"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
Showing posts with label emendation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emendation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 6, 2011
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.
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, August 31, 2010
Notes on Re-Editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: Chapter 3
"The Editor and the Theatre: Editorial Treatment of Stage Directions"
Shakespeare clearly wrote plays for the stage, and wrote them aware that he would play a part in the production process. The sparseness of his stage directions show his willingness to work out the specifics later, and reflect his focus on what was to be said. There is evidence from his use of actors names in speech prefixes that he sometimes wrote with certain actors in mind for characters. That is, Shakespeare was always conscious that his final product would not be finished until it was performed (57-58).
cf Klein, David. "Did Shakespeare Produce his Own Plays?" Modern Language Review 57 (1962). 556-560.
cf Wells, Stanley. "Editorial Treatment of Foul-Paper Texts: Much Ado About Nothing as Test Case." Review of English Studies NS 31 (1980), 1- 16.
A peculiar job of the editor comes when choosing between two different kinds of authority. The quarto text of Midsummer, for example, is believed to have been printed from a manuscript copy, and the Folio from an annotated prompt book copy. Where in Q the review of the wedding entertainments offered belongs to Thesues alone, in F Theseus and Lysander share these lines (of course, Paul Menzer has argued otherwise in "The Weaver's Dream - Mnemonic Scripts and Memorial
Texts" (109)). Here the editor must choose between the authority of the earlier or later texts, or be guided by Menzer's argument (60-61).
It is entirely possible that stage directions did not come from Shakespeare's hand. Since the plays were written to be inherently incomplete copy to be presented on the stage, we must accept that Shakespeare left some of the finer details of entrances and exits to be writ in later. Indeed, sometimes when he does provide entrances, such as Q Much Ado 2.1, where several characters are given an entrance even though two speak and one is already on stage, he is clearly wrong. In 1.2 of Antony and Cleopatra several characters are provided entrances who do not speak, are not spoken to, and who play
no part of the action in the scene are likewise introduced. Whether Shakespeare forgot to strike their names from the stage direction after finishing the scene, they were added later by a prompter who
needed bodies to dress the stage, or whether Shakespeare always meant for them to be a presence in the scene must remain a mystery (62).
"I regard the use of abbreviated names as speech prefixes as an indefensible barbarism in anything other than a diplomatic edition" (65).
Dover Wilson's attempt to give stage directions a literary flair may not be what Shakespeare had written, and if he had not been so overly lavish in his descriptions, the custom may have survived. Wilson's use of words to create a sense of place (sight, sound, and smell) in the mind of the reader is perhaps preferable to a *reader* of Shakespeare than the comparatively bare "enter" and "exuent" that a text prepared for performance might benefit from. The consequence of Wilson's approach is that the text becomes overly long, and his willingness to go too far in his descriptions is likely one of the reasons why his approach fell quickly out of favor with editors (67-68).
"I take it as axiomatic that the plays take place, not on heaths, in forests, in castles, in palaces, in ante-rooms, or bedrooms, or throne-rooms, but on a stage" (69).
McKerrow's recognition of stage directions being necessary "to visualize the action as it would be if staged by a reasonably conservative producer" should be thought of in terms of the early modern stage, but an editor who wishes to prepare an edition for a different style is embarking on a perfectly legitimate endeavor. While these directions are likely to not have much of an interest to the
greater field of textual studies, an editor may be inspired (or hired) to prepare an edition for one specific theatre, or as in the instance of Peter Brook's production of Midsummer, the edition may be
prepared after the fact as a way of commemorating the production (70). This seems to follow the general theme of keeping your apparatus transparent.
An editor ought not be too conservative in the presentation of entrances and exits where elaboration for the effect of stage presentation could be useful. It is doubtful that all the characters in Julius Caesar 3.1 would, on a stage, mutely enter from the same place in so neat a line (73).
"Shakespeare sometimes omits necessary entrances and exits," and editors would do well to mark where he has plausibly forgotten that a character must enter the scene, or that they should have exited
earlier (74).
Editors must remember that playgoers benefit from visual and aural cues that readers do not. Part of their task in elaborating on actions or necessary costume pieces implied in the text is to provide that
information in a straightforward matter so that the reader does not have to read that information back into text they have already read. To this end, an editors task is to help an intelligent reader
read a play intelligently (76).
It may help the reader to indicate whom a speech is addressed to when the addressee clearly changes, or even when the addressee is the audience (76).
cf Honigmann, E.A.J. "Re-enter the Stage Direction: Shakespeare and Some Contemporaries." Shakespeare Survey 29 (Cambridge, 1976), 117-125.
