Folio Text Research Articles

The Cruces of Measure for Measure and EEBO-TCP

This article records textual research undertaken in the course of preparing a text of Measure for Measure for the third edition of the Norton Shakespeare. The matters it considers—questions of interpretation, meaning and emendation—belong to an ongoing conversation about the play's text, which goes back into the eighteenth century and the earliest scholarly editions of Shakespeare. However, the current project has been able to make use of a resource not available to previous editors of the play, in the form of EEBO-TCP, the computer database generated by the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Specifically, this article documents fresh observations on five textual problems in the play, in all of which EEBO-TCP seems to provide examples of analogous usages. Of these five discussions, three defend the substantive readings of the Folio text, one defends an existing emendation and one is a new emendation, supporting evidence for which is provided by EEBO-TCP. These extended textual notes, then, cast light upon the text and interpretation of Measure for Measure. In addition, they raise wider methodological problems about the possibilities and practicalities of EEBO-TCP as a tool for textual criticism.

‘Twelfth Night’: A Critical Reader ed. by Alison Findlay and Liz Oakley-Brown (review)

Reviewed by: ‘Twelfth Night’: A Critical Reader ed. by Alison Findlay and Liz Oakley-Brown Cheryl Taylor Findlay, Alison and Liz Oakley-Brown, eds, ‘Twelfth Night’: A Critical Reader (Arden Early Modern Drama Guides), London, Bloomsbury, 2013; paperback; pp. 285; R.R.P. £17.99, AU$36.99; ISBN 9781472503299. Whatever a teacher’s enthusiasm for sharing with students the multi-faceted appeal of Twelfth Night, he or she may well hesitate over points of entry into the ever-growing mass of performances, contextual studies, and criticism. Such a teacher will find this little book, which brings together old and new thinking about Shakespeare’s ‘most perfect comedy’ (p. 52), a godsend. Enticements to deeper investigation in the Introduction and four of the contributed essays mean that the collection fulfils some of the functions of an annotated bibliography, but with the added inducement of sequential intellectual themes. For example, Peter Kirwan’s chapter is a diligent, wide-ranging, yet tightly-written evaluation of recent pedagogical approaches to Twelfth Night that deals with linked Shakespearean plays, characterisation, genre, carnival, gender, text, language, and visual resources. Kirwan’s interleaved insights into related internal issues such as Sebastian’s and Viola’s teachability sustain the reader’s engagement. R. S. White’s chapter, ‘The Critical Backstory’, and William C. Carroll’s discussion of Keir Elam’s 2008 edition and post-2000 commentaries are reliable and readable accounts of a rich tradition. A Critical Reader also offers succinct guidance on the performance history and recent productions of Twelfth Night. In summarising a wide selection of stage and film versions, Linda Anderson objects, rightly in my view, to the anachronistic nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘trend toward tragic Malvolios’ (p. 67), but astutely analyses the dilemma of directors staging the comedy for modern audiences, to whom Malvolio’s treatment ‘can only appear as cruelty and his adversaries as sadists’ (p. 68). Disagreements between Kirwan and Anderson, for example with reference to the 2006 Hollywood film, She’s the Man (pp. 59, 207–08), leave space for teachers and students to make up their own minds. [End Page 164] Four further essays in A Critical Reader are aptly titled ‘New Directions’. Elam argues that an emphasis on optics in the Viola plot and on graphics in the Malvolio plot ‘is central to the comedy’s dramatic economy’ (p. 109). Randall Martin applies stimulating social and psychological insights about shipwreck to Viola’s, Sebastian’s, and Feste’s progress through the play, while also making connections with Pauline eschatological teachings. Tiffany Stern’s essay demands reading as an essential preliminary to debating Twelfth Night’s festive and/or melancholic moods. Stern detects in the Folio text traces of ‘an earlier version … perhaps closer to the play’s probable Twelfth Night performance’ (p. 168), and warns that the relevance of Feste’s songs to Shakespeare’s work ‘may arise simply from the fact that they are (now) there’ (p. 171). Andrew Stott bases his interpretation of Feste as a professional comedian on an analysis of Robert Armin’s literary promotion of clowning as expert paid work. In seeking to undo C. L. Barber’s ‘gassily optimistic assessment’ of Twelfth Night (p. 144), Stott finds in Illyria’s ‘cut-throat world’ ‘a dark core that is never far from tipping into cruelty and violence’ (p. 159). He posits convincingly, on the basis of their interchanges (iv. 2. 31–60), that Feste’s verbal tormenting brings the imprisoned Malvolio to a ‘space of dissociative disembodiment’ (p. 165) that threatens a loss of identity. The further claim, however, that Twelfth Night ends ‘in summary imprisonment, promises of revenge and a song that takes as its subject the world’s stubborn refusal to improve’ (p. 145), is surely overstated, given the centrality to the last scene (v. 1) of clarifications, resurrections, and release. Malvolio, Viola’s sea captain, and presumably Antonio as Sebastian’s restored friend are freed; Malvolio’s is the only promise of revenge; and ‘When that I was a little tiny boy’ encourages a freeing of the audience too, both from life’s inherent sadness, and from engagement with Feste’s and the other characters’ troubles – ‘But that’s all...

