SHAKSPER 2000: Re: Shakespeare's Publications

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 12/12/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2310  Tuesday, 11 December 2000

From:           Marcus Dahl <Marcusdahl@aol.com>
Date:           Tuesday, 12 Dec 2000 10:58:22 EST
Subject: 11.2251 Re: Shakespeare's Characters and Publications
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.2251 Re: Shakespeare's Characters and Publications

Given the recent discussion (re: S's association / responsibility for
the texts attributed to him) which seems to have stopped just before it
got past summary critiques of facts mere or otherwise I wondered what
the other SHAKSPERians textualists thought of this paragraph in a new
Lives of the Poets volume:

"When the First Folio of the complete plays was planned, Richard Field,
who had printed the bard's Venus and Adonis in 1593 and Lucrece in 1594,
stood aside because he didn't like the theatre (the audiences were so
unruly and the weather at times inclement); besides, he reflected, the
texts of the plays proposed were so corrupt that it would have been
dishonest to serve them up, it was not Shakespeare. So much for the
wages of integrity: the plays were served up, and he was not at table to
savour a portion of the profits. When I see the text of a Shakespeare
play I think of Richard Field, getting by on pamphlets and jobbing
printing, while a series of corruptions in the name of his friend the
poet spun out in an unstoppable circulation, to benefit his
competitors."

* Does anyone know the source of these "Richard Field" thoughts? The
passage seems to me to be a rather lovely but unlikely thought
experiment.

* Ps thanks to Erick Kelemen for his note on Anthony Tyrrell. I will
look him up.

Yours,
Marcus.


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