sign posts to audiences in the 1590s, and when directors cut those images in favor of modern senses of realism, they also remove key images and literary signposts to help their audiences understand larger themes (146). Dessen spends several pages here discussing directors who are too quick to dismiss the image of Titus dressed as a cook because they fear that it's too ridiculous or nonsensical for modern audiences, but in the American Shakespeare Center's production of Titus Andronicus last season, James Keegan in the title role entered as a cook, which was regularly received a laugh, but this also made the violence of the scene all the more horrifying. Like I'm sure I've said before, laughter helps the audience let their guard down, and if Titus looks a little ridiculous to the audience, let us recall that he also looks a little ridiculous to Saturninus ("Why art thou thus Attir'd, Andronicus?").
Directors who remove visions and instances of supernatural effects, or attempt to incorporate the characters into the world of the supernatural, run the risk of detracting from the power of these scenes: in Katherine's vision in Henry VIII and in the appearance of Poshthumous' ancestors and Jupiter in Cymbeline, the supernatural elements exist outside of the realm of the characters, and either removing them or linking them to the "real" world reduces them to a more natural function and removes the romance of these scenes (147 - 149).
While it has become common practice to cut all or part of the "quaint device" through which Ariel is able to remove the food from the banquet table in The Tempest, doing so robs both the characters and the audience of the surprise of seeing something substantial vanish into thin air. This deprives the audience of access to a key symbol of impermanence on Prospero's island (152).
As described in the original stage directions, the appearance of the apparitions when Macbeth returns to the Witches ca prefigure moments of the play, and failing to include them in favor of effects that have a more cinematic flavor will often lack the intended payoff and deny the audience the opportunity of witnessing Macbeth unable to confront (or comprehend) the reality that is standing right before him (158).
Analysis
There are precious few stage directions left to us from the early modern period, and Dessen's desire "to get as much mileage out of them as possible" is something that actors and directors alike should consider (165). Ultimately, this attempt to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of stage directions enabled some of the funnier moments in our production of Merry Devil. For example, Kim played both the Host of the George and the Chamberlain at the Inn across the way. The stage direction for the final scene indicates the Host enters "trussing his points as if new up." This is something that we would not have been able to achieve, even using period costumes, without resorting to costly original practices costumes. Points are what the early moderns used in place of a belt, literally to tie their pants to their jacket. Instead, when the Host enters in the final scene, Kim entered in the process of changing her costume from the Chamberlain to the Host so the audience could see the effect of the character entering in a the process of dressing themselves.
As I said previously, I used to feel free to ignore the stage directions, and for many of the reasons that Malone and Honingmann cite. Professor Cohen has made a believer out of me though, and I agree with Dessen's final sentiment. If we can't honor the letter of the stage direction, we should try, as best as possible, to honor its spirit.
Dessen begins by noting the history of editors considering the stage directions as non-authorial, and therefore more dispensable than the dialog portions of the text. Malone and Honingmann were both particularly eloquent in their dismissal of stage directions (136).
Modern productions will tend to treat stage directions as flexible, especially in the case of weaponry, which may be inconsistent with the weaponry of a new period or setting of the production (136). Often times, a desired effect or production concept will take precedence over received stage directions, as will more modern sensibilities of the spiritual or of psychological realism (137). Also, let's not forget that a frightening and impressive effect in one generation is ridiculous in the next. I seem to recall Garrick having a pneumatic wig fashioned for his portrayal of Hamlet, to show appropriate fright at the appearance of the ghost. Today, that would likely garner a laugh.
Changing the period will make certain elements, such as Richard's entrance in "rotten armor" in 3.5 of Richard III irrelevant or anomalous (137).
A powerful rescripting of stag directions occurs in the Shakespeare Santa Cruz 1984 modern dress of 1 Henry IV, where, instead of throwing the bottle back to Falstaff during the battle, Hal takes it with him, depriving Falstaff of refreshment. He then stops to drink it, and is discovered by Hotspur, who trains a pistol on him. Hal coolly takes another drink and offers the rest to Hotspur, who accepts it and puts aside the pistol to engage the prince in single combat. A clearly scripted original stage direction, and originally intended symbol, was excised in favor of one that would create a chivalric bond between Hal and Hotspur for a modern audience (138 - 140). On the last page of this description, Dessen notes that he wouldn't want to lose the new image for the old one, and I agree: consider that stolen.
Rescripting stage directions linked to imagery that is signaled in the received texts but either contradictory to concepts envisions by modern directors or contrary to modern sensibilities is some of the most common (140).
For Katie Mitchell's 1994 production of 3 Henry VI at The Other Place, the intimate size of the stage did not allow for the son to bring in the body of his death father and the father to bring in the dead body of his son for 2.5, so the direction was rescripted so that each brought in, in place of a body, a rose wrapped in a handkerchief, which was then deposited upstage in keeping with a motif of accumulating roses on crosses (142 - 143). Dealing with rescriptings due to reduced size in performance space is, of course, particularly interesting to me. At the Globe, it would be perfectly plausible for characters to not be able to see each other at night because of the distance, but then be able to see each other when they were close. We didn't have that luxury at Studio 1831, so had to provide physical obstacles in addition to the darkness.
Certain images, such as Titus dressed like a cook, can provided valuable sign posts to audiences in the 1590s, and when directors cut those images in favor of modern senses of realism, they also remove key images and literary signposts to help their audiences understand larger themes (146). Dessen spends several pages here discussing directors who are too quick to dismiss the image of Titus dressed as a cook because they fear that it's too ridiculous or nonsensical for modern audiences, but in the American Shakespeare Center's production of Titus Andronicus last season, James Keegan in the title role entered as a cook, which was regularly received a laugh, but this also made the violence of the scene all the more horrifying. Like I'm sure I've said before, laughter helps the audience let their guard down, and if Titus looks a little ridiculous to the audience, let us recall that he also looks a little ridiculous to Saturninus ("Why art thou thus Attir'd, Andronicus?").