Measure for Measure, Ferrara and Measure for Measure, Vienna (review)

Reviewed by: Measure for Measure, Ferraraand Measure for Measure, Vienna Trish Thomas Henley Measure for Measure, Ferrara andMeasure for Measure, ViennaPresented by Hoosier Bard Productions at IndyFringe Basile Theatre, Indianapolis, Indiana. Ferrara, 02 21– 23, 2013 and Vienna, 02 28–03 2, 2013. Directed by Terri Bourus. Costume Design by Rebekah Taylor Foster. Set by Stephen Hamori. Produced by Gary Taylor. Dramaturgy by Gary Taylor. Verse Coaching by Christopher Marino. Vocal Direction by Andrew Morales. Music by Al Hoffmann. With Lauren Briggeman (Isabella), Thomas Cardwell (Lucio), Jaddy Ciucci (Mariana), Aaron Cleveland [End Page 499](Provost), Alexandra Hudson (Juliet), Aaron Moon (Pompey, Vienna), David Mosedale (Duke Vincentio), Scott Russell (Claudio), Benjamin Schuetz (Pompey, Ferrara), Autumn Sutton (Mistress Overdone), Tyrone Van Tatenhove (Angelo), Bill Wilkison (Escalus), Jonah Winston (Elbow) and others. Measure for Measureis, without question, one of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays. Frequently called a “problem comedy,” it contains both textual and performative cruxes that have puzzled directors, actors, and scholars alike. One possible explanation for these incongruities lies in the play’s textual and production history. Measurewas first written and performed in 1603–4 and later revived by the King’s Men, probably in 1621. The only surviving version of Measureis the 1623 First Folio text. Textual analysis suggests that our one surviving copy is based upon a posthumous revival, for which the text was adapted by the playwright Thomas Middleton. (For a breakdown of the dating evidence and Thomas Middleton’s involvement, please see John Jowett’s introduction to Measure for Measurein The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton[Oxford: OUP, 2007] and John Jowett and Gary Taylor’s “‘With New Additions’: Theatrical Interpolation in Measure for Measure” in Shakespeare Reshaped: 1606–1623[Oxford: OUP, 1993].) The presence of two hands, representing playwrights with vastly different political and aesthetic sensibilities, creates a playtext that at times feels schizophrenic: a text that pulls against itself and seems to unravel any attempt at moral certainty. It also leaves us to wonder what the play might have been like before Middleton’s adaptation. Hoosier Bard’s two performances of Measureattempted to answer this question. Hoosier Bard is the “theatrical arm” of the New Oxford Shakespeare Center at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Since its inception in 2010, Hoosier Bard’s productions have put theatrical research on its feet, staging the early quarto version of Hamlet; a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s lost play, Cardenio; and these two back-to-back versions of Measure. Hoosier Bard differentiated the two productions by referring to the first as Ferraraand the second as Vienna. The Ferraraproduction’s playtext, based on Jowett and Taylor’s research, attempted to excise the hand of Middleton, while the Viennastaging presented the text as it stands in the First Folio. The setting changes were based on Jowett and Taylor’s supposition that Middleton changed the setting from Ferrara to Vienna ( Collected Works1544). (To read these playtexts side-by-side, see the Collected Middleton’s version of Measure, where text believed to have been deleted by Middleton is produced in grey and text believed to have been added by him is [End Page 500]printed in bold. All citations from Measurein this review are taken from these texts.) The two productions retained the same cast (with the exception of Pompey, in whose case a family emergency necessitated a casting change) and staged the two versions on back-to-back weekends. This allowed spectators who experienced both the opportunity immediately to compare and contrast the differences in the emotional and moral impact of the two versions. Such differences were noticeable. Surprisingly, they emerged not simply through changes made to the leading parts, but also through both performative and textual shifts in the supporting characters’ roles. In the Ferraraproduction, David Mosedale played a wise and judicious Duke. This Duke was very much in keeping with the Duke from Shakespeare’s source text, Promos and Cassandra. The Duke’s justice appeared benevolent and all-knowing. Throughout this production, Mosedale’s Duke watched, listened, and then worked to right wrongs. By the play’s end, Ferrara’s moral disorder had been corrected, with all characters eventually...

Richard III’s Baby Teeth

Richard III’s Baby Teeth

"Your papers!": Archiving Beckett and Beckett's Archive of the Self

“Your papers!” barks a policeman at Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, an order that causes him no small confusion as “the only papers I carry with me are bits of newspaper, to wipe myself, you understand.”1 The concept of “foul papers” has a long and honorable pedigree. To the Elizabethans the drafts of a text were “foul,” with the “fair copy” from which folio texts would follow usually produced by a scribe. The only time most contemporary readers encounter an author’s handwriting is after the text’s completion, whether at a book-signing or, a slightly more rarefied setting, in a special collections reading room. Anyone who has struggled with Beckett’s handwriting will recognize the desire for a sanitized version of his foul papers, however more pungent the thrill of encountering Beckett in the raw; but for most people hologram frontispieces, such as decorate Faber & Faber’s new Beckett editions, will probably represent an optimal upper limit of textual authenticity.

