Seminar 4: Early Shakespeare

Schedule / Horaire

Friday 25 April 2014, 16h-18h.

Room: Vendôme.

Leaders / Organisateurs

Andrew J. Power (USA) and Rory Loughnane, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)

Participants

  1. Terri Bourus, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
    Shakespeare’s Early Hamlet
  2. Rob Carson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (USA)
    Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men
  3. Fran X. Connor, Wichita State University (USA)
    Richard Field and Venus and Adonis
  4. Hugh Craig, University of Newcastle (Australia)
    Cliques, networks and nodes: affinity and distinctiveness in early Shakespeare
  5. Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University (UK)
    The Date and Authorship of The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  6. MacDonald Jackson, University of Auckland (New Zealand)
    Arden of Faversham and Shakespeare’s Early Collaborations
  7. John Jowett, Shakespeare Institute (UK)
    Reconstruction or Collaboration: The Case of Richard Duke of York
  8. Andy Kesson, University of Kent (UK)
    Early Shakespeare and the first generation of commercial theatre
  9. Rory Loughnane, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
    Early Shakespeare, Late Peele
  10. Anna Pruitt, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
    The question of authorship and chronology in Act IV Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus
  11. Peter Sillitoe, De Montfort University (UK)
    Locating the Henry VI Plays: Spatial Dynamics in Early Shakespeare
  12. Will Sharpe, Shakespeare Institute (UK)
    Shakespeare’s Habits as a Collaborative Author
  13. Holger Schott Syme, University of Toronto (Canada)
    Whose Shakespeare?
  14. Gary Taylor, Florida State University (USA)
    The Fly Scene in Titus

Abstracts / Résumés

1. Terri Bourus, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
Shakespeare’s Early Hamlet

The dominant textual theories about Hamlet all agree that the 1603 quarto, though printed earlier than the 1604/5 quarto and the 1623 folio, must represent a derivative version of the play, and therefore must date from 1599 or later. This paper argues that all such theories are fundamentally flawed. Theatrical evidence clearly indicates that the 1603 text represents an earlier version, written and performed eleven years before composition of the more familiar, longer texts. This interpretation places the 1603 version near the beginning of Shakespeare’s playwriting career.

2. Rob Carson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (USA)
Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men

Shakespeare’s history plays often seem to presuppose that their audiences are familiar with events that featured prominently in other history plays of the period: here we might think of the murder of Woodstock that lurks beneath the opening acts of Richard II, the slapping of the Lord Chief Justice that is kept offstage in 2 Henry IV, and the ways in which Jane Shore haunts the action of Richard III. This paper will focus on the dramaturgy of Richard III, exploring the ways in which Shakespeare’s play stages a dialogue with the Queen’s Men’s True Tragedy of Richard III.

3. Fran X. Connor, Wichita State University (USA)
Richard Field and Venus and Adonis

William Shakespeare first appeared in print through printer Richard Field, publisher of the first two editions of Venus and Adonis. While the poem itself is entirely Shakespeare’s work, Field’s attention to the orthography and design of the poem were essential to establishing Shakespeare’s reputation as a poet. Using Field’s work on John Harrington’s 1591 Orlando Furioso as precedent, I will analyze the variants in the first two Venus and Adonis quartos to argue that Field similarly attempted to regularize spelling and other elements of the poem, establishing Shakespeare as a modern poet worthy of attention, and Field himself as a printer capable of elegant work.

4. Hugh Craig, University of Newcastle (Australia)
Cliques, networks and nodes: affinity and distinctiveness in early Shakespeare

English plays of the late 1580s and early 1590s seem to cluster by genre, and by progenitor — as descendants of Tamburlaine, or The Spanish Tragedy, or the Henry VI plays, for instance — rather than by author. Collaborative writing and careless textual transmission add to the sense of a collective dramatic product within which authorial trajectories are by no means clear. My paper will explore these questions with the tools of computational stylistics, establishng some points in early Shakespeare where single-authorial study is on firm ground and others where it must yield to other models of dramatic form and composition.

5. Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University (UK)
The Date and Authorship of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Two Gentleman of Verona is generally identified as one of the first plays, perhaps the very first, of Shakespeare’s career, and dated between 1585 and 1595 depending on just when one supposes that career began. This paper will survey the evidence for when Shakespeare started writing and consider Two Gentlemen‘s place among his first plays. Internal contradictions and inelegant passages have variously been attributed to dramatic immaturity, ‘stratification’ (that is, layers of authorial self-revision), and co-authorship. Computational stylistics will be used to reexamine the second and third of these possibilities as alternatives to the currently dominant first possibility.