Directors who remove visions and instances of supernatural effects, or attempt to incorporate the characters into the world of the supernatural, run the risk of detracting from the power of these scenes: in Katherine's vision in Henry VIII and in the appearance of Poshthumous' ancestors and Jupiter in Cymbeline, the supernatural elements exist outside of the realm of the characters, and either removing them or linking them to the "real" world reduces them to a more natural function and removes the romance of these scenes (147 - 149).
While it has become common practice to cut all or part of the "quaint device" through which Ariel is able to remove the food from the banquet table in The Tempest, doing so robs both the characters and the audience of the surprise of seeing something substantial vanish into thin air. This deprives the audience of access to a key symbol of impermanence on Prospero's island (152).
As described in the original stage directions, the appearance of the apparitions when Macbeth returns to the Witches ca prefigure moments of the play, and failing to include them in favor of effects that have a more cinematic flavor will often lack the intended payoff and deny the audience the opportunity of witnessing Macbeth unable to confront (or comprehend) the reality that is standing right before him (158).
Analysis
There are precious few stage directions left to us from the early modern period, and Dessen's desire "to get as much mileage out of them as possible" is something that actors and directors alike should consider (165). Ultimately, this attempt to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of stage directions enabled some of the funnier moments in our production of Merry Devil. For example, Kim played both the Host of the George and the Chamberlain at the Inn across the way. The stage direction for the final scene indicates the Host enters "trussing his points as if new up." This is something that we would not have been able to achieve, even using period costumes, without resorting to costly original practices costumes. Points are what the early moderns used in place of a belt, literally to tie their pants to their jacket. Instead, when the Host enters in the final scene, Kim entered in the process of changing her costume from the Chamberlain to the Host so the audience could see the effect of the character entering in a the process of dressing themselves.
As I said previously, I used to feel free to ignore the stage directions, and for many of the reasons that Malone and Honingmann cite. Professor Cohen has made a believer out of me though, and I agree with Dessen's final sentiment. If we can't honor the letter of the stage direction, we should try, as best as possible, to honor its spirit.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Chapter 5
Directors and actors tend to be dissatisfied with the endings transmitted in the received texts of these plays, and so the final act of Shakespeare's plays is especially likely to undergo some forms of revision, usually without notice or comment from audience members (109). Since the final scene of Merry Devil was where I would ultimately do the most rescripting (in order to fill in the textual hole and account for having one fewer actor than the scene calls for), this chapter is going to interest me a great deal.
Dessen notes instances of directors creating business before and after the curtain call to conclude with a final dramatic image, such as Harry speaking over the dead body of Hotspur in 1 Henry IV, or Viola looking very female in a wedding dress in Twelfth Night (110).
Directors will often rescript concluding scenes in order to heighten a particular sense or feeling. Directors of comedies may wish to heighten the positive resolution achieved by the characters (111).
Directors will similarly rescript the endings of tragedies and histories; a prominent example is that the comic business of Quickly, Doll, and the Beadle in 2 Henry IV is often cut to highlight Harry's coronation and the rejection of Falstaff, but some directors instead cut the line calling attention to the fact that Doll is faking her pregnancy in order to create the sense of a looming brutal and oppressive regime (114).
The removal of stage props originally specified for concluding scenes, such as Romeo's mattock and Paris' flowers in Romeo and Juliet will lead to the presentation of characters in a way that the props undercut: as specified by their properties, the audience will see Paris as the true and gentle lover, and Romeo guided by the force of his destructive impulses (117).
Some directors will choose to emphasize the presence of deceased characters, with cases of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar being some of the more notable (118). Dessen provides some examples of this achieved through doubling, but I don't think it's fair to count these. Doubling was part of the technology available to early modern playing companies, and making doubling choices to convey additional subtext is something well within the realm of what they would have achieved, and does not require any textual emendation. Thus, it is not "rescripting" in the sense where Dessen elsewhere uses the word.
When changing the time period in which a play takes place, it is unsurprising to find the final moments of histories and tragedies altered so that these figured fall victim to the fire of rifles, but if they chose to die, are surprised by their deaths, is a significant part of any interpretation. A director needs to consider the question of where Shakespeare's text ends and their interpretation begins (123).
American directors have a tendency to make 5th act adjustments based on the economy of their productions, and speeches recounting events already seen are some of the first to be cut (125). This is an interesting point because there are so many speeches that recount events that the audience has seen, and where Abrams argues strenuously for missing scenes based on events shown in Life and Death, I come back to the evidence offered in Merry Devil that these scenes are described and therefore do no need to be seen. It would seem as if my evidence is as shaky as his. Or, alternatively, did the same cutting logic for the modern American director apply to the Chamberlain's/King's Man responsible for making the cut script?
Of particular note is Sir Peter Hall's 1988 RNT Cottlesloe production of Cymbeline, where the narration of events that the audience already knows is specifically directed at the other actors on stage; the interesting show for the audience then comes in watching their reactions to the reception of, what is for the character, new news (127).
Fifth act changes, such as a Paulina who will not accept a marriage with Camillo, can be born out of modern senses of psychological realism, but are contra-indicated by the facts present in the received text. To change the text in such cases, even by omission of lines indicating this marriage, is to alter the logic of the text in crucial ways that highlight gaps between Shakespeare's reasoning and our own (130).
c.f. for doubling Meagher, John C. "Economy and Recognition: Thirteen Shakespearean Puzzles." Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 34. 1984. p 18 - 19.