Shakespeare Closely Read; A Collection of Essays: Written and Performance Texts ed. by Frank Occhiogrosso (review)

Reviewed by: Shakespeare Closely Read; A Collection of Essays: Written and Performance Texts ed. by Frank Occhiogrosso Angela Eward-Mangione Shakespeare Closely Read; A Collection of Essays: Written and Performance Texts. Ed. Frank Occhiogrosso. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2011. Pp. vii + 158. $60.00 (cloth). The need for a volume that closely reads Shakespeare derives primarily from an impetus to revisit formalist criticism in a postmodern world—one that sees a proliferation of new Shakespearean performances on stages and screens in nearly every part of the globe. The sheer quantity of new performances staged each year demands a method of documentation and analysis that exceeds the scope of the conventional play review. To approach Shakespearean performance criticism, scholars must conjoin their analysis with literary criticism. This is the position taken by the Introduction to this volume, in which Frank Occhiogrosso names “close reading,” the principal methodology utilized by the New Critics from the 1930s to the 1960s (1), as the approach the volume’s contributors will use in their discussion of Shakespeare’s plays. Occhiogrosso explains that New Criticism and close reading make us aware of the centrality of language to a text; thus, close reading often sets the stage for a critical Feminist, Marxist, or [End Page 157] Deconstructionist interpretation (2). Yet, referring to close reading, Occhiogrosso contends that “some things once considered central have been left behind” (2). He indicates that a number of recent publications, however, have argued for the need “to retain close reading” (3). Occhiogrosso’s Introduction implies that most current scholarship on Shakespeare does not feature close reading, an implication that some readers may find debatable. The book’s eleven essays were originally written for a seminar called “Close Readings of Shakespeare” that Occhiogrosso organized and conducted at the International Shakespeare Conference at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2008. Shakespeare Closely Read is divided into two sections, the first of which “closely reads” written texts. Occhiogrosso’s contribution, “‘Music Plays and They Dance’: A Close Reading of Romeo and Juliet, 1.5” stands out as particularly significant: it carefully examines the famous ball scene at Capulet’s to analyze how Shakespeare uses dramatic structure and staging to create paradoxical irony, a form of dramatic oxymoron (19–20). The stage direction at line 26—“Music plays and they dance”—which appears in both quarto and folio texts, is important for his argument, because nowhere later in the scene is it countered by any direction indicating that they stop dancing and retire (20). It is thus reasonable to assume that the dance continues through the remainder of the scene. The presence of the dancers on stage—presumably upstage—forces all the characters that have speaking parts into the downstage area (20). Noting the absence of stage directions indicating Capulet’s exit and/or Romeo’s entrance (21), Occhiogrosso observes how the juxtaposition of Capulet’s “speech of age” (“How long is’t now since last yourself and I / Were in the mask?” [33–34]) with Romeo’s “speech of youth” (“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! / For ne’er saw true beauty till this night” [53–54]), read in conjunction with the absence of evidence that the two can hear one another, shows us “dramatically the irony of people so close and yet so far apart, a dramatic oxymoron” (21). Shakespeare, by “jamming together into a tight space so many incongruities, dramatically creates in us the feeling, the perception, that although these characters are close enough to touch each other, in several senses of the word, they are still worlds apart” (24). John Russell Brown’s essay, “Shakespeare’s Secret Language,” closely reads dialogue and stage direction in King Lear. Discussing the commentary from his volume on King Lear in the Palgrave Shakespeare Handbooks series, Brown argues that “textual references to physical actions carry with them further ‘secret’ instructions” to make the audience “see feelingly” (4.6.140). For example, if the stage direction for Regan to “‘pluck [Gloucester] by the beard’” is to make sense Regan will “repeatedly ‘pluck [Gloucester] by the beard’ in act 3, scene 7 at lines 35–36 and 38–41” (39). According to Brown, close contact...

Montaigne's "Cannibals" and The Tempest Revisited

Shakespeare's borrowing in The Tempest from Montaigne's essay "Cannibals" has been generally assumed to be concentrated in one short passage as given in John Florio's English translation (1603). This article demonstrates that the second half of Gonzalo's utopian speech in fact derives not from this famous passage but from another substantially longer one found two pages later in Florio's original folio text. It also proposes that Shakespeare had inspirations for the name and characterization of Sycorax as well as the setting of Prospero's island from this Montaigne-Florio essay; and that this essay should be reconsidered as a far more important literary source of The Tempest than heretofore acknowledged.

Anticipating Nostalgia:Finding Temporal Logic in Textual Anomaly

In light of current critical controversies over periodicity, temporality, and historical inquiry—particularly the debate between presentism and historicism—this essay proposes new ways of imagining textual history by exploring radically diverse cultural relationships to time. Using the emergence in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century of medical theory of 'nostalgia' as brain disease in which afflicted sufferers imagine the green of home, this essays finds new point of entry into understanding notorious editorial crux in Shakespeare's play Henry V : Lewis Theobald's 1733 emendation of the Folio text's seemingly corrupt description of Falstaff's deathbed scene. Theobald famously emends the Folio's a Table of green fields with the conjectured reading a' babled of green fields, thus laying the affective and interpretative groundwork for what would become, in successive centuries, sentimentalized version both of Falstaff as character, and of England's empire-building as nation. The essay uses this extraordinary textual crux as focal point for understanding how an eighteenth-century medical term, 'nostalgia', which was originally conceived as disease involving disordered relationship to place, evolved into more generalized term involving longing to return to glorious, and misrecognized, past.

