Shakespeare's Errant Texts
Textual Form and Linguistic Style in Shakespearean 'Bad' Quartos and Co-authored Plays

Using case studies of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus, this book examines what constitutes a 'Shakespearean text'.

Lene B. Petersen (Author)

9780521765220, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 June 2010

332 pages, 4 b/w illus. 16 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.61 kg

'The question of the provenance of [Shakespeare's] foreshortened variant texts has puzzled scholars and editors for centuries and Lene B. Petersen's engaging and compelling new book offers a novel way of thinking about them … this is a fascinating and provocative book.' Around the Globe

If more than half of Shakespeare's texts survive in more than one version, and an increasing number of his texts appear to have been co-authored with other playwrights, how do we define what constitutes a 'Shakespearean text'? Recent studies have proposed answers to this crucial question by investigating 'memorial reconstruction' and co-authorship, yet significantly they have not yet considered properly the many formal and stylistic synergies, interchanges and reciprocities between oral/memorial and authorial composition, and the extent to which these factors are traceable in the surviving playtexts of the period. It is precisely these synergies that this book investigates, making this site of interaction between actorly and authorial input its primary focus. Petersen proposes new quantitative methodologies for approaching form and style in Shakespearean texts. The book's main case studies are Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus - plays drawn from the middle of Shakespeare's working career.

Foreword
Prologue
Part I. Oral-Memorial Transmission and the Formation of Shakespeare's Texts: 1. The Elizabethan dramatic industry and industrious Shakespeare
2. Decomposing the text: oral transmission and the theory of the Zielform
3. The popular play and the popular ballad: evidence of 'Quarto mechanics' in the multiple texts of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet
Conclusion Part I
Part II. Recomposing the Author: Some Tools for Positioning the Role of the Playwright in Dramatic Transmission: 4. Introduction to quantitative textual analysis: computational stylistics, cognition and the missing author
5. Stylometry and textual multiplicity I: contextual stylistics and the case of Titus Andronicus
6. Stylometry and textual multiplicity II: testing the grading between authorship and 'orality' in the scenes of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet
Conclusion Part II: evaluating the experiment
Epilogue
Appendix I. Scenic units in Q1 Hamlet/Der Bestrafte Brudermord and Romeo and Juliet/Romio und Julietta
Appendix II. 'Meet it is I set it downe': verbal evidence of Quarto mechanics in the short versions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet
Appendix III. Chapter 4: table of results for 257-Plays DA, using 50 principal components
Appendix IV. Examples of principal component screen plots for three-text Hamlet by scenes and three-text Romeo and Juliet by scenes only
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Literature & literary studies [D]