Analysis
If you want to change the way the play ends, change the final act. Everyone knows that. As a sound designer, I am especially sensitive to the track the audience hears over the curtain call because it can have such a profound impact on the way they view the play as a whole, which is why it is often times the very first thing I choose in my sound design. For the ending of Merry Devil, I had two problems that necessitated changes to the text: First, I didn't have enough actors, and Victoria was doubling both Bilbo and Smug in this last moment. Smug, however, leaves fairly early in the scene and then re-appears later, and Bilbo doesn't have any lines until later in the scene.
The resolution was obvious: Victoria enters as Smug and plays that role up through Smug's initial exit, changes to Bilbo, and then re-enters as Bilbo, paging the curtain/holding the door for Fabell, and thus still playing the role of the general purpose servant. Smug's appearance at plays end was excised. This was essential because Victoria also doubled as Dorcas Clare, who is forgotten at the nunnery halfway through the play: Sir Arthur sends Bilbo to ride to the nunnery to retrieve his wife, and Bilbo agrees to do so, but complains that he will miss "a good breakfast." Thus we see the character complaining at leaving to bring back another character when the actor is already present.
This actually helped solve my second problem: that is that there are references to Smug's adventures the previous night during the (cut) sign stealing episode. Removing Smug from the end of the scene made it easier to remove the lines that treat on his appearance as the second George, and thus the textual hole was patched.
I could have stopped there, but since the final lines of the received text are addressed to Smug, and comment on "concluding your night of merriment," I felt this needed to be cut for narrative sense, and Sir John's trope of "...and there's an end" bringing the play to a conclusion was too good to resist. Three clowns are thus left on stage: Sir John, the Host, and Bilbo, while the rest of the cast has exited to breakfast, and then all re-emerge to reprise the chorus from "Everything's Magic" as the curtain number.
In some cases, I was simply making choices of directorial interpretation, but a considerable amount of re-scripting was involved, and perhaps the most difficult decision that I now face is whether or not to include this as the conclusion in the edition I am preparing (of course, I would also include the received ending as an appendix), or to include my rescripting of the last scene as an appendix. Ultimately, that decision will be grounded in my answer to the question of "what is this text?"
Still, this chapter has been particularly useful in citing the ways that others have rescripted the works of Shakespeare to serve their purposes, in some cases subtly, and in other cases not. As I review Dessen's inevitable end of chapter questions, which boil down to "what is gained? what is lost?" I feel more confident that, in performance at least, I have made the correct decision. We gained resolution, we lost textual ambiguity, and by most standards we rescripted very conservatively.
Dessen notes instances of directors creating business before and after the curtain call to conclude with a final dramatic image, such as Harry speaking over the dead body of Hotspur in 1 Henry IV, or Viola looking very female in a wedding dress in Twelfth Night (110).
Directors will often rescript concluding scenes in order to heighten a particular sense or feeling. Directors of comedies may wish to heighten the positive resolution achieved by the characters (111).
Directors will similarly rescript the endings of tragedies and histories; a prominent example is that the comic business of Quickly, Doll, and the Beadle in 2 Henry IV is often cut to highlight Harry's coronation and the rejection of Falstaff, but some directors instead cut the line calling attention to the fact that Doll is faking her pregnancy in order to create the sense of a looming brutal and oppressive regime (114).
The removal of stage props originally specified for concluding scenes, such as Romeo's mattock and Paris' flowers in Romeo and Juliet will lead to the presentation of characters in a way that the props undercut: as specified by their properties, the audience will see Paris as the true and gentle lover, and Romeo guided by the force of his destructive impulses (117).
Some directors will choose to emphasize the presence of deceased characters, with cases of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar being some of the more notable (118). Dessen provides some examples of this achieved through doubling, but I don't think it's fair to count these. Doubling was part of the technology available to early modern playing companies, and making doubling choices to convey additional subtext is something well within the realm of what they would have achieved, and does not require any textual emendation. Thus, it is not "rescripting" in the sense where Dessen elsewhere uses the word.
When changing the time period in which a play takes place, it is unsurprising to find the final moments of histories and tragedies altered so that these figured fall victim to the fire of rifles, but if they chose to die, are surprised by their deaths, is a significant part of any interpretation. A director needs to consider the question of where Shakespeare's text ends and their interpretation begins (123).
American directors have a tendency to make 5th act adjustments based on the economy of their productions, and speeches recounting events already seen are some of the first to be cut (125). This is an interesting point because there are so many speeches that recount events that the audience has seen, and where Abrams argues strenuously for missing scenes based on events shown in Life and Death, I come back to the evidence offered in Merry Devil that these scenes are described and therefore do no need to be seen. It would seem as if my evidence is as shaky as his. Or, alternatively, did the same cutting logic for the modern American director apply to the Chamberlain's/King's Man responsible for making the cut script?
Of particular note is Sir Peter Hall's 1988 RNT Cottlesloe production of Cymbeline, where the narration of events that the audience already knows is specifically directed at the other actors on stage; the interesting show for the audience then comes in watching their reactions to the reception of, what is for the character, new news (127).
Fifth act changes, such as a Paulina who will not accept a marriage with Camillo, can be born out of modern senses of psychological realism, but are contra-indicated by the facts present in the received text. To change the text in such cases, even by omission of lines indicating this marriage, is to alter the logic of the text in crucial ways that highlight gaps between Shakespeare's reasoning and our own (130).
c.f. for doubling Meagher, John C. "Economy and Recognition: Thirteen Shakespearean Puzzles." Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 34. 1984. p 18 - 19.
Analysis
If you want to change the way the play ends, change the final act. Everyone knows that. As a sound designer, I am especially sensitive to the track the audience hears over the curtain call because it can have such a profound impact on the way they view the play as a whole, which is why it is often times the very first thing I choose in my sound design. For the ending of Merry Devil, I had two problems that necessitated changes to the text: First, I didn't have enough actors, and Victoria was doubling both Bilbo and Smug in this last moment. Smug, however, leaves fairly early in the scene and then re-appears later, and Bilbo doesn't have any lines until later in the scene.
The resolution was obvious: Victoria enters as Smug and plays that role up through Smug's initial exit, changes to Bilbo, and then re-enters as Bilbo, paging the curtain/holding the door for Fabell, and thus still playing the role of the general purpose servant. Smug's appearance at plays end was excised. This was essential because Victoria also doubled as Dorcas Clare, who is forgotten at the nunnery halfway through the play: Sir Arthur sends Bilbo to ride to the nunnery to retrieve his wife, and Bilbo agrees to do so, but complains that he will miss "a good breakfast." Thus we see the character complaining at leaving to bring back another character when the actor is already present.
This actually helped solve my second problem: that is that there are references to Smug's adventures the previous night during the (cut) sign stealing episode. Removing Smug from the end of the scene made it easier to remove the lines that treat on his appearance as the second George, and thus the textual hole was patched.
I could have stopped there, but since the final lines of the received text are addressed to Smug, and comment on "concluding your night of merriment," I felt this needed to be cut for narrative sense, and Sir John's trope of "...and there's an end" bringing the play to a conclusion was too good to resist. Three clowns are thus left on stage: Sir John, the Host, and Bilbo, while the rest of the cast has exited to breakfast, and then all re-emerge to reprise the chorus from "Everything's Magic" as the curtain number.
In some cases, I was simply making choices of directorial interpretation, but a considerable amount of re-scripting was involved, and perhaps the most difficult decision that I now face is whether or not to include this as the conclusion in the edition I am preparing (of course, I would also include the received ending as an appendix), or to include my rescripting of the last scene as an appendix. Ultimately, that decision will be grounded in my answer to the question of "what is this text?"
Still, this chapter has been particularly useful in citing the ways that others have rescripted the works of Shakespeare to serve their purposes, in some cases subtly, and in other cases not. As I review Dessen's inevitable end of chapter questions, which boil down to "what is gained? what is lost?" I feel more confident that, in performance at least, I have made the correct decision. We gained resolution, we lost textual ambiguity, and by most standards we rescripted very conservatively.
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Chapter 4
Intermissions as modern audiences conceive of them were unknown in Shakespeare's time. Plays were either performed continuously in the public theatres, or in the private theatres were broken up by brief musical interludes. This fashion of breaking up the play with musical interludes was adopted by the public theatres in about 1610, but no audience of the time would have recognized the modern convention of the single 15 (or dual 10) minute break (94 - 95).
Imposing the modern convention on the early modern text will disrupt the flow of energy. Even when an interval comes after a climactic moment and the action resumes in a powerful way (as is the case when the interval is placed between 3.3 and 4.1 of Julius Caesar (Cinna the Poet and Proscription), the link in the dramatic action between the violent death of the plebeian and the machinations of the triumvirs is diminished (95).
Some modern productions will play through without an interval, and Dessen provides a list of examples, and locations where the convention is accepted here (95 - 96).
The interval can be used as a moment to either introduce some new action into the world of the play or to remove large and/or complicated set pieces. Dessen cites Orlando "regularly" seen by audiences posting love notes during the intermission, along with other more specific examples (98).
"As with so many other theatrical choices in interpreting Shakespeare, to raise such a question (where should the interval/intermission come in The Tempest?) is to call attention to the many options in how we respond to, value, or trust the signals or strategies in the original scripts" (99).
It is important to recall that Shakespeare wrote plays for audiences and conventions that died long ago, and an intermission is an expected piece of modern theatrical conventions that is not easily dispensed with. Truly great directors will find a way to insert this break in the action in a way that works to their advantage to highlight a specific moment, or to create stage business that tells another part of the story, and to start again strong (108)
Analysis
My standard rule of thumb is that an audience will remain seated for about 90 minutes, and thus a play that is about 90 minutes or shorter doesn't need an intermission. Merry Devil was only 88 minutes on a bad day, so there was no question of inserting one, although we did have plenty of opportunities, and I am told that Erin Baird, an alumna of my program, wrote an excellent thesis on certain indicators of musical interludes which I ought to look into. The action of Merry Devil is broken because the text is broken, and thus the play would easily accommodate an intermission if it were anywhere long enough to hold one.
Imposing the modern convention on the early modern text will disrupt the flow of energy. Even when an interval comes after a climactic moment and the action resumes in a powerful way (as is the case when the interval is placed between 3.3 and 4.1 of Julius Caesar (Cinna the Poet and Proscription), the link in the dramatic action between the violent death of the plebeian and the machinations of the triumvirs is diminished (95).
Some modern productions will play through without an interval, and Dessen provides a list of examples, and locations where the convention is accepted here (95 - 96).
The interval can be used as a moment to either introduce some new action into the world of the play or to remove large and/or complicated set pieces. Dessen cites Orlando "regularly" seen by audiences posting love notes during the intermission, along with other more specific examples (98).
"As with so many other theatrical choices in interpreting Shakespeare, to raise such a question (where should the interval/intermission come in The Tempest?) is to call attention to the many options in how we respond to, value, or trust the signals or strategies in the original scripts" (99).
It is important to recall that Shakespeare wrote plays for audiences and conventions that died long ago, and an intermission is an expected piece of modern theatrical conventions that is not easily dispensed with. Truly great directors will find a way to insert this break in the action in a way that works to their advantage to highlight a specific moment, or to create stage business that tells another part of the story, and to start again strong (108)
Analysis
My standard rule of thumb is that an audience will remain seated for about 90 minutes, and thus a play that is about 90 minutes or shorter doesn't need an intermission. Merry Devil was only 88 minutes on a bad day, so there was no question of inserting one, although we did have plenty of opportunities, and I am told that Erin Baird, an alumna of my program, wrote an excellent thesis on certain indicators of musical interludes which I ought to look into. The action of Merry Devil is broken because the text is broken, and thus the play would easily accommodate an intermission if it were anywhere long enough to hold one.
Notes on Abrams' Introduction to The Merry Devil of Edmonton
Anyone doing any sort of serious study of Merry Devil would be remiss if they failed to consider William Amos Abrams' 1942 edition of the work. In producing it, he has completed a massive effort of textual scholarship that goes far beyond anything I would be able to do as a graduate student, and quite honestly has enabled my project. That said, I do not find his edition faultless, and no doubt because I have approached this text as more of a director than bibliographer, where Dr. Abrams was most decidedly a bibliographer. I'll spare the textual details for the moment, but I want to take some time to talk about his introductory material.
One of my chief problems with Bennett's edition (other than the ones it reproduces from Abrams' edition) is the lack of prefatory material. No one would ever think of laying that charge against Abrams whose 100+ page introduction comprises more printed pages than does the text of the play. He has neatly subdivided this introduction into "The History of the Play," "Sources," "Date of Composition," "The Text," and "Authorship," very neatly treating on each of the stumbling points for any editor approaching this text. In so far as Abrams' edition provides anyone with a road map to follow in preparing their own edition, he has created the "definitive" edition that Greg denies him, but as anyone who has followed a map knows, they are rarely always completely accurate, and even more rarely accurate for very long. Apart from the general unavailability of Abrams' edition (combined with the lack of prefatory material in Bennetts, creating the conditions necessitating a new edition), he stretches his data too far in some circumstances, and is often aware that he is doing so.
Here are issues I have with his introductory material:
When noting the relation of Merry Devil to Life and Death, Abrams notes that, "since this pamphlet appeared at least five years after the play, it cannot be considered a source" (15). This ignores the possibility that the pamphlet circulated as a manuscript publication, as did The Famous History of Friar Bacon, which Abrams admits as one of the sources for Merry Devil (13). History of Friar Bacon was, however, not printed until 1627, at least 25 years after Merry Devil as written (Bennett xii). As Greg notes, Abrams has a tendency to over-rely on Life and Death, and its place as the crux of Abrams' argument that Merry Devil is the ancestor to Life and Death may be blinding him to this fact.
Abrams is certain that an episode from Life and Death that describes Smug thinking he can fright the keepers with his visage because he thinks he has frighted spirits in the walk, actually nuns, must have been in the original play (18). His argument, however, is dependent upon a linear view of the way time works in early modern plays, and John C. Meagher has devoted an entire chapter of Shakespeare's Shakespeare
describing in detail that this is not the case. Should we assume that the anonymous author of Merry Devil, who clearly knew the work of the Chamberlain's/King's Men and who makes some obvious references to Shakespeare's plays (c.f. the "My Daughter!"/"My Dear!" construction of Merry Devil to the "My Daughter! My Ducats!" construction of Merchant of Venice) would have felt the need to bind himself to a temporal linearity that would have been, to his literary/dramaturgical sensibilities, distinctly artificial?
Regarding the missing scene, Abrams states (on page 21) that if the audience had not seen it, later references to Smug falling out of the tree would not have had an impact on the audience. From Bad Quarto's production, I observed the contrary. Our production did not include this scene, and the line still got a laugh. Here Abrams is thinking as a bibliographic and literary scholar rather than as a theatrical one, and has clearly underestimated the ability of actors to make the line funny. Also, there are other references to Smug's climbing and falling, so this trope is well known to the audience by description and not observation.
Another point of contention for me is Abrams' comment that certain textual errors "point to hasty and careless workmanship" (37). Remember that we are looking at a cut text, so in the best of circumstances there are bound to be certain gaps, but what Abrams sees as evidence of careless workmanship, I have read as evidence of multiple authorship, a position that Abrams flatly rejects (64). It is also worth noting that Abrams is working under the rather old fashioned belief that Merry Devil was published by a literary pirate (the same pirates who produced the "bad quartos" of Shakespeare), and thus obtained their copy surreptitiously. In this regard, Abrams is very much a scholar of his time, and should be forgiven for this assumption, but the logic of surreptitious copy and singular authorship leads to the belief that the play was written hastily; indeed, it should be recalled that, due to the turn around in the public theatres, nearly all plays were, and Abrams never dwells much on the conjecture, reached by Greg, that Merry Devil might have been set from a rough copy. Williams' assertion that no printer would have accepted rough copy and Massai's description of the perfecting process notwithstanding, certain of the errors in Merry Devil do point to this possibility.
Abrams spends roughly 40 pages arguing the case for Dekker's authorship of the play, and while he presents his arguments well, this is more weight than needs to be given to the matter. Even if the play is not the product of multiple authors, if we continue to follow Abrams' logic that the play is a surreptitious copy smuggled to the printer, and an abbreviated one at that, we must concede that someone else had a hand in preparing the play that we now have. The reality is that most of the same evidence brought to witness the heavy cutting of the play can be used in service of multiple authors composing the piece. Abrams' attempt to trace the play to Dekker is an attempt to give the play a unity that it lacks, and presents a further attempt to see through the veil of the corrupt printed book to an original that does not exist.
On the whole, that is my main problem with Abrams' introduction. I can't say this enough, his bibliographic scholarship is excellent and thorough, but the conclusions that he attempts to draw from this scholarship to create a literary unity are inconsistent with both the quality and the quantity of evidence available, and the conclusions he draws about the effects of the text in performance are contra-indicated by those we observed in our production.
Citation
Abrams, William Amos. "Introduction." The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608. William Amos Abrams Ed. Durham. Duke UP. 1942. p 3 - 103.
One of my chief problems with Bennett's edition (other than the ones it reproduces from Abrams' edition) is the lack of prefatory material. No one would ever think of laying that charge against Abrams whose 100+ page introduction comprises more printed pages than does the text of the play. He has neatly subdivided this introduction into "The History of the Play," "Sources," "Date of Composition," "The Text," and "Authorship," very neatly treating on each of the stumbling points for any editor approaching this text. In so far as Abrams' edition provides anyone with a road map to follow in preparing their own edition, he has created the "definitive" edition that Greg denies him, but as anyone who has followed a map knows, they are rarely always completely accurate, and even more rarely accurate for very long. Apart from the general unavailability of Abrams' edition (combined with the lack of prefatory material in Bennetts, creating the conditions necessitating a new edition), he stretches his data too far in some circumstances, and is often aware that he is doing so.
Here are issues I have with his introductory material:
When noting the relation of Merry Devil to Life and Death, Abrams notes that, "since this pamphlet appeared at least five years after the play, it cannot be considered a source" (15). This ignores the possibility that the pamphlet circulated as a manuscript publication, as did The Famous History of Friar Bacon, which Abrams admits as one of the sources for Merry Devil (13). History of Friar Bacon was, however, not printed until 1627, at least 25 years after Merry Devil as written (Bennett xii). As Greg notes, Abrams has a tendency to over-rely on Life and Death, and its place as the crux of Abrams' argument that Merry Devil is the ancestor to Life and Death may be blinding him to this fact.
Abrams is certain that an episode from Life and Death that describes Smug thinking he can fright the keepers with his visage because he thinks he has frighted spirits in the walk, actually nuns, must have been in the original play (18). His argument, however, is dependent upon a linear view of the way time works in early modern plays, and John C. Meagher has devoted an entire chapter of Shakespeare's Shakespeare
describing in detail that this is not the case. Should we assume that the anonymous author of Merry Devil, who clearly knew the work of the Chamberlain's/King's Men and who makes some obvious references to Shakespeare's plays (c.f. the "My Daughter!"/"My Dear!" construction of Merry Devil to the "My Daughter! My Ducats!" construction of Merchant of Venice) would have felt the need to bind himself to a temporal linearity that would have been, to his literary/dramaturgical sensibilities, distinctly artificial?Regarding the missing scene, Abrams states (on page 21) that if the audience had not seen it, later references to Smug falling out of the tree would not have had an impact on the audience. From Bad Quarto's production, I observed the contrary. Our production did not include this scene, and the line still got a laugh. Here Abrams is thinking as a bibliographic and literary scholar rather than as a theatrical one, and has clearly underestimated the ability of actors to make the line funny. Also, there are other references to Smug's climbing and falling, so this trope is well known to the audience by description and not observation.
Another point of contention for me is Abrams' comment that certain textual errors "point to hasty and careless workmanship" (37). Remember that we are looking at a cut text, so in the best of circumstances there are bound to be certain gaps, but what Abrams sees as evidence of careless workmanship, I have read as evidence of multiple authorship, a position that Abrams flatly rejects (64). It is also worth noting that Abrams is working under the rather old fashioned belief that Merry Devil was published by a literary pirate (the same pirates who produced the "bad quartos" of Shakespeare), and thus obtained their copy surreptitiously. In this regard, Abrams is very much a scholar of his time, and should be forgiven for this assumption, but the logic of surreptitious copy and singular authorship leads to the belief that the play was written hastily; indeed, it should be recalled that, due to the turn around in the public theatres, nearly all plays were, and Abrams never dwells much on the conjecture, reached by Greg, that Merry Devil might have been set from a rough copy. Williams' assertion that no printer would have accepted rough copy and Massai's description of the perfecting process notwithstanding, certain of the errors in Merry Devil do point to this possibility.
Abrams spends roughly 40 pages arguing the case for Dekker's authorship of the play, and while he presents his arguments well, this is more weight than needs to be given to the matter. Even if the play is not the product of multiple authors, if we continue to follow Abrams' logic that the play is a surreptitious copy smuggled to the printer, and an abbreviated one at that, we must concede that someone else had a hand in preparing the play that we now have. The reality is that most of the same evidence brought to witness the heavy cutting of the play can be used in service of multiple authors composing the piece. Abrams' attempt to trace the play to Dekker is an attempt to give the play a unity that it lacks, and presents a further attempt to see through the veil of the corrupt printed book to an original that does not exist.
On the whole, that is my main problem with Abrams' introduction. I can't say this enough, his bibliographic scholarship is excellent and thorough, but the conclusions that he attempts to draw from this scholarship to create a literary unity are inconsistent with both the quality and the quantity of evidence available, and the conclusions he draws about the effects of the text in performance are contra-indicated by those we observed in our production.
Citation
Abrams, William Amos. "Introduction." The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608. William Amos Abrams Ed. Durham. Duke UP. 1942. p 3 - 103.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Notes on Rescripting Shakespeare - Chapter 3
While rescripting is commonly done in the service of personnel reasons, trimming the over all running time, or to cut through obscure language, directors will often rescript shows as a way of dealing with problems that have plagued editors and scholars for generations, and have done so with their own technological resources in mind (64).
In order to cover perceived gaps in scenes, directors have added what they perceived to be missing materials, such as a scene where Shylock observes Jessica escaping his house in Merchant of Venice, and a scene where the audience sees a glimpse of the false Hero at the window, or Beatrice walking alone at night in Much Ado (64 - 65). From what I understand it, the Globe added such a pantomime of Smug on the sign in their workshop of Merry Devil, of course no mention of it's placement occurs in Bennett's text. Likewise, Abrams is very clear on where he thinks the missing scenes should go, but does not go so far as to create and insert them into the text. Again, I think the play works fine without adding anything, provided a couple of lines are omitted at the ending; the rest of the references can be covered with good acting choices.