The Anachronistic <i>Shrew</i>s

A single line in the Folio text of The Taming of the Shrew seems to point to dates decades apart. A performer identified by his speech heading as “Sinklo,” the actor John Sincklo or Sincler, recalls a stage character named “Soto,” presumably the character from John Fletcher’s Women Pleased . Sinklo’s name is used to argue for an early date for the play, sometimes as early as 1592, while the allusion to Soto suggests a date around 1620. Scholars intent on setting an early date for the 1623 text and on preserving its priority to the 1594 Taming of a Shrew apply very different evidentiary standards to Sinklo’s and Soto’s names. Sinklo is used to certify an early date, although the length of the actor’s career has never been established. Soto is treated as a crux to be resolved in the context of an early date for the play, rather than as a piece of evidence to establish that date. Editors have presented a number of hypotheses for Soto’s seemingly anachronistic name; while none of these have been completely persuasive, they do suggest that the 1623 Shrew text might be later than the 1594 Shrew or that hands other than Shakespeare’s might have made significant revisions to the play. In The Taming of the Shrew , the methods of textual scholarship have been subordinated to the preservation of Shakespeare’s authority.

"Gentleness" and Social Class in The Merry Wives of Windsor

"Gentleness" and Social Class in The Merry Wives of Windsor Maurice Hunt (bio) First performed almost certainly on a date in the last two or three years of the sixteenth century, The Merry Wives of Windsor in its Folio text is remarkable, among other things, for the frequency with which forms of the word gentle appear, mainly in the singular and plural compounds of gentleman and gentlewoman. All told they appear thirty-seven times. This frequency is even more singular when one considers that this comedy is often cited as the playwright's middle-class drama, in which members of the aristocracy are least apparent. One suspects that the play may be partly concerned with describing, perhaps defining, authentic gentleness. That this possibility should have preoccupied Shakespeare at the end of the sixteenth century is not surprising, once one remarks the relatively recent elevation of Shakespeare's father in 1596 to the ranks of armigerous gentry. Taking up and considering the senses in which forms of the word gentle, notably gentleman, occur in The Merry Wives comprises the substance of this essay, with the result that the traits and figures of unconventional Shakespearean gentleness emerge from the analysis. On 20 October 1596, William Dethick, Garter Principal King-of Arms, granted John Shakespeare's application for armigerous status, which included a coat of arms showing a falcon supposedly shaking a spear, the motto Non sanz droict (Not without right) and gentleman status for himself and—after his death (in 1601)—his playwright son.1 Apparently John's son William commissioned this particular heraldic device and paid the considerable expenses—about one hundred pounds—involved in acquiring armigerous status.2 After 1601, William regularly signed himself "gentleman," even though in 1602 Ralph Brooke, York Herald, "prepared charges against Dethick and [William] Camden for having improperly [End Page 409] granted arms to some twenty-three 'mean' individuals, among them John Shakespeare (by then dead)."3 The legal privileges entailed by a grant of the coat of arms, that of armigerous gentle status, become Shakespeare's focus in the opening prose of The Merry Wives of Windsor. At the beginning of the Folio text of this comedy, an octogenarian Justice of the Peace, Robert Shallow, assures Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson of Windsor, that the fat knight Falstaff, who has "beaten [his] men, killed [his] deer and broke open [his] lodge" (1.1.104–5),4 shall not abuse an "esquire," that is to say, "a gentleman, one degree below a knight, entitled to bear heraldic arms."5 Shallow's foolish nephew, Abraham Slender, self-importantly picks up on his uncle's reference to his high gentleman status, further defining it and focusing its armigerous dimension in a comic dialogue also involving the Welsh parson Sir Hugh Evans: Slender: In the County of Gloucester, Justice of Peace and Coram. Shallow: Ay, cousin, Slender, and Cust-a-lorum. Slender: Ay, and Rato lorum too; and a gentleman born … who writes himself Armigero, in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation —Armigero. Shallow: Ay, that I do, and have done so any time these three hundred years. Slender: All his successors—gone before him—hath done't; and all his ancestors—that come after him—may. They may give the dozen white luces in their coat [-of-arms]. Shallow: It is an old coat [-of-arms]. Evans: The dozen white louses do become an old coat well. It agrees well passant. It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love. Shallow: The luce is the fresh fish—the salt fish is an old coat. Slender: I may quarter, coz. Shallow: You may, by marrying. Evans: It is marring indeed, if he quarter it. (1.1.4–23) Butchering Latin, Slender says that Shallow is "Corum" (a corruption of the Latin quorum, "from the formula with which justices were installed: quorum vos … unum esse volumus, i.e. 'of whom we wish you to be one'").6 Shallow then smugly replies, in a contraction of the Latin custos rotulorum, that he is also keeper of the county rolls, the records of trials. Slender keeps up the elitist game with the born gentleman uncle by noting that Shallow...

Hamlet [Vol. 1.] by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, and: Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623 [Vol. 2.] by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (review)

