The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0838 Sunday, 16 December 2007
[1] From: Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 13 Dec 2007 17:36:17 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0831 Understudies
[2] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 15 Dec 2007 15:02:28 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0831 Understudies
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 13 Dec 2007 17:36:17 -0500
Subject: 18.0831 Understudies
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0831 Understudies
The interesting post against memorial reconstruction from Steve Urkowitz
got me wondering where publishers got the plays they pirated if not from
actors? We know they pirated some plays-Condell and Heminges implied
they did, and Heywood somewhere complains about a play or plays of his
being pirated (I think). Sure, revision went on, but it's my impression
that some of the plays considered by some to have been memorial
reconstructions seem much better written in some sections than others
which certainly makes an attempt at memorial reconstruction that leaves
gaps more plausible than some kind of selective revision. But I'm way
short of knowledgeable about this.
--Bob Grumman
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 15 Dec 2007 15:02:28 -0000
Subject: 18.0831 Understudies
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0831 Understudies
Bill Godshalk asks:
>If actors retained their "parts," wouldn't "memorial
>reconstruction" be a rather easy task? Get the actors'
>parts, and have a scribe reconstruct the script. If only
>a few actors had their parts, then these "parts" should
>be memorially reconstructed almost perfectly,
>not just with greater fidelity.
Leaving aside the question of whether the reconstruction were legitimate
or surreptitious, the mechanics of this aren't straightforward. Assuming
one 'part' per character (rather than one per actor), what Bill imagines
would involve sequential transcription from dozens of rolls held open
simultaneously, which isn't easily done. Working independently, Adrian
Kiernander and Michael Neill decided that this wouldn't be the best way
to proceed. Instead, say Kiernander and Neill, it were better to have
the actors recite their parts in turn and take down this aural event as
writing.
Replying to Bill Godshalk, Steve Urkowitz comments:
>After decades of febrile imaginings of sleazy black-
>market printings of stolen / reconstructed scripts,
>Peter Blayney showed that play-texts generally weren't worth
>the trouble and the trade in play scripts was more likely
>above-board.
Blayney's conclusion that plays were relatively unappealing to
publishers is vigorously contested by Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser
in last year's Shakespeare Quarterly. The editors of Shakespeare
Quarterly allowed Blayney a reply in the same issue of the journal in
which he conceded part of their argument. The remaining disagreements
are about what exactly is being counted (should certain genres be
excluded?) and how (does a collected plays edition count as one thing or
many?) Blayney's polemical 1997 essay, to which Steve alludes, served an
important function in overturning assumptions about surreptitious
printing, but in the light of Farmer and Lesser's mountainous evidence
its conclusions seem overstated.
References
Adrian Kiernander "'Betwixt' and 'between': Variant readings in the
Folio and first quarto versions of _Richard III_ and W. W. Greg's
concept of memorial reconstruction" in Lloyd Davis (ed) _Shakespeare
Matters: History, Teaching, Performance_ (Newark: University of Delaware
Press, 2003)
Michael Neill (ed) _Othello_ The Oxford Shakespeare, 2006, pp. 425-6.
Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser "The popularity of playbooks
revisited" Shakespeare Quarterly 56 (2005) pp. 1-32.
Peter W. M. Blayney "The alleged popularity of playbooks" Shakespeare
Quarterly 56 (2005) pp. 33-50
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