Oh, and our librarian from the Institute, Karin Brown, said that she would look into the Birthplace Trust having a special viewing of the First Folio for the Institute members, because she "simply couldn't see why they wouldn't want to." Membership has its priveleges.
So, today I am reading of the editing process. Specifically, the editing of Shakespeare, and the extremely difficult nature of it. When I heard that one of my professors, John Jowett, my academic advisor actually, was an editor of William Shakespeare's Complete Works, I damn near crapped myself (which is a Southern American Colloquialism, and not a literal state of being for me... the writer.) In his class, Textual Studies, the minutiae of textual expression by the author becomes a focal point while the translation of each of Shakespeare's expressions or odd spellings becomes the other focal point. How each editor reads and then translates each expression underneath the actual texts, in the collation lines, affects how each reader will interpret the play or the piece of work. Deciding which version of each script is the correct or more viable one, as there are sometimes many different versions of each Shakespearean play, is also a difficult decision that can only be decided by the editors and their publishers. King Lear, for example, has two completely different endings from the Quarto version of the play to the Folio edition. You'd be surprised on how much there actually is to argue about almost five hundred years after the man's death.
My favorite part of this class, has only recently become a central point of discussion. The stage directions of Shakespeare, and how editors decide when, where and what to put as the stage directions for each play. In the First Folio, which was written by two of Shakespeare's actors and not the man himself, there were very few stage directions and settings listed. How does each editor decide what to put there, and who the hell are they to say what happens onstage if they aren't a theatre director or production historian? I realize that certain directions are obvious, and those are of the enter and exit kind. However, when an editor writes that a character laughs... or fights with another character... or is even pursued by a woodland creature as they run offstage, who says they are correct? Is it enough that history says they are correct because the First or Second Folio have it that way, or should those editors begin to question stage directions and look at the production history of each show and give the percentage of times that a specific actor has laughed at that exact place in the script and then weigh that against the number of times they haven't laughed and then present their findings. They could probably also produce their own show, starring as many of the most venerable Shakespearean actors left alive today with all the Shakespearean directors, dramaturgs, and scholars, and see what they think. Why not take a vote? If they are serious about the editing process, does what other people think actually count, or are the editors just playing God with Shakespeare?
I can't decide it all right now, but I will certainly be making this a topic for one of my term papers. Thanks, Blog, for letting me talk this one out.
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