Shakespeare and Text (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)
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...a lucid, insightful, and most welcome addition to the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series...excellent, accomplished, and usefully controversial book by one of the most consistently brilliant editors of Shakespeare in our time. (Sonia Massai, The Review of English Studies )
Useful to undergraduates who are keen to extend and complicate their sense of the Shakespeare text. (Times Higher Education Supplement )
Useful to undergraduates who are keen to extend and complicate their sense of the Shakespeare text. (Times Higher Education Supplement )
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OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Shakespeare and Text is an indispensable and unique guide to its topic. It takes Shakespeare readers to the very foundation of his work, explaining how his plays first took shape in the theatre where writing was part of a larger collective enterprise. As the resulting manuscripts are virtually all lost, the account then turns to the early modern printing industry that produced the earliest surviving texts of Shakespeare's plays. It describes the roles of publisher and printer, the controls exerted through the Stationers' Company, and the technology of printing. A chapter is devoted to the book that gathered Shakespeare's plays together for the first time, the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare and Text goes on to survey the major developments in textual studies over the past century. It builds on the recent upsurge of interest in textual theory, and deals with issues such as collaboration, the instability of the text, the relationship between theatre culture and print culture, and the book as a material object. Later chapters examine the current critical edition, explaining the procedures that transform early texts in to a very different cultural artefact, the edition in which we regularly encounter Shakespeare.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
For less committed students, it is sometimes tempting to skip parts of 'scholarly' Shakespeare editions. More often than not, the least appealing section of all is called something like 'An Account of the Text', where authorities like WW Greg expound on compositors, their idiosyncrasies and the copy they worked from. Textual accounts can seem dour when compared to the poetry and wit of the actual plays. So is this one any different?
Ranging widely from play to play and from quartos to Folios, John Jowett gives us an insight into the workings of textual scholars. He shows, for example, how Charlton Hinman was so brilliantly able to reconstruct the chronology of the printing of the great 1623 First Folio in such detail. The falsifications of the so-called 'Pavier' quartos are also lucidly explained. With such clarity and ingenuity on display, textual scholarship seems glamorous, like detective work or forensic science, with its trails of evidence, painstaking scrutiny and inspired inference.
But textual studies in relation to Shakespeare remain problematic. Too often, evidence is simply unavailable and irrecoverable. And even when progress seems to have been made (as with Kathleen O. Irace's persuasive statistical study of the 'memorial reconstruction' that arguably lies behind unauthorised 'bad quartos') a sea-change in attitudes a few years later can reintroduce doubt. Some recent criticism, in fact, has questioned the very attempt to recover Shakespeare's manuscript 'originals'. The attempt is impossible and too 'literary', they contend, and ignores the fact that plays were collaborative ventures, constantly undergoing the revision and adaptation required for practical performance. Randall MacLeod has even gone as far as to suggest that photofacsimiles of early texts should replace modern editions.
This is a guide that moves beyond problems surrounding early texts and the manuscripts on which they are based. The editor of the modern, critical edition also faces challenges about emendation, modernising, stage directions and much else. They must also take sexual politics into account - we see how preferring 'wise' to 'wife' in Act 4 of The Tempest can provoke (fittingly, perhaps) a storm of largely feminist protest.
This is a fascinating, authoritative and accessible introduction that will probably encourage most readers to consider aspects of text more carefully. It shows us how far attitudes have changed over the past generation or so: how plays like Macbeth and Measure for Measure were probably revised by Thomas Middleton for the King's Men after Shakespeare's death; and how the 1623 Folio's marketing hype helped to create the long-held image of Shakespeare as a non-collaborating and non-drafting literary icon. It includes a particularly generous glossary of terms and a thought-provoking concluding discussion on what the future of 'text' might look like, with the availability of electronic editions transforming ways of studying Shakespeare.
Ranging widely from play to play and from quartos to Folios, John Jowett gives us an insight into the workings of textual scholars. He shows, for example, how Charlton Hinman was so brilliantly able to reconstruct the chronology of the printing of the great 1623 First Folio in such detail. The falsifications of the so-called 'Pavier' quartos are also lucidly explained. With such clarity and ingenuity on display, textual scholarship seems glamorous, like detective work or forensic science, with its trails of evidence, painstaking scrutiny and inspired inference.
But textual studies in relation to Shakespeare remain problematic. Too often, evidence is simply unavailable and irrecoverable. And even when progress seems to have been made (as with Kathleen O. Irace's persuasive statistical study of the 'memorial reconstruction' that arguably lies behind unauthorised 'bad quartos') a sea-change in attitudes a few years later can reintroduce doubt. Some recent criticism, in fact, has questioned the very attempt to recover Shakespeare's manuscript 'originals'. The attempt is impossible and too 'literary', they contend, and ignores the fact that plays were collaborative ventures, constantly undergoing the revision and adaptation required for practical performance. Randall MacLeod has even gone as far as to suggest that photofacsimiles of early texts should replace modern editions.
This is a guide that moves beyond problems surrounding early texts and the manuscripts on which they are based. The editor of the modern, critical edition also faces challenges about emendation, modernising, stage directions and much else. They must also take sexual politics into account - we see how preferring 'wise' to 'wife' in Act 4 of The Tempest can provoke (fittingly, perhaps) a storm of largely feminist protest.