YES, 38.I & 2, 2008 279 Stepping herway throughdance forms that may have been used forantimasques, for royal and aristocratic main masquers, and for social dances used in the revels that followed, she emphasizes the strong influence of Queen Anne and Queen Henrietta Maria, the latter importing French styles of dance to enhance native traditions. Discussing costume, she draws on Henrietta Maria's household accounts, demonstrat inga complex industryof preparation, maintenance and storage. She identifies'discreet cost-saving, which interfered as little as possible with the ostentation of luxury in performance' (p. I56). Some garmentsmight be recycled,but theQueen stipulated that masque costumes she had used were exclusively royal and should not be subsequently 'prostitutedupon anyMercenary stage' (p. I65). There are case studies of twoJonsonian masques (TheMasque of Queensand Oberon), one Carolingean (Coelum Britannium), and a record of an English wedding masque devised by Robert Bargrave, 'LevantMerchant' in Constantinople in i650. She shows how evidence of dancing, with itsaccompanying music, and of colourful costume, topped off withmask ormake-up and enhanced by lighting,can present amore vivid, albeit blurred, image of the theatrical impact and cultural significanceof theearly Stuartmasque than either InigoJones's designs,which were intended asworking drawings forscene painters and costume makers, or textual records intended, particularly inBen Jonson's case, to celebrate theprintedword asmuch as the event itcommemorated. Framing her studywith an account by a foreignvisitor of a Stuart masque and with themasque devised in Turkey,Ravelhofer creates a Verfrerndungseffekt inwhich we re evaluate how dimly-litmoving figures, obscure texts, arcane symbolism, creaking scenery, and backstage interference combine to create multimedia pieces, uniquely reflectingthe sometimes glorious, sometimes tottering,state of the early Stuarts. Occasionally, Ravelhofer's enthusiasm forcontextual exploration leads her intoeccen tricity, aswhen she explores the relevance of theambigram to InigoJones's experiments with perspective (p. 96). Once, her scholarship leads her to condemn as 'amateur and historicallyuninformed' (p. 7) amodern adaptation of historical dance (in the filmEliz abeth)inwhich thedance consultant, drawing freelyon authentic sources to realize the director's interpretation,actually showed an unpedantic theatricalprofessionalism that perhaps had itsroots in theStuart masque. Ravelhofer claims her work as 'a tribute to early studies by Allardyce Nicoll, Enid Welfor and Lily Campbell' (p.268). It isaworthy tribute,restoringemphasis to the 'living spectacle' (p. 269) of the early Stuart masque through robust evaluation of a dazzling array of familiar and unfamiliarmaterial. GUILDHALL SCHOOL OFMUSIC & DRAMA, LoDmON DIANA DEVLIN Hamlet. Ed. by ANN THOMPSON and NEIL TAYLOR. [Vol. i.]Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. 3rd edition. London: Arden Shakespeare. 2006. xxii + 6I3 pp. ?8.99. ISBN: 978-1-904271-33-8. Hamlet: The Textsof I603 and i623. Ed. byANN THOMPSON and NEIL TAYLOR. [Vol. 2.] London: Arden Shakespeare. 2007. xvi + 368 pp. ?I2.99. ISBN: 978-1-90427I-80-2. Editors of Shakespeare are oftenJekylland Hyde figures; they may talkat lengthabout the rational principles thatunderlie theirprocedures in their introductions, but their 280 Reviews practice ischaracterized by deeply subjective, literaryjudgements. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor's edition has no such darker side; itsgreat achievement is topresent three texts,consistently and conservatively edited. Essentially, Thompson and Taylor deliver the texts that the arguments in favourof Shakespeare as reviser,and so against confla tion,demand. On those terms, their twovolumes provide themost accurate editions of theQi, Q2, and Folio texts(the firstand last in the second volume). Such consistent and conservative editorial practice produces quite radical effects:the Q2 Prince Hamlet now addresses his "'Seems", madam' speech tohis 'coldmother' and not his 'good mother'(I. 2. 77); while the Folio prince, apologizing to Laertes in the fencing scene, talksof shooting his arrow over thehouse and hurting his 'mother' and not his 'brother' (v. 2. I9I). Some will relish the changes; some, who have previously argued against conflated texts,may, I suspect, want to reconsider their positions. Thompson and Taylor have catered for such second thoughts; they lay out neatly the arguments fora conflated text. (Indeed, the thoroughness and intellectualmodesty with which theysurvey thevarious editorial arguments todate isremarkable.)Might theynot have provided such a conflated edition? As theypoint out, theyhad no need: Harold Jenkins's edition, itseems,might be considered the thirdvolume of theArden Hamlet. In the real world of the undergraduate market, almost no...

The Texts of Henry V

Recent criticism of HenryV has made some startling and apparently contradictory claims. The play has come down to us in two forms: the short Quarto of 1600 and the much longer Folio version of 1623. Successive editors and textual critics have suggested that the Quarto is an abridgement made for performance; that it was produced simply as a version for the printing house; that the Folio Choruses were not performed in Shakespeare's time; that the Folio text was written for readers rather than audiences. Close discussion of these claims suggests that each of them shows particular weaknesses. Evidence of rehearsal, misrecollection and mishearing in the Quarto point to a tangled process of textual construction; while other evidence suggests, first, that the play's Choruses were indeed spoken in the play's earliest performances, and, second, that Elizabethan playgoers may have tolerated works that went beyond the two hours currently assumed to have been their limit of duration.

The Literary career and legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613-1680