"Plays may properly be edited in different ways to suit different readers" (78).
ANALYSIS
As a director, I very generally treat stage directions as basically ignorable statements about how a particular production was performed in a particular time and space. While a stage direction may suggest an action, it is not necessarily the action best suited to the production (most specifically actors and venue) that you are in charge of at the moment. ASC Co-founder and Director of Mission Ralph Alan Cohen has a drastically different take on the importance of stage directions, and quite honestly, I agree with him that they can be useful. I have tended to leave the stage directions open to my actors interpretation; when they ask me "should I do what the script says?" I tell them to do it if it makes sense, although under Cohen's tutealedge I have adopted a more conservative approach to stage directions.
Merry Devil certainly presents some problems. There are some very clear stage directions in the variou quartos that we simply cannot do because our Philly Venue is not so equipped, and we will likely not
have enough time to reblock all of those scenes for our Blackfriars performance. Still, I think in light of Wells' and Cohen's approaches to stage directions, it is best to include them and leave the director
the option of choosing the best action to fit his or her cast and venue.
Ultimately, while the edition of Merry Devil that I produce will be informed by the choices we have made in the production process, I do not expect that it will be limited by them. There are several edits to the text that circumstances have forced us to make that I would not make if circmstances were different, and I see no need to include those in the text.
Shakespeare clearly wrote plays for the stage, and wrote them aware that he would play a part in the production process. The sparseness of his stage directions show his willingness to work out the specifics later, and reflect his focus on what was to be said. There is evidence from his use of actors names in speech prefixes that he sometimes wrote with certain actors in mind for characters. That is, Shakespeare was always conscious that his final product would not be finished until it was performed (57-58).
cf Klein, David. "Did Shakespeare Produce his Own Plays?" Modern Language Review 57 (1962). 556-560.
cf Wells, Stanley. "Editorial Treatment of Foul-Paper Texts: Much Ado About Nothing as Test Case." Review of English Studies NS 31 (1980), 1- 16.
A peculiar job of the editor comes when choosing between two different kinds of authority. The quarto text of Midsummer, for example, is believed to have been printed from a manuscript copy, and the Folio from an annotated prompt book copy. Where in Q the review of the wedding entertainments offered belongs to Thesues alone, in F Theseus and Lysander share these lines (of course, Paul Menzer has argued otherwise in "The Weaver's Dream - Mnemonic Scripts and Memorial
Texts" (109)). Here the editor must choose between the authority of the earlier or later texts, or be guided by Menzer's argument (60-61).
It is entirely possible that stage directions did not come from Shakespeare's hand. Since the plays were written to be inherently incomplete copy to be presented on the stage, we must accept that Shakespeare left some of the finer details of entrances and exits to be writ in later. Indeed, sometimes when he does provide entrances, such as Q Much Ado 2.1, where several characters are given an entrance even though two speak and one is already on stage, he is clearly wrong. In 1.2 of Antony and Cleopatra several characters are provided entrances who do not speak, are not spoken to, and who play
no part of the action in the scene are likewise introduced. Whether Shakespeare forgot to strike their names from the stage direction after finishing the scene, they were added later by a prompter who
needed bodies to dress the stage, or whether Shakespeare always meant for them to be a presence in the scene must remain a mystery (62).
"I regard the use of abbreviated names as speech prefixes as an indefensible barbarism in anything other than a diplomatic edition" (65).
Dover Wilson's attempt to give stage directions a literary flair may not be what Shakespeare had written, and if he had not been so overly lavish in his descriptions, the custom may have survived. Wilson's use of words to create a sense of place (sight, sound, and smell) in the mind of the reader is perhaps preferable to a *reader* of Shakespeare than the comparatively bare "enter" and "exuent" that a text prepared for performance might benefit from. The consequence of Wilson's approach is that the text becomes overly long, and his willingness to go too far in his descriptions is likely one of the reasons why his approach fell quickly out of favor with editors (67-68).
"I take it as axiomatic that the plays take place, not on heaths, in forests, in castles, in palaces, in ante-rooms, or bedrooms, or throne-rooms, but on a stage" (69).
McKerrow's recognition of stage directions being necessary "to visualize the action as it would be if staged by a reasonably conservative producer" should be thought of in terms of the early modern stage, but an editor who wishes to prepare an edition for a different style is embarking on a perfectly legitimate endeavor. While these directions are likely to not have much of an interest to the
greater field of textual studies, an editor may be inspired (or hired) to prepare an edition for one specific theatre, or as in the instance of Peter Brook's production of Midsummer, the edition may be
prepared after the fact as a way of commemorating the production (70). This seems to follow the general theme of keeping your apparatus transparent.