6. MacDonald Jackson, University of Auckland (New Zealand)
Arden of Faversham and Shakespeare’s Early Collaborations

The Oxford William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (1986) presented 1 Henry VI, as by ‘Shakespeare and Others’ and the second edition (2005) added Titus Andronicus and Edward III to plays in which Shakespeare was a co-author. Evidence has since been accumulating that 2 and 3 Henry VI and Arden of Faversham belong to the same category. So ‘early Shakespeare’ is being redefined. Attribution of the middle scenes of Arden to Shakespeare is recent and contentious. But it can be strongly supported by analysis of how links with Arden are distributed within the five other putative collaborations. Shakespeare’s shares of all six plays have literary and dramatic qualities in common.

7. John Jowett, Shakespeare Institute (UK)
Reconstruction or Collaboration: The Case of Richard Duke of York

The title of this paper poses a false alternative in order to rebut it. Recent scholarship has proposed that 3 Henry VI is a collaborative play, and that it was revised by Shakespesare after he wrote R . Consequently the older hypothesis that the shorter and less Shakespearian 1595 Richard Duke of York is a memorial reconstruction looks vulnerable. This paper will agree that both versions are collaborative, and one them is revised. But it will reassert that Richard Duke of York is a derivative text with a tenuous line of transmission.

8. Andy Kesson, University of Kent (UK)
Early Shakespeare and the first generation of commercial theatre

Though we think of it as the period of Shakespeare’s early career, the late 1580s and early ’90s was also the period of the end of the first generation of commercial theatre-making. This paper will set out Shakespeare’s early work from the perspective of the theatre culture he joined, focusing in particular on contemporary controversies over performance, storytelling and authorship played out in the work of Greene, Lyly and the Queen’s Men repertory.

9. Rory Loughnane, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
Early Shakespeare, Late Peele

By 1594, when the first quarto of Titus Andronicus was published, George Peele (bap. 25 July, 1556) was at least 38 years old, some eight years Shakespeare’s senior. Peele, a Londoner and Oxford graduate, had been publishing regularly since the early 1580s. This paper considers what the identification of Peele as the author of the long opening scene of Titus Andronicus (at least) means for editing the play. As this scene has been traditionally edited, Shakespearean practices, linguistic and dramatic, rather than Peeleian, have informed editorial emendations. The paper will discuss several editorial cruxes, approaching the first scene anew with Peele’s corpus of writing in mind.

10. Anna Pruitt, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (USA)
The question of authorship and chronology in Act IV Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus

The uneven linguistic style of Titus Andronicus has made it difficult for scholars to fix a date for the play in Shakespeare’s early career. Stylistic elements have also served as evidence that Titus is co-authored, with most scholars identifying George Peele as the most likely candidate for the authorship of the play’s long opening scene and the possible author of Act IV Scene 1. By reassessing the authorship question for the latter scene, this paper will argue for the possibility that this scene bears traces of a different chronological layer of composition in Shakespeare’s text.

11. Peter Sillitoe, De Montfort University (UK)
Locating the Henry VI Plays: Spatial Dynamics in Early Shakespeare

This paper examines spatiality in the trilogy whilst employing the literary geography of London’s theatre industry to analyse the spaces of performance. Although critical theories of space have been usefully applied to large sections of the canon, little of this work has been undertaken on the early plays. Thus the paper addresses the spatial aspects of the plays, with numerous scenes taking place in battlefields and courts. At the same time, however, this research analyses how the uses of space in the plays during performance was influenced by the size of the playing companies and the dimensions of the venues.

12. Will Sharpe, Shakespeare Institute (UK)
Shakespeare’s Habits as a Collaborative Author

This paper will build on work I have undertaken in the Collaborative Plays volume as well as recent work on attribution and theatre history to reconsider Shakespeare as a collaborator in the early phase of his career, and how predominant a feature of his early writing it is. As the Henry VI plays continue to break apart, and with Martin Wiggins’ recent redating of The Two Gentlemen of Verona to 1594, I will consider the schematics of Shakespeare’s habits as a collaborative author, and argue that his early career is almost defined by collaboration to the same extent as his late.

13. Holger Schott Syme, University of Toronto (Canada)
Whose Shakespeare?

My paper considers the plays Shakespeare wrote before becoming a Chamberlain’s Man, and asks what happened to those scripts, why only some seem to have made it into the new company’s repertory, where those that did not may have ended up, and what a messier account of the fates of Shakespeare’s early works does for (or to) our traditional narratives of the development of London’s acting companies in the 1590s. I propose a reading of Shakespeare’s oeuvre that privileges the perspective of the companies for which the plays were written over the point of view constructed by the 1623 folio.

14. Gary Taylor, Florida State University (USA)
The Fly Scene in Titus

Attribution scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that the 1594 quarto text of Titus Andronicus was written by Shakespeare in collaboration with George Peele. In doing so, it has also convincingly demonstrated that Peele is not the author of the “fly scene”, which first appeared in print in the 1623 folio. But proving that Peele did not write the scene does not logically prove that Shakespeare did. This paper attempts to determine whether Shakespeare wrote the added scene, and if so when.