Heather Wolfe, ed. The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613-1680. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xiv+258pp. ISBN 978 1 4039 7016 9.1. Slender though it may be, the corpus of Elizabeth Cary's literary works, or at least those works attributed to her, has provoked a large and varied range of critical responses. As Heather Wolfe comments in her introduction to this collection of essays, Cary's former image as 'a nearly forgotten playwright and eccentric Roman Catholic convert' has been replaced with a fresh evaluation of her status as an accomplished 'Renaissance woman historian, playwright, translator, and poet' (1). After a lengthy period of obscurity Cary has provoked a remarkably robust range of criticism in a relatively short space of time to which this collection of essays represents a significant contribution.2. The book is divided into four sections, each focusing upon a specific work or a certain aspect of her literary legacy. The subject of the essays in the first section is Cary's most famous work, the neo-Senecan closet play, The Tragedy of Mariam. Written during the first decade of James I's reign, Mariam is noted as the first printed example of an original dramatic work written by a female author. The first chapter, by Ilona Bell, looks at the way in which the play is influenced by contemporary traditions of lyric poetry, particularly the Petrarchan sonnet. As Bell points out, 'Cary's play is writ all in verse and in rhyme. The iambic pentameter lines, quatrains with alternating rhymes, are punctuated by occasional couplets that produce sonnets, or truncated sonnets, throughout the play' (17). Of particular interest to Bell is the way that the appropriation of poetic forms interrogates social conventions, especially relating to the social status of women. The second chapter, by Erin E. Kelly, examines Mariam's status as Christian martyr, which, as Kelly acknowledges, has become 'a critical commonplace' (35), although 'no one has discussed how Cary's depiction of Mariam fits into the complex history of martyrology' (35), an imbalance Kelly seeks to redress. She argues that Mariam diverges from the typical image of female martyrs through her failure to conform to contemporary models of feminine behaviour yet, paradoxically, it is this subversive non-conformity that seals her status as a martyr. In the third and final chapter of this section, Alison Shell looks at the relationship between Mariam and its principal source, Thomas Lodge's translation of Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, focusing primarily upon the view of history advanced by the preface rather than the play's fidelity to the source.3. The second, and longest, section of this volume is dedicated to Cary's prose history, Edward II, written during the 1620s but not published until 1680. The first two entries in this section concentrate on the political aspects of the text beginning with Curtis Perry's reading of it against the culture of favouritism, particularly that which he labels 'the Buckingham phenomenon' (71). Mihoko Suzuki also considers the political aspects of Edward II, particularly the way in which it was influenced by, and participated in, a Machiavellian tradition of political writing which included the works of John of Salisbury and John Fortescue. The final two chapters examine the history of the text in print. Jesse G. Swan considers the critical reputation of the octavo version which, he argues, has been unjustly marginalized in favour of the longer folio version. Swan argues that the octavo text can effectively be considered as a separate work with an agenda independent to that of the folio text. …

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole

From seventeenth century to twenty-first, editors of the works of have had widely differing views on what completeness (and Shakespeare) ought to look like. First Folio, while declaring itself The Works of William Shakespeare, omitted several plays and all poems, among which were works for which Shakespeare was best known in his own time. poems were not, indeed, routinely included in complete Shakespeares until twentieth century, and Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare's collaboration with Fletcher, is still not invariably part of works. At same time, editorial tradition has, from mid-seventeenth century on, involved a significant attempt to increase Shakespeare canon, by adding works that either were ascribed to Shakespeare in his own time or have at some point had his name (or even his initials) associated with them. Individual plays too have, over centuries, been felt to require additions to make them complete. Sometimes, as with conflation of quarto and Folio texts, additions have been Shakespearean; sometimes they have been derived from chronicles or other sources, to make Shakespeare more true to his originals; and sometimes they have been simply invented, to fill supposed gaps in plot or in dramatic psychology.

Compositor B’s Speech-Prefixes in the First Folio of Shakespeare and the Question of Copy for 2 Henry IV

Compositor B’s Speech-Prefixes in the First Folio of Shakespeare and the Question of Copy for 2 Henry IV S. W. Reid (bio) Textual critics of Shakespeare have traditionally focused on the names or titles represented in the speech-prefixes of his plays in the course of classifying them as either typeset from foul-papers or as derived from fair copy or prompt-books. This has been so since R. B. McKerrow’s truly seminal article in the 1930s, which proposed that the substantive content and consistency of the ‘character-names’ in an early printed edition could indicate the kind of manuscript that served as its copy. He contrasted the First Folio’s ‘permanent labels’ and ‘uniform’ names in Two Gentlemen of Verona with the irregularity in The Comedy of Errors of the names for ‘the brothers Antipholus and the two Dromios’, and then went on to discuss the now well-known alternation in the second quarto of Romeo and Juliet between the names and functions of Juliet’s parents, as well as similar inconsistency in the first editions of Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well that Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus.1 McKerrow’s ‘Suggestion’ has constituted one of the principal reference points for several generations of editions, including the most recent ones, though as of the end of the last century his typically coherent, temperate, and modest observations have incurred searching criticism, whether because of their lack of documentary confirmation, the pressure they have had to endure from editorial speculation, or fin de siècle doubt.2 [End Page 73] Nonetheless, the speech-prefixes of the principal compositor of the First Folio have received less attention from bibliographers than might have been expected. For in some plays, it is the precise forms of Compositor B’s speech-prefixes, the various combinations of letters he used to represent the names or titles of the characters who speak, that provide some of the most promising evidence for examining whether or not a given quarto served as the basic setting copy for William Jaggard’s first collected edition—a question that continues to plague the textual analysis of plays like 2 Henry IV, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear. A few scholars have had recourse to such evidence in attempts to distinguish pages set by B from those set by other compositors, chiefly E. More important, however, and more neglected, has been Fredson Bowers’ suggestion that these ‘appurtenances’ provide ‘evidence about the nature of the underlying Folio copy’ which ‘can be evaluated with some confidence’. The proposition he develops is that B, like other compositors, was ‘conservative in the treatment of names and titles’ not only in stage-directions but in speech-prefixes, especially on their earlier appearances. Furthermore, Bowers argues, in the latter ‘variation in the forms of names and titles . . . including even some variant spelling of the names’ will usually reflect the variability of B’s manuscript copy, despite his tendency to repeat the form of an immediately preceding stage-direction and to prefer shorter forms to longer ones.3 The conclusion that the variable speech-prefixes in the Folio texts of All’s Well that Ends Well and Julius Caesar do not represent the compositors’ own ‘predilections’, but rather reflect the manuscripts behind them, has important implications for assessing the character of other Folio manuscripts. Yet the hypothesis itself, which has potential application to printed copy as well, remains untested because the manuscripts themselves have perished. The survival of examples of the quartos used by B and his partners to set up seven Folio plays offers the opportunity to examine the proposition that, under most [End Page 74] circumstances and with certain qualifications, he faithfully followed his copy’s speech-prefixes. Compositor B’s pages in these Folio plays4 indicate that the proposition is essentially sound and, in particular, that when speech-prefixes containing complete names appear in his work, they almost certainly derive from B’s copy. However, the reliability of the evidence must be defined not only in the context of B’s general practices and tendencies in setting speech-prefixes, but also by reference to some specific techniques...

