PAUL WERSTINE, Early Modern Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare

Abstract

THIS book is the product of Paul Werstine’s accumulative research on manuscript culture in relation to the editing of Shakespeare’s printed plays. It seeks to answer questions relating to what exactly an early modern text is, and how its meaning is created and accredited. For editors and bibliographers of printed texts, such questions are particularly difficult because the early modern book trade supported a wealth of practices that might now be considered alien: two editions might have different origins but present no discussion of their relationship; a run of copies may be corrected for perceived typos, misreads, and eyeskip as they go through the press; and incomplete and unrevised manuscripts could be—and were—stolen and rushed through print shops, sometimes to the (recorded) annoyance of the author. The issue underpinning these and other textual problems is that few manuscripts survive from the early modern period. By extension, it is often unclear what stage of the manuscript process is represented by an extant printed text. The significant textual differences in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as seen in the first quarto, which is much shorter than the text of the second quarto and the first folio, are a case in point. In instances where a manuscript does survive, it is sometimes unclear who wrote or copied it, and whether the manuscript is of an early draft, a presentation copy, or something in between. ‘Authority’ is a key word here, but it is a word riddled with debates. Understanding these manuscript debates is crucial if we are to be able to accurately explain the practices underneath, and the production of, extant printed witnesses.