SHAKSPER 2002: Re: Authorial Intention

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 02/06/02 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0349  Wednesday, 6 February 2002

[1]     From:   Todd Lidh <tmlidh@hotmail.com>
        Date:   Tuesday, 5 Feb 2002 10:50:43 -0500
        Subj:   RE: SHK 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention

[2]     From:   Marcus Dahl <Marcusdahl@aol.com>
        Date:   Wednesday, 6 Feb 2002 06:22:38 EST
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Todd Lidh <tmlidh@hotmail.com>
Date:           Tuesday, 5 Feb 2002 10:50:43 -0500
Subject: 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention
Comment:        RE: SHK 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention

As 'luck' would have it, I am currently in the process of revamping my
master’s thesis into a book on this very subject. My working title of
the thesis, "Stage Directions as Narrative Voice in the Works of
Beckett, Miller and Shakespeare" hints at the theoretical stance I took.

The name I coined for the chapter on Shakespeare (after setting up the
pattern and importance of stage directions both parenthetical and within
the dialogue) was "internal stage directions" -- this versus the
"external stage directions" one finds inside parenthesis or in italics
in modern and classical dramatic texts.

I don't know if that term works for all people, but when I've explained
my thesis in brief, it seems to get the point across.

Todd M Lidh
Flagler College

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Marcus Dahl <Marcusdahl@aol.com>
Date:           Wednesday, 6 Feb 2002 06:22:38 EST
Subject: 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0318 Re: Authorial Intention

I'm sorry but this thread is as usual going in precisely the opposite
direction to my cautionary note. Take The Taming of The Shrew for
example.  Read any decent edition of the play (better still just read
the unedited Folio) and you will see how often 'Shakespeare' or anyone
else concerned with printing the play forgot or omitted Stage
directions, or in fact confused the titles of character entrances /
exits / speech headings etc. All the way through the (often taken to be)
authoritative Folio these omissions (which cause confusion as much in
the reader as for the 'prompter') occur. The possible reasons for these
omissions are multiple:

(1) Shakespeare didn't bother too much with extensive stage directions
(compare the so-called actorly quartos with the so-called authoritative
folio - quartos "usually" have longer SD's - but not always...)

(2) Shakespeare was careless about Stage directions leaving scribes,
compositors etc in doubt as to the correct interpretation of his
'original' text.

(3) Shakespeare was careful but no one else was... etc

Please just keep looking at unedited texts...I mean even the folio-only
Macbeth is supposedly 'promptbook' (because of various supposedly
Middletonian interventions) yet the text itself is almost fully divided
into acts and scenes (indicative of printing house rather than stage),
omits in the main to identify Lady Macbeth as anything other than 'Lady'
or 'Macbeth's Wife' (vague by modern standards); the text includes many
mislineations which look too influenced by compositorial
laziness/necessity to be purely actorly while bit part actors arrive
unannounced and asides are unmarked. The list is complex and pulls in
different directions. Whilst the act and scene division is unlikely to
be authorial, some of the internal markings of scene and place set with
dialogue of the kind previously discussed occur ambiguously: e.g.
"...Ring the Bell./Bell rings. Enter Lady.'  All one stage direction, or
a character command and additional stage direction? Could we ever be
sure?

Yours in complexity of textual ambiguity (oh for the loss of Empson)

Marcus

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