So, in my class yesterday I was introduced to the Textual Study of Shakespeare, and how much we really know about what he wrote. Not surprisingly, the question of authorship did NOT come up. However, I learned a great deal about the plays that he wrote, when and how they were produced either on stage or through a printed text, and how authoritative any given text of his plays really are, as there are several very different texts out there of many of his plays.
In class there were many topics discussed, but as is my habit when taking notes in class, I only really ever ask myself lots of questions on paper or I write down interesting facts I didn't know before. The decidedly much-younger lady sitting next to me, when I asked what she'd be writing down, had written whole sentences down and could probably recite back everything that had been said inside the classroom.
"You could write a dissertation from that."
"Yeah. What did you write down?"
"Lots of questions."
"Why write down questions, when you can write down the answers?"
"Are we in the business of answering? Or can we only ask the right questions?"
She shrugged.
So, that's how that went down.
One of the main points of yesterday's lecture was in discussion about how accurate most of the texts we have on Shakespeare are to what he actually wrote down. With only three pages of Sir Thomas More known to exist in Shakespeare's own hand, and nothing else besides a few collector's items with his signature or a few words written down, we have very, very little. Or at least, that is what I heard in class yesterday... I am certainly no authority yet on Shakespeare's known pieces of handwriting.
The reason there is very little in his own writing stems from the discrepancy of time between an actual performance of Shakespeare's plays, that being the time in which he would be most involved, and the actual publication of his scripts for the general public to read at their leisure, a time in which he would be least involved. (A book by Lukas Erne called Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist was recommended on this topic, where Shakespeare's involvement with the printer and publisher of his works is speculated on. Book Link)
A few of the facts I picked up in class were based around why we call them Folios, Quartos and Octavos, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the work. A Folio is a piece of work where the printed page is only folded once, a Quarto is folded twice, and an Octavo folded thrice (c'mon, you knew I was gonna say "thrice" instead of "three times", I'm a Shakespeare geek now.) There are very few Shakespeare Octavos in existence, but a surprising number of Quartos still around, and of course, a number of copies of the First Folio of his Complete Works. The Quartos, in fact, are the reason that so many different texts to his plays exist, and the sheer number of Quartos in existence for each piece of writing gives us some idea of what his most popular works in writing were. While his early plays, like Richard II and III, and Henry IV had several different Quartos released (six for Richard III, five for Richard II, and seven for Henry IV) that we know of, most of Shakespeare's plays only rated one, two, or three versions of the Quartos released, and a full third of his plays we do not have any Quarto copies of. The most popular piece of writing Shakespeare had in Quarto form was his poem, Venus and Adonis, which had a surprising twelve Quartos released, and maybe more but these are the only ones we have knowledge of.
A Quarto was a much more popular, and a much more accessible piece of writing than a Folio, as it was produced for much cheaper and made much quicker than a Folio would have been. While a First Folio might be found in the library of royalty or rich aristocracy, the Quarto of a play could be owned by a shopkeeper or less-rich member of the gentry and thus a much more widely distributed piece of writing. Something else I was told about, that is free and available to everyone... a website that has all of Shakespeare's Quartos scanned and ready for perusing, that also allows you to compare the texts side-by-side. (The British Library: Shakespeare in Quarto Collection) I mean, how cool is that?
If you take a look at the versions of Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet, you will notice a difference in texts between Q1 and Q2 for both of them, and then again finding difference in text from the actual Folio version of each. The First Folio actually being an amalgamation of Quartos, manuscripts, and edits of Shakespeare's work, and not necessarily the *authority* on what each play was, and is, today.
Here are a few of the questions I wrote down in class, based upon the discussion:
- What did Shakespeare actually write, and what didn't he write?: It has been a growing belief that Shakespeare was a collaborator on "Arden of Faversham" by Anonymous. This is also an obvious question for anyone studying the text of William Shakespeare, and probably the first one that everyone asks.
- Sometimes texts differ greatly. What are the validity of each of his texts?: Again, an obvious and unanswerable question.
- Is any of the stage direction given in any of his early publications actually a part of Shakespeare's original manuscript or was it a part of his productions?: No way to know the answer to this question, but one I am keen to take a crack at.
- Was Shakespeare interested in seeing his plays in print?: An interesting question as it stems from the desire to know what was inside the man's head, and a good follow-up might be, "If he was, when did that begin and when did it end?"
- How did the performance of a play reshape the ownership of it in Elizabethan times?: the copies of Shakespeare's early work in Quarto (e.g. Titus Andronicus) did not even feature the author's name on the front cover, and just listed the names of the "honourable men" who performed it and the publisher.
- Why would a theatre company want a play they have performed put into print?: A follow-up to the last question, in which it was posited that maybe they wanted to respark interest in a play that had gone out of style, or wanted to make an additional profit off of the sale.
- Why does Shakespeare's name only appear in reprints of his early work?: Another question about the printing, the answer to which was posited as maybe his gain in celebrity around London as a premier playwright, and maybe his name had become a selling point.
- Did Shakespeare himself want to hold back on the printing in lieu of performances that had yet to, or were still taking place?
- Did the publishing of Ben Jonson's plays influence how Shakespeare went about publishing?: Ben Jonson was an integral part of the publishing of his plays, being very particular in how they were put into the written word, being fussy about punctuation and word order.
Shakespeare Seminar, Part the First. -- Dr. Michael Dobson, A Boy from Stratford.
After attending Textual Studies yesterday, I had a two hour break wherein I posted my review of Twelfth Night and attended to some important online research (read: Facebook Stalking). At 2 pm, I attended a seminar/ lecture/ presentation of paper on Shakespeare as a boy, entitled A Boy from Stratford presented by its author, Dr. Michael Dobson, the head of the Shakespeare Institute.
This presentation focused mostly on the images of Shakespeare that appeared in art after the author himself was many years in the grave. Though Professor Dobson is much more educated in this topic, and spoke with a candor and humor as befitting his status of a Shakespearean scholar, he also made this lecture fun. His commentary on the subject wasn't necessarily contained in the words that he spoke, but really in the manner that he spoke them. With a certain emphasis on his light praise of a piece of artwork, he could turn that praise into a sarcastic bite that made the audience laugh in recognition of the artistic liberty that each painter, storybook author, or photographer has taken in the presentation of his or her work to the general populous, and how ridiculous some of those artistic liberties actually were. For example, in the discussion of a children's book with William Shakespeare as the title character, the book had suggested that all of Mr. Shakespeare's plays and bits of famous dialogue were in fact inspired by his encounters with the townspeople of Stratford-upon-Avon, and his brother... all while he was a teenage boy. Though the book was, of course, not intended to be taken seriously, Professor Dobson's light ribbing of the book was not to be taken too seriously either as his intonation during the exposition of the discussion suggested.
Though it was only my very first lecture/ paper presentation at the Shakespeare Institute, I came away with a good idea of what a great presentation sounds and looks and feels like (as I will be making two of them in my tenure here at the Institute), gotten a little insight as to the posthumous effect of Mr. Shakespeare's fame on British society and world art, and have come away with a quote of Dr. Dobson's in his evaluation of art and artwork...
"It's always easier if someone in the picture is wearing a halo." -- Dr. Michael Dobson, 27/09/12.
I have to admit, I laughed pretty hard at that last one... but then again, I love a dry and witty commentary on art and art critiques (critics?).
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