The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0276 Friday, 9 May 2008
From: John Drakakis <
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Date: Friday, 9 May 2008 16:42:59 +0100
Subject: 19.0257 SHAKSPER Roundtable: Shakespeare's Intentions
Comment: RE: SHK 19.0257 SHAKSPER Roundtable: Shakespeare's Intentions
Larry Weiss's and Gabriel Egan's postings came in together; I think they
require to be addressed separately. I have addressed Weiss's
contribution to the debate, and I now turn to Egan's.
In my original contribution, there were a few typographical errors. Four
of them are obvious, one of which involves the omission of the word
'text' towards the end of the posting. Also, the part of the sentence
for which Egan rightly takes me to task should read: "published in
quarto in 1600 printed by James Roberts, not Valentine Simmes." I did
not mean to suggest that there had been some dispute over who printed Q1
of _The Merchant of Venice_ nor did I wish to suggest that Roberts and
Simmes were the publishers as well as the printers of _The Merchant_ and
_Much Ado_ respectively. I merely wished to point out that some of the
peculiarities concerning speech-prefixes were not confined to one
printer. One more erratum, in the best tradition of Archbishop Spooner,
when I referred to Bruce King, I really meant Bruce Smith. My apologies.
At one of the points to which Egan refers in my contribution, I was
concerned to raise the question of 'intention' in relation to the
variations of speech-prefix that appear in Q1 _Much Ado_ at 4.2. and to
suggest that different printing houses encountered various problems with
them which they addressed in their own way. I was concerned to draw
attention to the way in which McEachern had dealt with the issue in her
recent edition of _Much Ado_. In quoting part of the note on p. 278 of
McEachern's addition, I inadvertently omitted the brackets around the
clause "(and hence puzzled over by a compositor)", and I also printed
'the' for 'a'. Such are the pitfalls of writing at speed, although I
don't think that these minor inaccuracies affect the substance of the
point I was making.
My concern was not to drag McEachern into a slanging match about who is
the more virtuous editor, nor am I interested in subjecting her edition
to the yardstick of bibliographical fashion. It contains plenty of
material for which we should be grateful. I stick to my position that as
footnotes go, the one to which I was referring is 'exemplary'. Since
Egan seems to have got himself stuck in only one side of a binary, let
me go through McEachern's suggestions:
1. that the appearance of the actors' names (or "intended actors") names
betray the marks of the play's composition
2. "perhaps that the copy-text that served as the basis for Q was a
promptbook used in the theatre"
3. and that it was this that was (." . . hence puzzled over by a
compositor")
There is a difference between 1 and 2, and 3 adds another dimension.
McEachern does not tell us what it was precisely that the compositor who
set these pages may have 'puzzled over'. Were the characters' names
scored out and the actors' names inserted? Was the copy 'foul papers' or
a promptbook? What was the agency involved here? Was it Shakespeare who
intended that Kemp and Cowley should play the parts of Dogberry and
Verges, and if so do we not need (and this was my point) to modify the
rather crude model of intentionality that has hitherto accounted for
dramatic composition?
I do not have a copy of Greg's _The Shakespeare First Folio_ to hand,
but I do have his comments on _Much Ado_ in _The Editorial Problem in
Shakespeare_. There he says -- and I shall do my best to transcribe it
accurately -- that Much Ado was one of three plays that show evidence
"that a playhouse manuscript existed and was consulted" (p. 121). He
goes on:
<PROSEQUOTE>
At one point in the quarto of Much Ado the names of the actors Kemp and
Cowley appear as prefixes for Dogberry and Verges, whence it has been
assumed that the text was set up from a prompt copy. But Shakespeare
must obviously have written the parts with particular actors in mind,
and nothing is more likely than that he should have used their names.
[Gregg appends a lengthy footnote that details all of the confusions.]
Everything points to the copy having been foul papers that lacked final
revision. The stage directions are obviously the author's, casual and
often inadequate, [fn. See appendix (p.178)] and there is much
inconsistency in designating the speakers." (pp.121-2) (my italics)
</PROSEQUOTE>
Greg challenges the consistency of Dover Wilson's explanation of what he
took to be authorial anomalies in Q, while at the same time claiming
that the play was printed directly from "the prompt-book".(p. 122). I
will, of course, check the later Greg text, but I am not aware that he
changed his position on this play substantially.
