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
Showing posts with label playwriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playwriting. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
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.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Notes on the Introduction to The Coast of Utopia
"Introduction" to The Coast of Utopia
Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia is a trilogy of plays that, like An Experiment with an Air Pump, by Shelagh Stephenson, is a dramaturg's dream. Set in czarist Russia and following the travels of Russian radicals and revolutionaries, through these three plays (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage) Stoppard tells the story of the maturation of philosophy in the rich historical backdrop of 19th century Europe. In the 2007 Grove Press edition, Stoppard also provides an introduction to the trilogy that offers his insights into the process of writing and revising his own work.
The process of writing a play is a transcription of an event before the event actually happens. The event that happens after the fact usually turns out at least slightly different from the one the playwright imagines, whether for artistic or purely logistic (i.e. the play was too long) reasons. The second edition of a play follows when these changes are incorporated back into the original transcription, which itself becomes obsolete (xi).
"Theatre is a pragmatic art form" (xii).
Plays offer the writer the possibility to move text around, and re-create the text anew based on their impressions of a reading. Novels seldom are as fluid, and when the work is complete, there is rarely the chance to change it. While some playwrights will regard their work in the same way, taking advantage of the fluid nature of dramatic writing allows for the potential for a text to evolve to match the transcript of events that actually happen, or that, in retrospect, should have happened (xii - xiii).
Appropriate citation information follows.
Stoppard, Tom. "Introduction." The Coast of Utopia. New York. Grove Press. 2007. xi - xiv.
Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia is a trilogy of plays that, like An Experiment with an Air Pump, by Shelagh Stephenson, is a dramaturg's dream. Set in czarist Russia and following the travels of Russian radicals and revolutionaries, through these three plays (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage) Stoppard tells the story of the maturation of philosophy in the rich historical backdrop of 19th century Europe. In the 2007 Grove Press edition, Stoppard also provides an introduction to the trilogy that offers his insights into the process of writing and revising his own work.
The process of writing a play is a transcription of an event before the event actually happens. The event that happens after the fact usually turns out at least slightly different from the one the playwright imagines, whether for artistic or purely logistic (i.e. the play was too long) reasons. The second edition of a play follows when these changes are incorporated back into the original transcription, which itself becomes obsolete (xi).
"Theatre is a pragmatic art form" (xii).
Plays offer the writer the possibility to move text around, and re-create the text anew based on their impressions of a reading. Novels seldom are as fluid, and when the work is complete, there is rarely the chance to change it. While some playwrights will regard their work in the same way, taking advantage of the fluid nature of dramatic writing allows for the potential for a text to evolve to match the transcript of events that actually happen, or that, in retrospect, should have happened (xii - xiii).
Appropriate citation information follows.
Stoppard, Tom. "Introduction." The Coast of Utopia. New York. Grove Press. 2007. xi - xiv.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Tickling Your Catastrophe
2 Henry IV's "I'll tickle your catastrophe" is one of the great Shakespearean insults, or is it? I don't know how I've been staring at this text for so long without making the connection, but Smug, in what I've dubbed scene 5, makes a remark about the wind 'O it tickles our catastrope.' And who is the source of the more well known "I'll tickle your catastrophe?" None other than the great Sir John Falstaff. That would be scanned.
One of the arguments I've been making is that some of the great clown characters of the King's Men come together in Merry Devil, and I've been casting Merry Devil's Sir John as an incarnation of Falstaff. But maybe that isn't so. Or maybe the roles these men played were more fluid than Tiffany Stern and other modern scholars have come to believe. We all know the story of William Kempe, the principle clown of the company, being replaced by Robert Armin, and thus the change in clown types in new plays, but Armin would have been expected to play Kempe's roles. Or would he? Is it possible that someone else better suited to those roles would have filled them in? Certainly Merry Devil requires a greater comic range than the reductive assignment of the company clown will allow. Just like a modern actor must be versatile in their range, so must an early modern one.
In any case, perhaps this is a pointer to Shakespeare's hand in Merry Devil. Or it could be a pointer to someone else's hand in 2 Henry IV. Or it could be that the tickling of catastrophes was such a common catch phrase that everyone was using it. 2 Henry IV was written between 1596 and 1599, a good 4 - 7 years prior to Merry Devil, so it is perhaps possible that we're seeing an actor re-inserting a favorite phrase, but even if this is the case, and Shakespeare is responsible for the invention of "tickle your catastrophe" we could be seeing Stern's culture of the commonplace book at work.