Money Changes Everything: Quarto and Folio The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Case for Revision

Money Changes Everything: Quarto and Folio The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Case for Revision PETER GRAV While countless stagings of TheMerryWives ofWindsorhave been set in a bucolic"merrye olde England," Bill Alexander's 1985 RSC rendition tookShakespeare's representation ofa 1590s English bourgeoisie, numerically anagrammatized its temporal setting, and placed it in the 1950s Macmillan years of postwar prosperity in Britain. Alexander depicted a suburban middle class enjoying the power of newfound affluence in an era whose watchword was "you never had it so good." Mistresses Ford and Page plotted their revenge on Falstaff while sitting underhair dryers and sipped gin and tonics in a comfortable living room while Ford ransacked the infamous buckbasket. One of the underlying concerns of this much-lauded production was the materialism of the time; theater programs even carried real period advertisements for consumer goods such as televisions, complete with prices. Alexander's vision was entirely apropos, as the idea that wealth had become both the measure of personal worth and a societal linchpin lies at the heart of Merry Wives, a play in which economic imperatives are never far from the surface. Falstaff dissolves his retinue and pursues the titular wives because he is penniless; Ford throws money at Falstaffto test his wife's fidelity; and Anne Page's matrimonial fate is governed by the wealth she represents and the capital she attracts. In the only work wherein Shakespeare ostensibly depicts his own contemporary society, it seems evident that cash values, rather than human ones, are firmly in control. Whileoften neglected in discussions ofShakespeare's comedie oeuvre, Merry Wives is both an intriguing and important play that warrants inclusion in any discussion of the dramatist's underlying attitudes toward 217 218Comparative Drama the role played bymoneyin society.The inclination ofsome to place it in the genre ofCitizen Comedyseems apt,given that genre's preoccupation with economic motivations and the cozenage required to accumulate wealth. In both the main and subplot ofMerry Wives, subterfuge driven by greed appears to be a societal norm. Yet the cynicism of Comedy is belied to a degree by the somewhat predictable resolution of the play's main plot,in which lessons arelearned and the forces ofavarice are turned back. In fact, the defeat ofFalstaffseems so effortless that one might ask whether he ever did represent a threat to Windsor's values. Perhaps of greater interest is the much more opaque Anne Page subplot, which, in the end,offers none ofthe comfort engenderedbythe comeuppance ofa humbled fortune hunter.This seeminglystandard New Comedytale ofa young woman defying her parents to wed the man she loves is, upon closer examination, a consistently cynical exploration of the pervasiveness ofeconomic imperatives in interpersonal relationships. Ofparticular interest here are the very different ways that the Anne-Fenton love storyunfolds in the MerryWives Quarto and Folio texts. Comparing the two versions reveals that the Folio foregrounds economic themes largely absent in the 1602 Quarto. While the differences between the Q and F versions have longbeen widelyconsidered the result ofthe former being either a memorial reconstruction or an abridgement, the argument advanced here is that the Folio text is more likely a revision of the Quarto and that Shakespeare's motivation was to strengthen the indictment of cash and exchange values that lies at the heart of Merry Wives. As noted above, MerryWives is the only playthat Shakespeare set in a recognizable, contemporaryEngland, and its singularityin this respect suggests it contains his reactions to the economic world in whichhelived. The Pages, the Fords, Shallow, Slender, Evans, and Doctor Caius collectively represent an English bourgeoisie (the latter two in spite of their Welsh and French pedigrees, respectively1) that grew in strength and numbers over the sixteenth century, and, in Shakespeare's only"English" comedy, their value system is shown to be sorely wanting. Over the years, a good deal ofMerry Wives criticism has focused on how Falstaffs presence poses a threat to Windsor from the outside. For example, Anne Barton argues that the Windsorites view Falstaff as "the intruder from another social and moral sphere ... a threat to the estab- Peter Grav219 lishedorderofa community''2Yet it is arguablethatthe"threat"ofFalstaff exists more in the minds of...