While one common method of dealing with perceived problems in a text is to cut them, other directors find they can solve problematic elements by repositioning some lines or scenes. Henry's order to kill the French prisoners can be cut, but it is also sometimes moved to the scene following Gower and Fluellen discussing the French killing all the English boys. This can make a troubling line less so, but at the sacrifice of a line that perhaps should be troubling, and perhaps at the risk of substituting a cause for an effect (68).
Dessen notes that the repositioning of scenes takes place most commonly to minimize the need to shift set pieces, of course Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote for a stage that was both open and flexible, and relied on minimal and portable set pieces and props (71). Our production of Merry Devil, inspired by American Shakespeare Center practices in reproducing Shakespeare's original staging conditions, didn't suffer from this problem much. We used four acting blocks with open-able lids, and positioned them in a basic default position, which the Prologue than moved to re-create Fabell's study. The Host then moves most of the pieces upstage for the first scene at the George at Watham, and then moves the last block into its upstage position in the second scene at the George. The Host likewise moves the blocks into their forest brake position when the clowns come once more under the zona-torrida of the forest, while the rest of the clowns remain off stage making wild animal noises to scare him (the ruse is discovered when one of them moos like a cow). The sexton re-arranges the blocks upstage to form Enfield Church Porch, which has precisely the same configuration as the George at Waltham and the inn across the way (which, despite Abrams's analysis of Life and Death, I cannot think of as the White Horse). The scene shifts were in all cases except for one part of the scripted action of the play, and in the one instance where it was not, it proved to be an opportunity for a comic bit. The secret was to never let the audience think they were watching a simple scene shift, and so we didn't have any problems, but if we absolutely couldn't have covered the shift with the action (as they sometimes cannot at the ASC), we would have been able to use a brief musical interlude to do so (as they sometimes do at the ASC).
While most directors rescript in order to cut or streamline the text, others find it necessary to add new material to the received text in order to clarify - or make - a point they feel is important. This can include one off jokes (such as in CSC's 1986 Merchant of Venice, where Launcelot Gobbo makes a reference to his mother being named "Gretta," and thus "Gretta Gobo), or for some musical effect, such as in the case of RSC's 2000 Richard II, wherein Richard enters whistling "God Save the King." (73 - 74). Guilty as charged: to help cover one of Paul's costume changes from Sir John into Sir Richard, Victoria as Smug did an air guitar riff of "Runnin' with the Devil," Sir John called for Smug to follow him from off stage, and then Smug delivered her "Good night, Waltham!" line in the manner of a rock star exiting the stage. It gave us more than enough time to complete the change, and got a laugh.
Another common addition to plays in performance is including characters in scenes where they are not specified, but may be indicated by the action. While scholars may suppose that Cassius and Caius Ligarius were played by the same actor, for example, such conventions are often not necessary today, and Sir Peter Hall, in his 1995 RSC production, specifically included both, the result being that Caesar specifically snubs greeting Cassius (as no line is provided for such a greeting), and thus affirms both what Caesar had said previously about Cassius, and Cassius' own feelings (74 - 75). With one less actor than the script of Merry Devil technically calls for, this wasn't a luxury that we could afford.
Sometimes characters mentioned in the dialogue are included in the action, perhaps most notably the changeling boy in Midsummer (75). Personally, I agree with Ralph Alan Cohen's position that bringing on the changeling is a really bad idea, and is perhaps even contra-indicated by the script. Isn't it better if we see Titania and Oberon quarreling over nothing, literally, just like old married couples do? But I digress....
Directors will sometimes, for the sake of highlighting the brutality of a certain ruler, place onstage executions and violence where it is only implied in the text (78).
Directorial prologues and pre-show "dumb shows" are the most common insertion into plays of the period, some beginning at the advertised curtain time, others beginning when the house opens, and still others beginning somewhere in between. These can have an effect similar to an authorial induction, or can serve to blur the line between actor and character, performance and reality (81).
The use of pre-show and post-show dumb shows as framing devices have been regularly employed at the London Globe (83). Ah ha! So that's why Globe Education was so quick to offer that as a solution!
The combination of a prologue/epilogue as a framing device will generally be more effective than employing either device individually (83).
Sometimes directors prefer an interpretation of a given character that requires a certain amount of rescripting to maintain it. If, for example, Oberon is played as a devilish spirit, it might make sense to cut his "but we are spirits of another sort" line (86 - 87).
Dessen concludes whit chapter with a description of Michael Boyd's 1998 Measure for Measure at the RSC, which set the action of the play in a state reminiscent of an Eastern Bloc power, and shifted the focus of the action to averting a governmental coup. Reviews for this production were widely mixed, with some praising Boyd for taking new and bold directions, and other criticizing him for altering the text so thoroughly that original themes were barely recognizable (90 - 93).
Analysis
Directors can do a great deal to improve the play to their own ends, but as Dessen so eloquently asks in the series of rhetorical questions that he poses consistently at the end of these chapters, "as who likes it" (93)? The answer can only be one of interpretation, and in the case of an early modern play, the director must choose early on whether they wish to trust their audience with the text they've received, and how much. Sometimes adaptations will work beautifully, and sometimes disastrously, whereas in other cases opinions will likely be split between textual purists and those more open to adaptation.
Again, the question seems to me, at what point does a director need to draw a line and say they have edited a text? At what point do they draw another line and say they've adapted it? At what point do they draw yet another and say they've written a new play inspired by an old one? Where does the line where hey cease to mention the source material come? And before we start enjoying the view from our ivory tower too much, let us recall that Shakespeare never once mentions Holinshead.
In order to cover perceived gaps in scenes, directors have added what they perceived to be missing materials, such as a scene where Shylock observes Jessica escaping his house in Merchant of Venice, and a scene where the audience sees a glimpse of the false Hero at the window, or Beatrice walking alone at night in Much Ado (64 - 65). From what I understand it, the Globe added such a pantomime of Smug on the sign in their workshop of Merry Devil, of course no mention of it's placement occurs in Bennett's text. Likewise, Abrams is very clear on where he thinks the missing scenes should go, but does not go so far as to create and insert them into the text. Again, I think the play works fine without adding anything, provided a couple of lines are omitted at the ending; the rest of the references can be covered with good acting choices.