Three distinct possibilities emerge:
One of the arguments I've been making is that some of the great clown characters of the King's Men come together in Merry Devil, and I've been casting Merry Devil's Sir John as an incarnation of Falstaff. But maybe that isn't so. Or maybe the roles these men played were more fluid than Tiffany Stern and other modern scholars have come to believe. We all know the story of William Kempe, the principle clown of the company, being replaced by Robert Armin, and thus the change in clown types in new plays, but Armin would have been expected to play Kempe's roles. Or would he? Is it possible that someone else better suited to those roles would have filled them in? Certainly Merry Devil requires a greater comic range than the reductive assignment of the company clown will allow. Just like a modern actor must be versatile in their range, so must an early modern one.
In any case, perhaps this is a pointer to Shakespeare's hand in Merry Devil. Or it could be a pointer to someone else's hand in 2 Henry IV. Or it could be that the tickling of catastrophes was such a common catch phrase that everyone was using it. 2 Henry IV was written between 1596 and 1599, a good 4 - 7 years prior to Merry Devil, so it is perhaps possible that we're seeing an actor re-inserting a favorite phrase, but even if this is the case, and Shakespeare is responsible for the invention of "tickle your catastrophe" we could be seeing Stern's culture of the commonplace book at work.
Three distinct possibilities emerge:
- Shakespeare originated the line, and re-used it in Merry Devil.
- Shakespeare originated the line, and someone else used it in Merry Devil.
- Shakespeare did not originate the line.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Collaborative Play Editing
It strikes me as odd that, where any playwright worth their salt wouldn't think of trying to publish a play without first having actors read it and mounting a production of it, most editors don't think twice about doing exactly that. Having finished a collation of three quartos, I'm fairly confident in my familiarity with the text (here I mean textual object), but the process of collation is no necessarily the most conducive to producing a functioning edition of the text.
I have previously commented on the relatively clear evidence for multiple authors in Merry Devil. The names are often times just plane wrong: surnames are inconsistent, or in the case of this afternoon's discovery, a character refers to another who simply isn't in the scene. If it was a clown, you might be tempted to brush this off as a malapropism of names, but in what I have dubbed scene 9, Peter Fabell calls Harry Clare "Ralph." There are already two Ralphs in the play, of course: Sir Ralph Jerningham, Frank's father, and Brian's man, Ralph. This isn't the sort of thing one would expect someone of Fabell's status ad knowledge, which is the foundation of his status, to get wrong.
So we paused for a moment to make sure that I hadn't simply let this typo slip through, and sure enough, there was the reference to "Raph" right there in Q1. Obviously this needs to be amended to "Harry," with the appropriate footnote that Q1 has Raph here, and that it is probably an error in the script or a compositor error.
Again, remember what Stern was saying about plays being cut for touring and some characters being cut or combined. It is completely plausible that this "typo" is the result of the King's Men editing the script for touring and creating a mashup character out of several others. It is also possible that it is the result of the scrivener of the fair copy missing the in-text reference to a character not present in the scene. One can't rule out simple compositor error either. I don't know how the mistake got in Q1, but it took my cast members trying to make sense of something they saw as inherently senseless to figure it out.
I have previously commented on the relatively clear evidence for multiple authors in Merry Devil. The names are often times just plane wrong: surnames are inconsistent, or in the case of this afternoon's discovery, a character refers to another who simply isn't in the scene. If it was a clown, you might be tempted to brush this off as a malapropism of names, but in what I have dubbed scene 9, Peter Fabell calls Harry Clare "Ralph." There are already two Ralphs in the play, of course: Sir Ralph Jerningham, Frank's father, and Brian's man, Ralph. This isn't the sort of thing one would expect someone of Fabell's status ad knowledge, which is the foundation of his status, to get wrong.
So we paused for a moment to make sure that I hadn't simply let this typo slip through, and sure enough, there was the reference to "Raph" right there in Q1. Obviously this needs to be amended to "Harry," with the appropriate footnote that Q1 has Raph here, and that it is probably an error in the script or a compositor error.