The Difficulty of Dying in King Lear

MY TITLE MAY SEEM IRONIC. Clearly, death is not an unusual occurrence King Lear. A list of characters who are dead by the end of the would have to include Lear himself, three of his daughters, one son-in-law, Oswald, Edmund, Gloucester, the slave that was a-hanging Cordelia (5.3.272), and the unnamed servant who mortally wounds Cornwall immediately before being himself killed by Regan. By the end of the play, of the characters who matter are dead, dying, or, the Fool's case, have simply gone. The exceptions are Albany and Edgar, who take turns delivering the final lines the Quarto and Folio texts, respectively. Surprisingly, however, among the characters who seek Goneril alone succeeds. Gloucester is not executed by Regan and Cornwall, who instead blind him, nor does he manage to dash himself against the rocks at the bottom of Dover Cliff. Lear is not destroyed during the storm, despite his cries for apocalypse, and later finds himself awoken from a sleep which he took to be death. Even Cordelia's suicide, present most if not of the sources to which Shakespeare had access, is replaced by an extra-legal execution. The only character who does succeed committing suicide, Goneril, is perhaps the most despicable. For every other character, death seems strangely unattainable. Most die, but not if they're trying. While Lear, like all tragedies according to Lord Byron, ends in death, most deaths are strangely deferred. This unusual situation must be accounted for by any attempt to understand King Lear as a tragedy. Leo Tolstoy, his famously perverse declaration of the superiority of the earlier, anonymous, and now mostly forgotten King Leir, claims that Shakespeare's adaptation violates the conventions of tragedy accepted by his nineteenth-century admirers: According to the laws laid down by those very critics who extol Shakespeare, the conditions of every tragedy are that the persons who appear should, as a result of their own characters, actions, and the natural movement of events, be brought into conditions which, finding themselves opposition to the world around them, they should struggle with it and that struggle display their inherent qualities. (335-36) More recent critics also attempt to distance themselves from nineteenth-century constructions of the tragic hero. Against the emphasis on the individual and his struggles, Naomi Conn Liebler and John Drakakis argue that is misrecognised as a flaw of 'character' is, fact, a projection of something which has its roots, not the inner psychological life of the protagonist, but the larger domain of culture (8). Tom McAlindon observes that as a result of this commitment to the cultural over the personal, political criticism is largely if not wholly indifferent to the affective dimension of the plays, an indifference which seems least defensible relation to the tragedies (85). While a general suspicion of emotional affect informs an important vein of recent criticism, and is reflected questions about genre, queries about Lear's status as a tragic hero are neither new nor the preserve of any one critical school. Paul A. Cantor claims that the view of most critics, Lear is basically a pathetic old man, vain and foolish, rash his judgment and incapable of controlling his emotions--and he is these things from the very beginning of the play (189). Even A. C. Bradley points out that by the end of the play, the audience has come to regard Lear almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at as an agent (280). In what follows, I will argue that Shakespeare's is an exceptional tragedy, not comprehensible by a traditional or existentialist reading. Specifically, I will be comparing theories of tragedy derived from the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, on the one hand, and Emmanuel Levinas, on the other, and will be arguing that the latter's ideas provide a better framework within which to understand the tragedy of King Lear. …

“When Every Noise Appalls Me”: Sound and Fear in Macbeth and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

Study of Shakespeare on film has attended much more to the visual differences between early modern theatre and modern cinema than to the aural differences between these artistic media. This essay considers Shakespeare's Macbeth in its earliest performances (imperfectly witnessed in the 1623 Folio text of the play) and in a celebrated Japanese film adaptation. The off-stage sounds used by the King's Men form a distinct pattern of suspense and surprise (a soundscape) that Kurosawa successfully translated to his film.

"Methinks the truth should live from age to age": The Dating and Contexts of Henry V

overleaf 72. It only really surfaces—this in both versions—in Henry’s private prayers on the eve of Agincourt, where he asks that his father’s “fault ... in compassing the crown”(4.1.290–91) be not visited on him that day, where—perhaps perversely—it registers most strongly as one of the burdens the king has to carry rather than as a questioning of his status. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.78 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:07:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms abstract Richard Dutton discusses Henry V as a succession play and analyzes the differing registers of that theme in its 1600 Quarto and 1623 Folio texts. He considers its chronicle history genre, noting how such works typically introduced fictional romantic elements that allowed for an oblique (and apparently acceptable) topical allusiveness, by contrast with the “politic”histories of Daniel, Jonson, and Chapman in the mid-1600s. Henry V appeared in the wake of the dramatic shifts in European politics in 1598, especially confrontation with Spain, now intent on placing the Infanta Isabella on Elizabeth’s throne. This coincided with outright rebellion in Ireland as well as possible threats from Scotland. Dutton traces how the two texts register these issues, arguing that the Folio version (the only one that mentions Ireland) is likely to date from after the decisive Battle of Kinsale (1601) rather than from 1599, and therefore to celebrate Mountjoy rather than Essex.Richard Dutton discusses Henry V as a succession play and analyzes the differing registers of that theme in its 1600 Quarto and 1623 Folio texts. He considers its chronicle history genre, noting how such works typically introduced fictional romantic elements that allowed for an oblique (and apparently acceptable) topical allusiveness, by contrast with the “politic”histories of Daniel, Jonson, and Chapman in the mid-1600s. Henry V appeared in the wake of the dramatic shifts in European politics in 1598, especially confrontation with Spain, now intent on placing the Infanta Isabella on Elizabeth’s throne. This coincided with outright rebellion in Ireland as well as possible threats from Scotland. Dutton traces how the two texts register these issues, arguing that the Folio version (the only one that mentions Ireland) is likely to date from after the decisive Battle of Kinsale (1601) rather than from 1599, and therefore to celebrate Mountjoy rather than Essex. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.78 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:07:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

"By Foule Authority": Miscorrection in the Folio Text of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida"

"By Foule Authority": Miscorrection in the Folio Text of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida"