Encomium

Abstract

I have known Gail Paster since I was a graduate student but only in the past decade has it been my good fortune to work for and alongside her at Shakespeare Quarterly. Gail served as Editor of the journal from 1997 to 2009 and 2013 to 2017; thereafter to the present, she has been one of two consulting editors. For some time now, I have served the journal in the same Consulting Editor capacity. It is my belief that, more so than most professional journals, SQ nurtures submissions into publications. At least this is what I have found under the leadership of David Schalkwyk, then Gail, and now Jeremy Lopez. But it is Gail who is my subject here. Gail, who after twenty years at SQ reported that she had not in the least “tired of the process of reading and responding to every manuscript submitted to the journal.” Gail, whose conscientiousness, scrupulousness, abiding commitment to our field of study, and consistently patient and encouraging way with authors has always impressed me. Gail, whose seemingly ingrained inclination to root for success surfaces in in-house communications like these: “I decided to read this essay biased toward its virtues.” “I would ask you to read these essays in a kindly spirit.” “While it is easy to make the excellent the enemy of the good, I will say that no essay is as good as it could be.” Gail has consistently asked me to reread essays not so much with an eye toward acceptance or rejection but toward “making it publishable”—not so much to identify its flaws as to identify “what is fixable.” Her criteria for accepting an essay add up to a nonrestrictive kind of excellence: hence, “I never worry that an essay fails to change the play if it deepens it one way or the other”; or, “this is not to say that I buy the author’s interpretation altogether, but I have never required that—only that a reading make me think hard.”