Again, remember what Stern was saying about plays being cut for touring and some characters being cut or combined. It is completely plausible that this "typo" is the result of the King's Men editing the script for touring and creating a mashup character out of several others. It is also possible that it is the result of the scrivener of the fair copy missing the in-text reference to a character not present in the scene. One can't rule out simple compositor error either. I don't know how the mistake got in Q1, but it took my cast members trying to make sense of something they saw as inherently senseless to figure it out.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Making Shakespeare Notes: Chapter Three
Apparently, the Prologue was the first Chapter, and the first chapter is chapter two, and so on, so technically last time I was writing about chapter two, and this time I'm making notes on chapter three. I'll just put that in my confused locker and move along.
Heminges and Condell, when they praised Shakespeare for never revising his work, were giving him customary praise for the time. Thomas Randolph, a less well known playwright, was similarly praised by his peers (34).
"The one piece of continuous handwriting that is thought to be Shakespeare's is actually full of crossed words, rewriting and overwriting" (35).
Hand D of The Book of Thomas Moore, whether it is Shakespeare's or not, provides valuable insight into the nature of collaboration. His text, which includes only a crowd scene and a soliloquy, is inconsistent with the rest of the play, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the play as a whole. Very little knowledge of a play was required for collaboration (36).
From the Thomas Moore manuscript, we see Shakespeare re-using the "Friends, Romans, Countryman" rhetorical device from Julius Caesar in the form of "friends, masters, countrymen." This is not an isolated example, as Hamlet's "words, words, words" re-appears as Troilus' "words, words, mere words..." Shakespeare clearly re-used linguistic structures that he liked (38).
Berowne's justification for being forsworn is an example of Shakespeare deciding to rework a passage while he was writing it. The complete passage as it has come down to us is highly repetitive, which is indicative that the typesetter did not note a marginal indication to strike one set of the lines, and although it is impossible to tell which ones do not belong, it is almost certain that one of them should not be present in the text (39).
Romeo's description of "the grey eyed morn" in Romeo and Juliet is later repeated by Friar Laurence with subtle changes to the description. There changes make it unlikely that the repeated passage is the result of print-house error, and further implies that the characters are here acting as vehicles for verse passages; the speaker obviously didn't matter to the playwright so much as that the lines were spoken (39-40).
Shakespeare's tendency to recycle phrases and rhetorical devices across his plays suggests an author who thinks in individual passages of text without regard for the cohesion of the whole (42).
"A culture that works with commonplace books has a habit of thinking in snippets, in pieces of removable text" (42). Consider the works of Shakespeare not as long, cohesive works of brilliants, but as snippets of language, recycled rhetorical devices, and borrowed plot points. Consider that Shakespeare was not the first author, he was the first remixer.
Ben Jonson marked pieces of his plays in his Collected Works off in quotation marks, presumably to highlight his best writing and concepts. He breaks his plays back down into the component passages from which they are fashioned (45).
Stern defines bad quartos: bottom of page 46.
Heminge's and Condell chose to avoid both the demeaning term "plays" for the Folio, but likewise wanted to avoid the seemingly haughty term "works" (for which choice Ben Jonson was derided in 1616). Thus the choice to publish the Folio as "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, histories and tragedies," while escaping both the demeaning and pretentious terms necessitated his plays be divided into these genres (48).
An early text of Henry V predicts success for Essex's enterprise in Ireland, but later texts were amended after Essex failed (or after it became clear that he would fail). Even if Essex had succeeded, the passage would have had to have been amended to reflect the past-tense of his victory. Shakespeare must have written the passage knowing he was going to change it, but it was more important that the play reflect the timeliness of the events in his world (51).
Revisions to Julius Caesar, Henry V, Richard II, and 1 Henry IV are only apparent to us because of external factors that alert us to them. It is unknown how many other revisions were made to Shakespeare's plays, with or without his knowledge or consent (52).
Shakespeare demonstrably revised his plays, even if he did so unwillingly, but he also ha a tendency to be willing to strike the lines for which he is now best remembered. Further, it seems clear that his fellow company members were not opposed to revising his plays after his death, as in the case of Macbeth. Revision was a regular feature of early modern playwriting, and Shakespeare was no exception (61).
Summary:
Shakespeare's texts were fluid. Since he wrote about his times and incorporated contemporary events into his writing, he wrote his plays anticipating that he would need to revise them. Further, the law and royal favor forced him to revise his plays from time to time so they could be performed. Since a revised and expanded text was a selling point for playbooks, it is likewise improbable that Shakespeare felt that he needed to conceal his revisions form the practice of his playwriting. Heminges and Condell, in praising Shakespeare for never having needed to revise his works, were applying a formula of praise that was widely known at the time, and we ought not to read anything more into it than that. Revision was the rule, and not the exception, and even in cases where there is only one text (good, bad, or ugly), there are often hints that a previous version of the text existed.
