2013

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0134  Tuesday, 26 March 2013

[1] From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         March 22, 2013 

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Q: Rom. “quit”

[2] From:        Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         March 25, 2013 5:20:38 PM EDT

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Q: Rom. “quit” 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         March 22, 2013 

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Q: Rom. “quit” 

Gabriel Egan wrote,

>> Larry Weiss wrote of Hamlet

>>

>> F1 seems to have been printed from Q3,

>> which doesn't have substantive authority.

>>

> I'd be interested to hear the reasons for

> this assertion about the Folio text of Hamlet.

See, e.g., Riverside 2d ed. p.1139; Wells, et al. Textual Companion 288 et seq.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         March 25, 2013 5:20:38 PM EDT

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Q: Rom. “quit”

Larry Weiss wrote,

>Q2, which is the better text, has “quit.” Q1 is a bad quarto, and 

>F1 seems to have been printed from Q3, which doesn’t have 

>substantive authority. However, I agree that the word means 

>“requite,” but this can be noted in a commentary note. If an 

>editor adopts “quite” s/he should probably spell it “'quite” to 

>indicate that it is a clipped form.

Might (pronounced “mitt?”) it not be a better idea for the editorial community to invite (pronounced “invitt”?) its readers to accept the vagaries of so much early spelling and just leave ‘em alone unless a serious problem erupts? The compulsive demons that tormented Fredson Bowers and his code-breaking buddies demanded adherence to the mantra “An Editor Must Edit.” Well, maybe. If you’re working on Enigma transmissions in WWII, that’s the case. But for the humane educating of readers of Shakespeare, it’s my experience that if the editor lays back then the kid on the bike learns to ride more easily. The old spellings and the early texts in their battiness seem to encourage supple adapting, flexible tiny-problem-solving, and an intellectual boldness approaching the Renaissance ideal of sprezzatura. And that’s in fourth-grade kids in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It might work in their near neighbors at Princeton?  

Joys from your Luddite Interlocutor, 

Ever,

Steve Urkquartowitz  

(more usually spelt “urquartowitz” but editorially normalized to “idiot”)