• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Deceitful Plays"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Season 3 of "Slings and Arrows""
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2034  Friday, 9 December 2005

From: 		Al Magary <al@magary.com>
Date: 		Friday, 09 Dec 2005 01:34:42 -0800
Subject: 	Where's the Arden Edward III?

Michael Best wrote (in Re: SHK 16.2005 The Internet Shakespeare Editions):

 >_Edward III_ ...is in the process of being edited for the ISE by
 >Sonia Massai and will in due course appear alongside other fully 
edited texts.

This reminds me to ask whatever happened to the apparently announced 
Arden Shakespeare edition of _Edward III_ that seemed to endorse the 
play as the Bard's work.

BBC News had a 1998 story 
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/182023.stm) that said, in part:

  A play about Edward III, written 400 years ago, has been officially 
recognised as a 'lost' work of William Shakespeare .

The text will be included in the new Arden Shakespeare series, regarded 
by scholars as the closest to a definitive version of the Shakespeare canon.

They believe that the play was a collaborative effort by a group of 
playwrights, but that Shakespeare may have taken charge at a late stage 
of the writing.

This reappraisal was prompted by an American computer analysis of the 
text which compared the play's vocabulary to that of Shakespeare's known 
works....

"The computer has been a great help. The Arden text will give authority 
to the accumulating strength of opinion that Edward III is significantly 
Shakespearean," said Professor Richard Proudfoot, senior editor at Arden.

The official acceptance comes as welcome news to Eric Sams, a retired 
civil servant and amateur literary scholar who put the case for the 
Bard's authorship in his book Shakespeare's Edward III, published in 1996.

The book was poorly received by academics, with one review dismissing 
Sams as "a particularly pesky gnat, raging at orthodoxy with all the 
passion of the outcast Lear - as yet to equally forlorn effect."...

In 1904 it appeared in a list of 14 plays possibly by the Bard, but this 
is the first time it has been recognised by the official arbiters of 
Shakespeare's literary legacy.

There were several SHAKSPER posts about this announcement in 1998, 
thread beginning at http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1998/1091.html and 
resuming at http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1998/0936.html

A substantial list of E3 resources was posted by W.L. Godshalk: 
http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1998/1108.html

But I find nothing about any E3 edition at the Arden website: 
http://www.ardenshakespeare.com/   Perhaps it is to be included in the 
separate Early Modern Drama series set for 2009? 
http://www.ardenshakespeare.com/catalogue/result.aspx?SearchBy=Category&Category=Arden+Early+Modern+Drama

BTW the Arden series was started in the 19th century by Methuen and is 
now published by Thomson; the third set of Sh. eds. is underway. 
Richard Proudfoot (quoted by the BBC in 1998) is still one of the three 
general editors, the other two being Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan.

Cheers,
Al Magary

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the 
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the 
editor assumes no responsibility for them.

• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "Deceitful Plays"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Season 3 of "Slings and Arrows""
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]