Heminges and Condell, when they praised Shakespeare for never revising his work, were giving him customary praise for the time. Thomas Randolph, a less well known playwright, was similarly praised by his peers (34).
"The one piece of continuous handwriting that is thought to be Shakespeare's is actually full of crossed words, rewriting and overwriting" (35).
Hand D of The Book of Thomas Moore, whether it is Shakespeare's or not, provides valuable insight into the nature of collaboration. His text, which includes only a crowd scene and a soliloquy, is inconsistent with the rest of the play, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the play as a whole. Very little knowledge of a play was required for collaboration (36).
From the Thomas Moore manuscript, we see Shakespeare re-using the "Friends, Romans, Countryman" rhetorical device from Julius Caesar in the form of "friends, masters, countrymen." This is not an isolated example, as Hamlet's "words, words, words" re-appears as Troilus' "words, words, mere words..." Shakespeare clearly re-used linguistic structures that he liked (38).
Berowne's justification for being forsworn is an example of Shakespeare deciding to rework a passage while he was writing it. The complete passage as it has come down to us is highly repetitive, which is indicative that the typesetter did not note a marginal indication to strike one set of the lines, and although it is impossible to tell which ones do not belong, it is almost certain that one of them should not be present in the text (39).
Romeo's description of "the grey eyed morn" in Romeo and Juliet is later repeated by Friar Laurence with subtle changes to the description. There changes make it unlikely that the repeated passage is the result of print-house error, and further implies that the characters are here acting as vehicles for verse passages; the speaker obviously didn't matter to the playwright so much as that the lines were spoken (39-40).
Shakespeare's tendency to recycle phrases and rhetorical devices across his plays suggests an author who thinks in individual passages of text without regard for the cohesion of the whole (42).
"A culture that works with commonplace books has a habit of thinking in snippets, in pieces of removable text" (42). Consider the works of Shakespeare not as long, cohesive works of brilliants, but as snippets of language, recycled rhetorical devices, and borrowed plot points. Consider that Shakespeare was not the first author, he was the first remixer.
Ben Jonson marked pieces of his plays in his Collected Works off in quotation marks, presumably to highlight his best writing and concepts. He breaks his plays back down into the component passages from which they are fashioned (45).
Stern defines bad quartos: bottom of page 46.
Heminge's and Condell chose to avoid both the demeaning term "plays" for the Folio, but likewise wanted to avoid the seemingly haughty term "works" (for which choice Ben Jonson was derided in 1616). Thus the choice to publish the Folio as "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, histories and tragedies," while escaping both the demeaning and pretentious terms necessitated his plays be divided into these genres (48).
An early text of Henry V predicts success for Essex's enterprise in Ireland, but later texts were amended after Essex failed (or after it became clear that he would fail). Even if Essex had succeeded, the passage would have had to have been amended to reflect the past-tense of his victory. Shakespeare must have written the passage knowing he was going to change it, but it was more important that the play reflect the timeliness of the events in his world (51).
Revisions to Julius Caesar, Henry V, Richard II, and 1 Henry IV are only apparent to us because of external factors that alert us to them. It is unknown how many other revisions were made to Shakespeare's plays, with or without his knowledge or consent (52).
Shakespeare demonstrably revised his plays, even if he did so unwillingly, but he also ha a tendency to be willing to strike the lines for which he is now best remembered. Further, it seems clear that his fellow company members were not opposed to revising his plays after his death, as in the case of Macbeth. Revision was a regular feature of early modern playwriting, and Shakespeare was no exception (61).
Summary:
Shakespeare's texts were fluid. Since he wrote about his times and incorporated contemporary events into his writing, he wrote his plays anticipating that he would need to revise them. Further, the law and royal favor forced him to revise his plays from time to time so they could be performed. Since a revised and expanded text was a selling point for playbooks, it is likewise improbable that Shakespeare felt that he needed to conceal his revisions form the practice of his playwriting. Heminges and Condell, in praising Shakespeare for never having needed to revise his works, were applying a formula of praise that was widely known at the time, and we ought not to read anything more into it than that. Revision was the rule, and not the exception, and even in cases where there is only one text (good, bad, or ugly), there are often hints that a previous version of the text existed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)