The Review of English Studies Advance Access published online on September 16, 2009
The Review of English Studies, doi:10.1093/res/hgp062
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press 2009; all rights reserved
Performance as ‘Punctuation’: Editing Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
Simon Fraser University
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Abstract |
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Discussions of Shakespeare’s earliest editors tend to focus on their textual manipulations and emendatory strategies, with less attention paid to their engagements with performed modes of dramatic realisation. Without denying their disproportionate interest in Poem over Play, this article demonstrates how the influential editions of Rowe, Pope, Theobald and Capell—which often display a lack of concern with or even explicit dismissal of performance practice—formulated the dynamic relationship shared by page and stage. That representations of performance potentialities in early critical editions ranged so widely—from excision and marginalisation of what were deemed to be theatrical interpolations, to esoteric symbols meant to encode staged action into the text—indicates that from the outset, editorial engagements with Shakespeare involved utilising the manipulable space of the page to configure some sort of harmony between text and performance, a process that greatly impacts a reader’s ability to navigate the resonant space between mise en page and mise en scène.