I have no desire to challenge the 'subtlety' of Greg's account of these
matters, but all we can accuse McEachern of is conflating an existing
explanation in an attempt to produce a succinct footnote. Like many
eminent editors before her, she is perhaps a little too respectful of
editorial tradition. I notice that Egan does not pick her up on her use
of the term 'copy-text' in this footnote. He does, later, direct us to
Gregg's 'The Rationale of Copy-Text' (reprinted in J. C. Maxwell's
edition of _The Collected Papers of Sir Walter W. Greg_), but he is
silent on those parts of the essay relevant to this discussion and on
the extent to which that fascinating essay is littered with odd
slippages between 'author' and 'writer'. Let's see what Eagan has to say
about the ideological investment in the following quotation from this
very influential (but now largely superseded) essay:
<PROSEQUOTE>
It is therefore the modern editorial practice to choose whatever extant
text may be supposed to represent most nearly what the author wrote and
to follow it with the least possible alteration. [So far, so good] But
here we need to draw a distinction between the significant, or as I
shall call them 'substantive', readings of the text, those namely that
affect the author's meaning or the essence of his expression, and
others, such in general as spelling, punctuation, word-division, and the
like, affecting mainly its formal presentation, which may be regarded as
the accidents, or as I shall call them 'accidentals' of the text. (my
italics) (p. 376)
</PROSEQUOTE>
We need to register here the slippage from 'what the author wrote' (what
I understand by the term 'agency') to the larger question of readings
"that affect the author's meaning or the essence of his expression" (by
which I understand 'authority'). I feel certain that we shall come back
to this at some point in our discussion, and not, I hope, in relation to
whether or not Greg departed radically from McKerrow, since such matters
are not strictly relevant.
But let me turn to an area of Egan's response on which we appear to
agree: that involving a radical revision of, -- to use a
short-hand-romantic notions of creativity. Our agreement is,
regrettably, short-lived, since he thinks that "actors' names in
speech-prefixes" (and I would take it further to include the instability
of speech-prefixes tout court) are 'trivial'. I want to argue that they
lead us into very complex questions, only some of which are relevant to
our discussion of 'intention'. But was does the complexity to which Egan
would direct us involve? That "the dramatist intends some others, the
performers, to complete the meaning of the script by performing it". I
resist the temptation to take a sledgehammer of theory to crack this
poor defenseless nut. Like Gregg before him, thought with something less
than Greg's eloquence, Egan has "the meaning of the script" very firmly
in mind; and, in seeking to point out the mote that may or may not be in
McEachern's eye, he overlooks the beam that is in his own. The issue is
who's meaning, and was it, or was it not 'intended'. I insist that this
is not a mere scholastic point, since we now have access to very
detailed theories and accounts of what an 'author' is and how meaning is
produced, and we should be very careful how we proceed. Pedestrian
common sense will simply not do here.
Egan accuses McEachern of not being up to date in her bibliographical
thinking, but I wonder how 'up to date' he is himself? Lest he takes
this opportunity to tell us, perhaps I should point out to him that that
was a rhetorical question. But I ask it because his crude account of
theatrical transaction and of the problem of 'intention' cannot really
be allowed to stand after Barthes' 'The Death of The Author' and
Foucault's 'What is an Author'. I will not tax the patience of members
of the list by rehearsing some of these arguments, except to say that
they imply a very clear distinction between 'agency' and 'intention'
that Egan either simply fails to understand, or is reluctant to engage
with. What distinction would he make between 'meaning production' and
'sense making' and how might these categories impinge upon our theme for
this discussion? One of the questions I am asking is: what do we
understand by 'intention' and how do we project that understanding onto
texts whose 'intentions' (and I use these scare quotes deliberately) we
may only, if at all, be in a position to read symptomatically? And
moreover, since this leads to other questions, what are the forces that
over-determine these 'intentions'? I have in mind here questions of
genre, language itself, and everything that might come under the heading
of 'motivation'. And how does the establishment of authorial meaning
differ from the readerly practice of sense-making? I only raised the
textual bibliographical issues insofar as they impinge on these
questions, and I do not think that we should be diverted into areas that
might be more appropriately treated in another round-table discussion.
Finally, the trouble with Egan's 'concrete example' is that it is just
that: inert, thoughtless, and absolutely a-historical. He is not a 16th
century dramatist, nor by any stretch of the imagination can he
transform himself into an Elizabethan compositor. Leaving that
'complexity' aside, even at the most basic of levels, he confuses agency
with authority, and he won't get out of this bind so long as he persists
in regarding writing as an entirely instrumental mode of access to some
Platonic realm of ideas. In spite of his concern with practical material
matters of printing, there is a very clear Platonic strain in Greg's
thinking, and in the bibliographical thinking of many of his
contemporaries, including Bowers. It is no accident that D. F.
McKenzie's ground-breaking article of 1969 should have been entitled
'Printers of the Mind'. What gives the game away for Egan is his
possessiveness: the 'accidentals' of his writing are 'his'. I would be
very interested to be a fly on the wall of a conversation between Egan
and God!
Cheers,
John Drakakis
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