An editor ought not be too conservative in the presentation of entrances and exits where elaboration for the effect of stage presentation could be useful. It is doubtful that all the characters in Julius Caesar 3.1 would, on a stage, mutely enter from the same place in so neat a line (73).
"Shakespeare sometimes omits necessary entrances and exits," and editors would do well to mark where he has plausibly forgotten that a character must enter the scene, or that they should have exited
earlier (74).
Editors must remember that playgoers benefit from visual and aural cues that readers do not. Part of their task in elaborating on actions or necessary costume pieces implied in the text is to provide that
information in a straightforward matter so that the reader does not have to read that information back into text they have already read. To this end, an editors task is to help an intelligent reader
read a play intelligently (76).
It may help the reader to indicate whom a speech is addressed to when the addressee clearly changes, or even when the addressee is the audience (76).
cf Honigmann, E.A.J. "Re-enter the Stage Direction: Shakespeare and Some Contemporaries." Shakespeare Survey 29 (Cambridge, 1976), 117-125.
"Plays may properly be edited in different ways to suit different readers" (78).
ANALYSIS
As a director, I very generally treat stage directions as basically ignorable statements about how a particular production was performed in a particular time and space. While a stage direction may suggest an action, it is not necessarily the action best suited to the production (most specifically actors and venue) that you are in charge of at the moment. ASC Co-founder and Director of Mission Ralph Alan Cohen has a drastically different take on the importance of stage directions, and quite honestly, I agree with him that they can be useful. I have tended to leave the stage directions open to my actors interpretation; when they ask me "should I do what the script says?" I tell them to do it if it makes sense, although under Cohen's tutealedge I have adopted a more conservative approach to stage directions.
Merry Devil certainly presents some problems. There are some very clear stage directions in the variou quartos that we simply cannot do because our Philly Venue is not so equipped, and we will likely not
have enough time to reblock all of those scenes for our Blackfriars performance. Still, I think in light of Wells' and Cohen's approaches to stage directions, it is best to include them and leave the director
the option of choosing the best action to fit his or her cast and venue.
Ultimately, while the edition of Merry Devil that I produce will be informed by the choices we have made in the production process, I do not expect that it will be limited by them. There are several edits to the text that circumstances have forced us to make that I would not make if circmstances were different, and I see no need to include those in the text.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Notes on Re-Editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader: Chapter 2
"Emending Shakespeare"
While Bowers has proposed that all emendations that can be made have been made, and that the editors task in emending the text is simply to choose their favorite, this attitude is shockingly defeatist. If everything that can be said about the text has been said, why not leave them alone? Of course new editors are learning new ways of interpreting texts for new readers all the time, certainly with each
succeeding generation, and while a more conservative approach may be preferable to an uncontrolled, eclectic one, unthinking conservativism is never the correct position for an editor to take (32).
Emendation is almost certainly necessary when the source text is nonsensical, but even where an emendation may not be necessary an editor still has the right to express doubts about the original, or an alternative or traditional reading, and to offer a plausible alternative (41).
"I do not think we should be inhibited from adopting a superior reading by a fear that we might be improving on Shakespeare rather than on the agents of transmission" (42).
Logical weaknesses, i.e. a weakness in the sense of the meaning, should arouse the suspicion of an editor and open the door to emendation, but so should stylistic weakness. While a modern editor
may wish to avoid being accused of attempting to improve Shakespeare, a stylistically awkward piece of an otherwise polished passage should attract an editors attention, and likewise invite emendation (43).
"An editor's first duty is, if possible, to make sense of the original text, even if he then decides to alter it" (44).
On the regularization of names, Wells notes that, in All's Well that Ends Well Helena's name only appears as "Helena" four times, and only one of those occurences is in dialogue, the remainder being located in stage directions. The shorter "Helen" form of her name appears 25 times, sixteen of those in dialogue, and yet editors generally print the longer form. It would seem logical to normalize the name to the longer form, if indeed it needs to be normalized (47).
A similar, though more complicated case of name emendation is common in Julius Caesar, where the names given in the Folio text are often emended to a more formal Latin form (47-48). This is an altogether unnecessary emendation that reflects the bias of the classicists more than Shakespeare's intent. The place of Julius Caesar as a bridge between classical and English education lends more gravity to the men than Shakespeare meant to give them.
"For some reason-perhaps because an edition can be annotated-one is more willing to confront a reader than a playgoer with nonsense" (49).
