The State of Being Shakespearean

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:12:09 GMT

Rosenbaum's The Shakespeare Wars has made me think much about the over thinking of critics and analysts. As Rosenbaum points out, there is no evidence of anything in Shakespeare. We have various versions of the works, but nothing that ties him to them except his name.

That being said, I'm not going to dispute Shakespeare's authorship. I have every confidence that he wrote them. I see no value in an elaborate cover up, and such a cover up would probably have produced more evidence than reality has. What I want to talk about in this post is the issue of revisions and versions - not as a critic, but as a writer.

Not every reader knows that the Shakespeare being read is not the Shakespeare Shakespeare wrote. In the case of Lear and Hamlet, no one is even sure what he wrote - from stage directions to changed words to entire soliloquies missing or amended. If you want to read about the details, by Rosenbaum's fascinating book. The question among scholars is who, perhaps how, did these revisions come to be. Did Shakespeare guide his editors, did they work from his manuscripts, or did editors work to improve his work from the beginning - to make it clearer, and in that attempt, perhaps misinterpret the bard's intension's?

My sense is everything discussed in the book is true, but not in the binary-either-or way scholars establish as a way of differentiating their views from the views of others. It just isn't scholarly to have an opinion that all things are possible - one must stake out some innovative interpretation in order to shake the world, so to speak.

Well, I say BS to all of that. As a poet, I revise. Most poets I know revise. In the days of Shakespeare we do know for a fact that typesetters corrected (or introduced errors) during press runs, often one page at a time. I bet his pals Heminges and Condell couldn't resist tinkering. It isn't an either or, but an all of the above. Even if we find a manuscript in Shakespeare hand, I am unconvinced that it will answer the deep questions - because it will be a version, a point in time. It will be important but inconclusive - as it will not be the version actually acted, the version necessarily used as the final source for the quartos or folios (though it would certainly be clear if it was or not). But when we have two close versions, as in Lear and Hamlet, it will not be the definitive answer to the variations. Any one of the above actions - from those of Shakespeare editing himself, to incidentally introduced errors, could still account for the variations. All of the Shakespeares, may indeed be Shakespeares.

I have some poems that have dozens of variations. I pity any future grade student who would try to put my manuscripts in order, let alone know what I intended one day to the next. I like the approach to the new Arden Hamlet. Print it all and let the reader decide for themselves. In the end, it doesn't matter what an editor does to create some master that represents his or her well researched fantasy of what Shakespeare really wrote - all that matters is that the words move you - and if different words move different people in different ways - then so be it.

In the end of course, we must follow the Bard's advice:

...above all: to thine own self be true. - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).

The Future of Information Work: The Work of Literature

The State of Being Shakespearean