Kids today!

Angrie.Woman wrote:

Ah, well there's the rub: what we have it NOT all his own work anyway! He farmed bits out to be written by others (a common practice at the time, particularly with comic dialogue*: you can see the joins very clearly in some plays, Shakespeare's included. Those in some of Marlowe's are very obvious) and much of what we have is what is

*remembered* by actors who never had the whole script in their hands.

Because copying the whole thing out by hand was impossible in the time (sometimes barely a month between starting to write and it appearing on stage), most actors were given their lines only, with cues for the other actors. Many of the first published versions, on which we base our current texts are based, were what the actors sold to publishers during a run: they knew all *their* words off by heart, and much of the rest of the play, but there were big chunks they had to guess at and misremembered. Publishers would try to fill in the missing bits by approaching other members of the company, but it was all a bit haphazard. Shakespeare was not himself directly involved in the publication of any of his plays in his lifetime, and as no complete texts in his own hand exist, it's very hard to be dogmatic about it. In some cases (Richard II for example) whole passages were missed out for political or safety reasons, the publishers preferring to leave a gap in the text than risk closure or prosecution. There are sometimes marked differences in the texts of the first and second quarto publications, and some scenes only appear in one edition and not the other. The most definitive texts we have are reckoned to be those of the Methuen Arden series, which we use here in the UK as standard exam texts for both school and university exams. They are not the ONLY ones, but are particularly useful, and not just because of the quality of the text. They also contain essays on the origins of the text used, history of the play, and good explanations of the original conditions under which it was produced. They also contain other useful notes about the text and its meaning, and a comprehensive list of critical works.

Putting a Shakespeare text together is an exercise in literary archeology: you really need to dig about quite a bit to find out what happened to it, when, where, and how. And then you need a leap of faith... :)

*It seems to have been quite common for the comic actors to 'write' their own material, some of which was improvised at the time, much the way Billy Conolly does his routines today. These lines only became fixed when the play was published. Actors would sell their latest play to a publisher to make a bit extra on the side. The playwrite himself was paid for the play and that was the end of his involvement unless he was a shareholder in the company and made more money that way, as Shakespeare did. The way this worked is depicted very well in Shakespeare In Love - one of the few accurate bits of history in the film!

You're quite safe ordering from Amazon. I don't know if they do Australia, but I would imagine they would.

A

In article , Jean D Mahavier of BellSouth Internet Group uttered

We have a pile of books on the floor by the bath ... wonderful place for a relaxing read ....

In article , Kate Dicey of Customer of PlusNet plc

uttered>I HATE teaching like that! I don't think I've ever started a chunk of >classic lit in that way. And I have no truck at all with worshiping >the Bard's every word - after all, he himself chopped things up and >reassigned lines, re-wrote things to suit political mood and events, >and re-wrote the jokes to reflect current affairs.>

My kids saw their first live Shakespeare on Friday night - 12th Night. They were in stitches. I feel a bit bad though - I started with Macbeth at age 8...

My Goddaughter's favorite 'nursery rhyme' at the age of 2 was the witches brew from Macbeth! Her mum was due to teach it when she went back to school after maternity leave after her birth, and read all the A level texts and crit aloud to the infant while breastfeeding!

James's first encounter with real theatre was ballet at the Royal Opera House! You can see the costumes I made for it on the website... He loved being able to see the musicians at work as much as the dancing.