This is a fascinating, authoritative and accessible introduction that will probably encourage most readers to consider aspects of text more carefully. It shows us how far attitudes have changed over the past generation or so: how plays like Macbeth and Measure for Measure were probably revised by Thomas Middleton for the King's Men after Shakespeare's death; and how the 1623 Folio's marketing hype helped to create the long-held image of Shakespeare as a non-collaborating and non-drafting literary icon. It includes a particularly generous glossary of terms and a thought-provoking concluding discussion on what the future of 'text' might look like, with the availability of electronic editions transforming ways of studying Shakespeare.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
Vexed texts
29 Jan 2012
Format:Paperback
For less committed students, it is sometimes tempting to skip parts of 'scholarly' Shakespeare editions. More often than not, the least appealing section of all is called something like 'An Account of the Text', where authorities like WW Greg expound on compositors, their idiosyncrasies and the copy they worked from. Textual accounts can seem dour when compared to the poetry and wit of the actual plays. So is this one any different?
Ranging widely from play to play and from quartos to Folios, John Jowett gives us an insight into the workings of textual scholars. He shows, for example, how Charlton Hinman was so brilliantly able to reconstruct the chronology of the printing of the great 1623 First Folio in such detail. The falsifications of the so-called 'Pavier' quartos are also lucidly explained. With such clarity and ingenuity on display, textual scholarship seems glamorous, like detective work or forensic science, with its trails of evidence, painstaking scrutiny and inspired inference.
But textual studies in relation to Shakespeare remain problematic. Too often, evidence is simply unavailable and irrecoverable. And even when progress seems to have been made (as with Kathleen O. Irace's persuasive statistical study of the 'memorial reconstruction' that arguably lies behind unauthorised 'bad quartos') a sea-change in attitudes a few years later can reintroduce doubt. Some recent criticism, in fact, has questioned the very attempt to recover Shakespeare's manuscript 'original'. The attempt is impossible and too 'literary', they contend, and ignores the fact that plays were collaborative ventures, constantly undergoing the revision and adaptation required for practical performance. Randall MacLeod has even gone as far as to suggest that photofacsimiles of early texts should replace modern editions.
This is a guide that moves beyond problems surrounding early texts and the manuscripts on which they are based. The editor of the modern, critical edition also faces challenges about emendation, modernising, stage directions and much else. They must also take sexual politics into account - we see how changing 'wife' to 'wise' in Act 4 of The Tempest can provoke (fittingly, perhaps) a storm of largely feminist protest.
This is a fascinating, authoritative and accessible introduction that will probably encourage most readers to consider aspects of text more carefully. It shows us how far attitudes have changed over the past generation or so: how plays like Macbeth and Measure for Measure were probably revised by Thomas Middleton for the King's Men after Shakespeare's death; and how the 1623 Folio's marketing hype helped to create the long-held image of Shakespeare as a non-collaborating and non-drafting literary icon. It includes a particularly generous glossary of terms and a thought-provoking concluding discussion of what the future of 'text' might look like, with the availability of electronic editions transforming ways of studying Shakespeare.
Ranging widely from play to play and from quartos to Folios, John Jowett gives us an insight into the workings of textual scholars. He shows, for example, how Charlton Hinman was so brilliantly able to reconstruct the chronology of the printing of the great 1623 First Folio in such detail. The falsifications of the so-called 'Pavier' quartos are also lucidly explained. With such clarity and ingenuity on display, textual scholarship seems glamorous, like detective work or forensic science, with its trails of evidence, painstaking scrutiny and inspired inference.
But textual studies in relation to Shakespeare remain problematic. Too often, evidence is simply unavailable and irrecoverable. And even when progress seems to have been made (as with Kathleen O. Irace's persuasive statistical study of the 'memorial reconstruction' that arguably lies behind unauthorised 'bad quartos') a sea-change in attitudes a few years later can reintroduce doubt. Some recent criticism, in fact, has questioned the very attempt to recover Shakespeare's manuscript 'original'. The attempt is impossible and too 'literary', they contend, and ignores the fact that plays were collaborative ventures, constantly undergoing the revision and adaptation required for practical performance. Randall MacLeod has even gone as far as to suggest that photofacsimiles of early texts should replace modern editions.
This is a guide that moves beyond problems surrounding early texts and the manuscripts on which they are based. The editor of the modern, critical edition also faces challenges about emendation, modernising, stage directions and much else. They must also take sexual politics into account - we see how changing 'wife' to 'wise' in Act 4 of The Tempest can provoke (fittingly, perhaps) a storm of largely feminist protest.
This is a fascinating, authoritative and accessible introduction that will probably encourage most readers to consider aspects of text more carefully. It shows us how far attitudes have changed over the past generation or so: how plays like Macbeth and Measure for Measure were probably revised by Thomas Middleton for the King's Men after Shakespeare's death; and how the 1623 Folio's marketing hype helped to create the long-held image of Shakespeare as a non-collaborating and non-drafting literary icon. It includes a particularly generous glossary of terms and a thought-provoking concluding discussion of what the future of 'text' might look like, with the availability of electronic editions transforming ways of studying Shakespeare.
Great Book
10 Oct 2010
Format:Kindle Edition
A fantastic introduction to textual studies and issues in Shakespeare Studies. A must-have for anyone wanting to learn about the history of the text.
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