Schedule / Horaire
Saturday 26 April 2014, 15h-17h.
Room: ENS, salle Celan.
Leaders / Organisatrices
Rosy Colombo, University of Rome “Sapienza” (Italy), and Daniela Guardamagna, University of Rome “Tor ergata”(Italy)
Participants
- Francesca Brancolini, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Was It Shakespeare Who Revised Locrine? A Question of Authorship - Rosy Colombo Smith, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Origin Displaced - Tommaso Continisio, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Shakespeare’s Hand in Mucedorus: Did the Bard Write the Additional Scenes? - Daniela Guardamagna, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Middleton beyond the Canon - Roger Holdsworth, University of Manchester (UK)
Timon of Athens as a Middleton Play - Lucia Nigri, University of Salford (UK)
Authorial and non-authorial links in The Lady’s Tragedy - Giuliano Pascucci, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Not All is Lost. Cardenio, Double Falsehood and music - Rossana M. Sebellin, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Imagery in Thomas of Woodstock and Richard II
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Francesca Brancolini, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Was It Shakespeare Who Revised Locrine? A Question of Authorship
Locrine (1595), attributed to the hand of a University Wit (Peele and Greene are the two most likely candidates), is one of the plays bearing the “W.S.” acronyme on its frontispiece. Some critics have seen Shakespeare behind the revision of some scenes of the text. My purpose is to analyse those scenes (probably the Strumbo ones, by some connected to the figure of Falstaff) with the help of Computational Linguistic tools, in order to verify if these theories can be supported (or not) by statistical evidence, which could open new perspectives on the authorship studies of the play.
2. Rosy Colombo Smith, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Origin Displaced
This presentation focuses upon the category of ‘origin’ from a theoretical viewpoint, which, besides including philological/textual aspects, inevitably opens up the issue of interpretation, not limited to ‘capturing’ an originary, foundational ‘meaning’. I argue that origin can never be recovered in conventional terms, but is rather displaced in space and time, in the materiality of subsequent edited texts: Freud stated that telling a dream is already an experience of displacement, in which what remains of the dream are significant traces. A case in point are the multiple versions of Hamlet, which I will approach as a palimpsest to illustrate my argument.
3. Tommaso Continisio, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Shakespeare’s Hand in Mucedorus: Did the Bard Write the Additional Scenes?
It is sometimes suggested that the ‘new additions’ added to Q3 of Mucedorus, a tragicomedy written in the 1590s and one of the period’s most popular plays, are by Shakespeare. In my paper I apply various tests for authorship derived from computational linguistics to establish the truth, or at least the feasibility, of this claim. I then consider how such tests might be applied to the whole play to help determine how many authors are present, and who they might be.
4. Daniela Guardamagna, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Middleton beyond the Canon
The ‘new Middleton’ who emerged from the Seventies to the Nineties of the 20th century (since the work of MacDonald P. Jackson, David Lake and Roger Holdsworth), and even more so after the publication of his Collected Works and Companion by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (with M.P. Jackson, John Jowett, Valerie Wayne and Adrian Weiss), is very different from the author that was proposed till the Seventies and even longer. Especially in the field of tragedy, the new author-figure presents striking features which greatly modify our perception of his work. This novelty is the subject of my presentation.
5. Roger Holdsworth, University of Manchester (UK)
Timon of Athens as a Middleton Play
Three centuries of criticism have discussed Timon as a Shakespeare play, largely as an adjunct of King Lear. But Timon is also a Middleton play: he co-wrote it with Shakespeare, and some two-fifths of the Folio text is by him. Tracing links of content and style between Timon and the rest of the Middleton canon – not only his plays but his poems, satiric and devotional pamphlets, and city pageants – demonstrates what a multifaceted and innovatory work Timon is, with a capacity to challenge and disturb its audience in ways that the Lear comparison, however relevant, entirely fails to convey.
6. Lucia Nigri, University of Salford (UK)
Authorial and non-authorial links in The Lady’s Tragedy
Written and performed in 1611, the authorship of The Lady’s Tragedy has been a source of much conjecture: Goff, Chapman, Shakespeare, Massinger, Tourneur, Chapman, Ford, and Fletcher have been all argued for. More recently critics almost unanimously attribute the play to Middleton. This contribution will discuss the degree to which this attribution can be corroborated by critical means and will investigate the relationship between plot and subplot in the tragedy. It will also look at possible non-authorial links with Shakespeare and the influences his plays may have had on Middleton’s tragedy.
7. Giuliano Pascucci, “Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy)
Not All is Lost. Cardenio, Double Falsehood and music
In 2001, Michael Wood suggested that the Elizabethan song Woods, Rocks and Mountains, by Robert Johnson, is the only remnant of Cardenio, a lost play presumably written by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Wood revived the debate about the Double Falsehood/Cardenio querelle, but also the problem of Shakespeare’s canon. His ingenuous, well received theory is based on the textual similarities between the song and Shelton’s translation of Don Quijote, source of Cardenio. However, these and many others so far disregarded similarities should be further investigated to ascertain what conclusions can be drawn about authorship attribution issues from the comparison.
8. Rossana M. Sebellin, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy)
Imagery in Thomas of Woodstock and Richard II
Thomas of Woodstock, also known as Richard II part I, is an anonymous text, so far little explored, apart from the impressive four-volume edition by Michael Egan (2006): this critic is sure the play is by Shakespeare, but his findings have convinced few experts: attribution remains debated. Beside Egan’s book, a linguistic analysis of the play has been carried out by Donatella Montini (2012), but a study of the cluster of images pertaining to both texts has not yet been attempted.