While metrical emendation has long been out of fashion, editorial hesitence to amend metre has been taken too far. When the extant text's metrical values are demonstrably deficient, an editor should be
willing to amend a line for the sake of the metre (50). The key words are "demonstrably deficient." Perhaps I am too conservative, but I think the only instance in which I should consider amending metre is when the line occurs in an otherwise highly regular passage, and for which its irregularity cannot be otherwise explained.
There are a couple points in this chapter when Wells proposes a "foul-papers text" being the source of confusion: Taming of the Shrew is proposed (52), as is the quarto of Much Ado about Nothing (46). Yet
I cannot help but think to William Proctor Williams' eminently logical assertion that no printer would have accepted foul-papers copy for the simple reason that it would be more difficult, and therefore take
longer to set than fair copy. Hasty composition is a halmark of a foul-papers text, as described by Wells, but is it inconceivable that hastily composed lines might never have been corrected in the fair
copy that made its way to the print shop?
Summary: emendation is sometimes necessary, and editors ought to not feel too skittish about amending texts of plays when the sense, metre, or style of the line is called into question. While some lines can simply be glossed to impart meaning to a modern reader, this is not always the case, and part of the editors job is to present reasonable alternatives. However, an editor would also do well to make note of the original, and perhaps other emendations and arguments in appropriate foot or end notes.
While Bowers has proposed that all emendations that can be made have been made, and that the editors task in emending the text is simply to choose their favorite, this attitude is shockingly defeatist. If everything that can be said about the text has been said, why not leave them alone? Of course new editors are learning new ways of interpreting texts for new readers all the time, certainly with each
succeeding generation, and while a more conservative approach may be preferable to an uncontrolled, eclectic one, unthinking conservativism is never the correct position for an editor to take (32).
Emendation is almost certainly necessary when the source text is nonsensical, but even where an emendation may not be necessary an editor still has the right to express doubts about the original, or an alternative or traditional reading, and to offer a plausible alternative (41).
"I do not think we should be inhibited from adopting a superior reading by a fear that we might be improving on Shakespeare rather than on the agents of transmission" (42).
Logical weaknesses, i.e. a weakness in the sense of the meaning, should arouse the suspicion of an editor and open the door to emendation, but so should stylistic weakness. While a modern editor
may wish to avoid being accused of attempting to improve Shakespeare, a stylistically awkward piece of an otherwise polished passage should attract an editors attention, and likewise invite emendation (43).
"An editor's first duty is, if possible, to make sense of the original text, even if he then decides to alter it" (44).
On the regularization of names, Wells notes that, in All's Well that Ends Well Helena's name only appears as "Helena" four times, and only one of those occurences is in dialogue, the remainder being located in stage directions. The shorter "Helen" form of her name appears 25 times, sixteen of those in dialogue, and yet editors generally print the longer form. It would seem logical to normalize the name to the longer form, if indeed it needs to be normalized (47).
A similar, though more complicated case of name emendation is common in Julius Caesar, where the names given in the Folio text are often emended to a more formal Latin form (47-48). This is an altogether unnecessary emendation that reflects the bias of the classicists more than Shakespeare's intent. The place of Julius Caesar as a bridge between classical and English education lends more gravity to the men than Shakespeare meant to give them.
"For some reason-perhaps because an edition can be annotated-one is more willing to confront a reader than a playgoer with nonsense" (49).
While metrical emendation has long been out of fashion, editorial hesitence to amend metre has been taken too far. When the extant text's metrical values are demonstrably deficient, an editor should be
willing to amend a line for the sake of the metre (50). The key words are "demonstrably deficient." Perhaps I am too conservative, but I think the only instance in which I should consider amending metre is when the line occurs in an otherwise highly regular passage, and for which its irregularity cannot be otherwise explained.
There are a couple points in this chapter when Wells proposes a "foul-papers text" being the source of confusion: Taming of the Shrew is proposed (52), as is the quarto of Much Ado about Nothing (46). Yet
I cannot help but think to William Proctor Williams' eminently logical assertion that no printer would have accepted foul-papers copy for the simple reason that it would be more difficult, and therefore take
longer to set than fair copy. Hasty composition is a halmark of a foul-papers text, as described by Wells, but is it inconceivable that hastily composed lines might never have been corrected in the fair
copy that made its way to the print shop?
Summary: emendation is sometimes necessary, and editors ought to not feel too skittish about amending texts of plays when the sense, metre, or style of the line is called into question. While some lines can simply be glossed to impart meaning to a modern reader, this is not always the case, and part of the editors job is to present reasonable alternatives. However, an editor would also do well to make note of the original, and perhaps other emendations and arguments in appropriate foot or end notes.
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