The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 29.0152 Wednesday, 28 February 2018
From: William Sutton <
Date: February 28, 2018 at 6:46:28 AM EST
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Richard III/Shorthand
Hi All,
Tad asked for some simple indications of how these shorthand people did what they did and got away with it. I don’t believe for a second they did. But that said there were shorthand stenographers at churches a-plenty. Maybe Gerald could find some indications of their methodologies? What Madeleine Doran said almost a century ago ain’t helping your argument. The warning in a play of 1623 of not letting in brachygraphers to take notes says diddley-squat too.
Your default mode back to Bordeaux and your belief that it was a shorthand recorded play also displays no explanations of how on earth they could get away with it. You’ve been to an open outdoor theatre right? You can see everyone in the galleries and in the pit. It’s daylight. Someone scribbling notes even in the 21st C is noticeable. Hell’s teeth, try taking photos with your mobile phone. But if I ran the Globe I’d experiment with shorthand artistes trying their damnedest to record a play. You can try surreptitiously too but I don’t grant you any success. Get a court stenographer with their machine to do it. Your shorthand spies require teamwork so complicated it falls off Ockham’s razor edge. Not to mention: quill or pencil, wax tablet or rough parchment, lap desk or lap dog? Convince me of the ability to be able to take notes of speaking actors on a stage, by shorthand or phonetically and I just might give your shorthand a chance. Chances are you're backing up a fiction. Surely we can put this idea to bed forever.
Like Richard Field marrying the daughter, and not the wife of Thomas Vautrollier.
Another fiction that some still hold on authority gone by.
Best,
Will