ePlay

EDITORIAL POLICY FOR THE TEXT, SPEECH HEADERS & STAGE DIRECTIONS

OUR STARTING POINT

As serious students of Shakespeare know there is no definitive text for any Shakespeare play.  The simple reason is that nothing, bar 170-odd lines Shakespeare contributed to a revision of Sir Thomas More, survives in Shakespeare's own hand.  Pick up any text of Shakespeare and it is as removed from the original in the same way one's distant family cousins are many times 'removed'.  Numerous hands have intervened between Shakespeare's original drafts (known as 'foul papers') and today.

Of his 38 plays, 18 survive only in the First Folio of 1623, the rest in combinations of the First Folio and Quartos.  Even the surviving First Folio editions vary as changes were made to each as they were printed.  Sometimes an edition corrected one error but generated another elsewhere.  The same problem occurs with the release of the Second, Third and Fourth Folios.  Accordingly, the Shakespeare text is a minefield.

LITERARY VERSUS PERFORMANCE

To further complicate matters most editors over the past 400 years have approached the text largely from a literary standpoint.  The repercussion has been twofold:

• a tendency to try to regularise everything and iron out 'kinks'.  In ironing out kinks, however, there is a view, particularly popular with standard-bearers for the First Folio, that the editors have carelessly steamrollered, starched and flattened invaluable performance-clues only visible in the original creases.  To this there is some truth.

• the use of literary punctuation rather than performance punctuation.  To simplify, literary punctuation tends to be more abrupt and staccato.  There is a greater preponderance of full-stops (periods) over subtler, free-flowing performance punctuation (colons, semi-colons, dashes) that permits longer and more nuanced thoughts - sometimes referred as 'garden-path sentences'.   For those readers unfamiliar with this English expression, visualise a meandering path through flowers and bushes that can head off in unexpected directions revealing new and arresting vistas.

THE INHERENT LIMITATIONS OF ANY TEXT

All editors must recognise, and that includes us, that as soon as we set down a passage of text it can be disputed.  There can be legitimate arguments over:

• the speech header (i.e. who actually is meant to speak a line)

• the choice of words in the text - which word(s) should the editor pick when the source texts conflict?

• the punctuation - even after allowing for the basic difference between literary and performance punctuation, the position or absence of even minor punctuation can drastically alter sense (consider the famous contemporary example by the author Lynne Truss: the panda "eats, shoots and leaves" [pistol-packing panda] or "eats shoots and leaves" [regular panda]

• whether the text is verse or prose - famously the second half of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech in Romeo & Juliet

• whether we should change 'false friends'.  False friends are words that look familiar to us today but whose meanings have flipped or significantly shifted, thus leading us to make wrong assumptions

• whether lines not in the designated 'copy-text' (the official name for the primary source chosen for a new edition of a play) but available in another recognised source should be incorporated and merged.  Some editions are purists and won't do this; others, no less scholarly, are more flexible

• entrances and exits - who, and how many, enter and leave; and thus who exactly is on stage at a given moment (this changes the on-stage dynamic)

• who is being addressed

• whether a speech is an aside or not; or it is whether somewhere in-between, i.e. musing out loud.

RESOLVING THIS CONUNDRUM

Versebuster's approach to these conundrums is to make it clear from the outset that actors and directors are invited to make whatever changes to the text they feel serves them best.  They know their target audience and the effect they want to achieve better than editors.  Laurence Olivier cannibalised the original text of Richard lll in his acclaimed film version; you can do the same if it serves your vision.  To assist you in this task we supply:

• informed options line-by-line in easy-to-follow ePlay notes

• printable theatre scripts with generous line spacing and plenty of white space all-round to make creative changes.

A FULL TEXT

We do not make any cuts.  No editor can anticipate a director’s vision; it must surely be preferable to let them decide what to include or exclude.  Accordingly the ePlays (and their matching theatre scripts) are the most comprehensive / fullest text for each play.

PUNCTUATION

Versebuster steers away from literary punctuation towards a performance punctuation which mainly entails:

• avoiding excessive use of full-stops (periods)

• deploying an imaginative range of intermediary punctuation – colons, semi-colons, dashes, parentheses – to ‘capture’ speech and better identify clauses in long speeches (First Folio punctuation can be helpful in this respect)

• favouring question marks rather than exclamation marks when either will serve the text (questions better engage the audience)

• reducing vocative commas

• delineating between direct questions and rhetorical questions by the simple expedient of using a lower case letter after a rhetorical question.  For instance: Where is thy head?  where’s that?

• delineating between an emphatic remark or statement and an exclamation by the simple expedient of using a lower case letter after an exclamation.  For instance: Oh my lord !  my lord !

STAGE DIRECTIONS

We highlight the many interesting stage-direction variants between the five editions we compare.  Notably, this means the entrances and exits, as who is present / absent, and even the placement of the entrance or exit, can substantially change the on-stage dynamics.

LINE SETTINGS

We highlight the many interesting line-setting variants between the five editions we compare.  Notably, whether a passage is prose or verse, and whether two or more lines shared lines are shared.

SPEECH HEADERS

We highlight the many interesting speech-header variants between the five editions we compare.  For instance, editors and directors often juggle who says what between the First Murderer and Second Murderer in Act 1.4 Richard lll (the Clarence malmsey-butt scene).  In Henry V editors have conflicting opinions about whether the Dauphin or the Duke of Bourbon is present at Agincourt.

'O' AND 'OH'

Most editors decide to have either just 'O's or 'Oh's.  We see no reason not to have both, as does the First Folio.  'O' is more exclamatory than 'Oh'.  When we edit we vocalise different permutations, cross-referencing with the First Folio.  It is, of course, a subjective exercise, but no less invalid for that.  We encourage you to change it in the script if you disagree with our choice.

PAST PARTICIPLES

In common with the better editions we differentiate between past participles where the –ed ending should be sounded and where it should not.  Occasionally we invite the actor to consider overriding a strict metrical reading to serve a creative purpose.

SCANSION AND ITS IMPACT ON ELISION & EXPANSION

Our scansion is based on the principles expounded by the American scholar George T. Wright in his classic work The Art of Scansion.

Our elisions and expansions flow from the principles Wright advances.  However:

• this is advisory; the actor and director is invited to use their discretion

• when the contraction is difficult to verbally execute, or it would not be understood by the audience, we suggest alternative approaches.

FALSE FRIENDS

On those occasions we word substitute ourselves, you are encouraged to check the original wording in the ePlay resource and change it back if our substitute is not to your taste.

CONFUSING ALLUSIONS

In a similar vein to ‘false friends’, occasionally there are confusing or misleading references to people and places.  Sometimes this can be remedied with a judicious substitution.  For instance, in Richard lll there is a puzzling reference to ‘Morton’.  Morton is, however, familiar to the audience as the Bishop of Ely from an earlier scene.  Fortunately the clarification ‘Ely’ is a perfect metrical fit.  

FEEDBACK

Is our editorial policy missing a vital component?  Is an explanation unclear?  We welcome suggestions as to how we can improve this page.  Please note, however:

• the ePlay DEMO should clarify most of the above, so please check this out first

• the current DEMO is based on an extract from Shakespeare's contribution to Sir Thomas More.  This 170-line contribution only appears in two Complete Works and in one dedicated Sir Thomas More edition by Arden, so only these three texts are compared line-by-line.  All other plays enjoy a more productive comparison of text from five editions - namely: Riverside, Penguin, Arden, Cambridge and Oxford.