While one common method of dealing with perceived problems in a text is to cut them, other directors find they can solve problematic elements by repositioning some lines or scenes. Henry's order to kill the French prisoners can be cut, but it is also sometimes moved to the scene following Gower and Fluellen discussing the French killing all the English boys. This can make a troubling line less so, but at the sacrifice of a line that perhaps should be troubling, and perhaps at the risk of substituting a cause for an effect (68).
Dessen notes that the repositioning of scenes takes place most commonly to minimize the need to shift set pieces, of course Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote for a stage that was both open and flexible, and relied on minimal and portable set pieces and props (71). Our production of Merry Devil, inspired by American Shakespeare Center practices in reproducing Shakespeare's original staging conditions, didn't suffer from this problem much. We used four acting blocks with open-able lids, and positioned them in a basic default position, which the Prologue than moved to re-create Fabell's study. The Host then moves most of the pieces upstage for the first scene at the George at Watham, and then moves the last block into its upstage position in the second scene at the George. The Host likewise moves the blocks into their forest brake position when the clowns come once more under the zona-torrida of the forest, while the rest of the clowns remain off stage making wild animal noises to scare him (the ruse is discovered when one of them moos like a cow). The sexton re-arranges the blocks upstage to form Enfield Church Porch, which has precisely the same configuration as the George at Waltham and the inn across the way (which, despite Abrams's analysis of Life and Death, I cannot think of as the White Horse). The scene shifts were in all cases except for one part of the scripted action of the play, and in the one instance where it was not, it proved to be an opportunity for a comic bit. The secret was to never let the audience think they were watching a simple scene shift, and so we didn't have any problems, but if we absolutely couldn't have covered the shift with the action (as they sometimes cannot at the ASC), we would have been able to use a brief musical interlude to do so (as they sometimes do at the ASC).
While most directors rescript in order to cut or streamline the text, others find it necessary to add new material to the received text in order to clarify - or make - a point they feel is important. This can include one off jokes (such as in CSC's 1986 Merchant of Venice, where Launcelot Gobbo makes a reference to his mother being named "Gretta," and thus "Gretta Gobo), or for some musical effect, such as in the case of RSC's 2000 Richard II, wherein Richard enters whistling "God Save the King." (73 - 74). Guilty as charged: to help cover one of Paul's costume changes from Sir John into Sir Richard, Victoria as Smug did an air guitar riff of "Runnin' with the Devil," Sir John called for Smug to follow him from off stage, and then Smug delivered her "Good night, Waltham!" line in the manner of a rock star exiting the stage. It gave us more than enough time to complete the change, and got a laugh.
Another common addition to plays in performance is including characters in scenes where they are not specified, but may be indicated by the action. While scholars may suppose that Cassius and Caius Ligarius were played by the same actor, for example, such conventions are often not necessary today, and Sir Peter Hall, in his 1995 RSC production, specifically included both, the result being that Caesar specifically snubs greeting Cassius (as no line is provided for such a greeting), and thus affirms both what Caesar had said previously about Cassius, and Cassius' own feelings (74 - 75). With one less actor than the script of Merry Devil technically calls for, this wasn't a luxury that we could afford.
Sometimes characters mentioned in the dialogue are included in the action, perhaps most notably the changeling boy in Midsummer (75). Personally, I agree with Ralph Alan Cohen's position that bringing on the changeling is a really bad idea, and is perhaps even contra-indicated by the script. Isn't it better if we see Titania and Oberon quarreling over nothing, literally, just like old married couples do? But I digress....
Directors will sometimes, for the sake of highlighting the brutality of a certain ruler, place onstage executions and violence where it is only implied in the text (78).
Directorial prologues and pre-show "dumb shows" are the most common insertion into plays of the period, some beginning at the advertised curtain time, others beginning when the house opens, and still others beginning somewhere in between. These can have an effect similar to an authorial induction, or can serve to blur the line between actor and character, performance and reality (81).
The use of pre-show and post-show dumb shows as framing devices have been regularly employed at the London Globe (83). Ah ha! So that's why Globe Education was so quick to offer that as a solution!
The combination of a prologue/epilogue as a framing device will generally be more effective than employing either device individually (83).
Sometimes directors prefer an interpretation of a given character that requires a certain amount of rescripting to maintain it. If, for example, Oberon is played as a devilish spirit, it might make sense to cut his "but we are spirits of another sort" line (86 - 87).
Dessen concludes whit chapter with a description of Michael Boyd's 1998 Measure for Measure at the RSC, which set the action of the play in a state reminiscent of an Eastern Bloc power, and shifted the focus of the action to averting a governmental coup. Reviews for this production were widely mixed, with some praising Boyd for taking new and bold directions, and other criticizing him for altering the text so thoroughly that original themes were barely recognizable (90 - 93).
Analysis
Directors can do a great deal to improve the play to their own ends, but as Dessen so eloquently asks in the series of rhetorical questions that he poses consistently at the end of these chapters, "as who likes it" (93)? The answer can only be one of interpretation, and in the case of an early modern play, the director must choose early on whether they wish to trust their audience with the text they've received, and how much. Sometimes adaptations will work beautifully, and sometimes disastrously, whereas in other cases opinions will likely be split between textual purists and those more open to adaptation.
Again, the question seems to me, at what point does a director need to draw a line and say they have edited a text? At what point do they draw another line and say they've adapted it? At what point do they draw yet another and say they've written a new play inspired by an old one? Where does the line where hey cease to mention the source material come? And before we start enjoying the view from our ivory tower too much, let us recall that Shakespeare never once mentions Holinshead.
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