Simon Jarvis
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182955
- eISBN:
- 9780191673924
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182955.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Lewis Theobald's own edition of William Shakespeare has received almost unanimous approval from subsequent, and especially from twentieth-century, historians of the subject. T. R. Lounsbury's lengthy ...
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Lewis Theobald's own edition of William Shakespeare has received almost unanimous approval from subsequent, and especially from twentieth-century, historians of the subject. T. R. Lounsbury's lengthy defence of Theobald in The First Editors of Shakespeare was followed by R. F. Jones's Lewis Theobald, which first made clear the extent of Theobald's indebtedness to the textual-critical techniques of classical philology; later, more general surveys of the field, such as those of R. B. McKerrow and Brian Vickers, have singled out Theobald's criticism for praise; most recently, Peter Scary's full-length book has made an extensive and thoroughly documented case for Theobald's attention to Shakespearian bibliography and for his anticipation of the methods and tenets of the New Bibliographers. It is evident that much of Theobald's theory and practice mark a significant break with the previous course of criticism of English texts.Less
Lewis Theobald's own edition of William Shakespeare has received almost unanimous approval from subsequent, and especially from twentieth-century, historians of the subject. T. R. Lounsbury's lengthy defence of Theobald in The First Editors of Shakespeare was followed by R. F. Jones's Lewis Theobald, which first made clear the extent of Theobald's indebtedness to the textual-critical techniques of classical philology; later, more general surveys of the field, such as those of R. B. McKerrow and Brian Vickers, have singled out Theobald's criticism for praise; most recently, Peter Scary's full-length book has made an extensive and thoroughly documented case for Theobald's attention to Shakespearian bibliography and for his anticipation of the methods and tenets of the New Bibliographers. It is evident that much of Theobald's theory and practice mark a significant break with the previous course of criticism of English texts.
Edmund G. C. King
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter revisits the question of why Double Falsehood/Cardenio never became part of the Shakespeare canon. Looking at the reception of Double Falsehood in the late 1720s, it argues that the play ...
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This chapter revisits the question of why Double Falsehood/Cardenio never became part of the Shakespeare canon. Looking at the reception of Double Falsehood in the late 1720s, it argues that the play surfaced at a particularly fraught moment in the history of editorial scholarship in England. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, collected editions of authors’ works tended to be inclusive: successive editions were puffed according to how many ‘new’ works they added to their authors’ canons. Starting with Alexander Pope, however, eighteenth-century Shakespeare editors began to distinguish themselves according to their connoisseurship, their ability to separate genuine works from the spurious. In the dispute between Pope and Lewis Theobald over the play’s authenticity, this chapter argues, Double Falsehood became a ‘test case’ for this new, sceptical approach to canon formation, a process that had unfortunately drastic and conclusive results for the play itself.Less
This chapter revisits the question of why Double Falsehood/Cardenio never became part of the Shakespeare canon. Looking at the reception of Double Falsehood in the late 1720s, it argues that the play surfaced at a particularly fraught moment in the history of editorial scholarship in England. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, collected editions of authors’ works tended to be inclusive: successive editions were puffed according to how many ‘new’ works they added to their authors’ canons. Starting with Alexander Pope, however, eighteenth-century Shakespeare editors began to distinguish themselves according to their connoisseurship, their ability to separate genuine works from the spurious. In the dispute between Pope and Lewis Theobald over the play’s authenticity, this chapter argues, Double Falsehood became a ‘test case’ for this new, sceptical approach to canon formation, a process that had unfortunately drastic and conclusive results for the play itself.
Ivan Lupić
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter discusses the marginal notes Edmond Malone made in his copy of the second issue of the 1728 edition of Double Falsehood. Malone’s observations are placed in the context of other ...
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This chapter discusses the marginal notes Edmond Malone made in his copy of the second issue of the 1728 edition of Double Falsehood. Malone’s observations are placed in the context of other eighteenth-century attempts to understand the relationship between Theobald’s play and (The History of) Cardenio, especially those of Isaac Reed and George Steevens, hitherto neglected by scholars. New information on the fate of the surviving external evidence relating to Double Falsehood and Cardenio is presented and interpreted within the larger framework of eighteenth-century attribution studies. The insights gained from this act of historical recovery are then brought to bear on the current discussion of Shakespeare’s collaborative plays.Less
This chapter discusses the marginal notes Edmond Malone made in his copy of the second issue of the 1728 edition of Double Falsehood. Malone’s observations are placed in the context of other eighteenth-century attempts to understand the relationship between Theobald’s play and (The History of) Cardenio, especially those of Isaac Reed and George Steevens, hitherto neglected by scholars. New information on the fate of the surviving external evidence relating to Double Falsehood and Cardenio is presented and interpreted within the larger framework of eighteenth-century attribution studies. The insights gained from this act of historical recovery are then brought to bear on the current discussion of Shakespeare’s collaborative plays.
Brean Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter considers the reaction to the publication, in March 2010, of the Arden edition of Double Falsehood. It takes into account discussion in the press and in the ‘blogosphere’, as well as ...
More
This chapter considers the reaction to the publication, in March 2010, of the Arden edition of Double Falsehood. It takes into account discussion in the press and in the ‘blogosphere’, as well as academic reviews that have so far appeared, and considers what controversies have been generated, what new knowledge has been gained, and what are the principal unanswered questions in the wake of this publication. The chapter offers some speculative answers to some of those questions.Less
This chapter considers the reaction to the publication, in March 2010, of the Arden edition of Double Falsehood. It takes into account discussion in the press and in the ‘blogosphere’, as well as academic reviews that have so far appeared, and considers what controversies have been generated, what new knowledge has been gained, and what are the principal unanswered questions in the wake of this publication. The chapter offers some speculative answers to some of those questions.
Simon Jarvis
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182955
- eISBN:
- 9780191673924
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182955.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The relationship between eighteenth-century Shakespearian textual criticism and its classical and scriptural relatives has sometimes been approached from a rather misleading angle. Some attention has ...
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The relationship between eighteenth-century Shakespearian textual criticism and its classical and scriptural relatives has sometimes been approached from a rather misleading angle. Some attention has been paid to the derivation of early Shakespearian editorial procedures from classical scholarship. The need to understand attitudes towards the re-editing of vernacular texts in the context of attitudes towards classical and scriptural editing is clear, if only because scholars working on English texts so often compared Shakespearian textual criticism to its classical and scriptural counterparts. Lewis Theobald expressed the hope that the editing of English texts might render the same service to the English language that classical textual criticism had performed for standards of Greek and Latin, and declared his intention of modelling his edition of William Shakespeare on Richard Bentley's Amsterdam edition of Horace.Less
The relationship between eighteenth-century Shakespearian textual criticism and its classical and scriptural relatives has sometimes been approached from a rather misleading angle. Some attention has been paid to the derivation of early Shakespearian editorial procedures from classical scholarship. The need to understand attitudes towards the re-editing of vernacular texts in the context of attitudes towards classical and scriptural editing is clear, if only because scholars working on English texts so often compared Shakespearian textual criticism to its classical and scriptural counterparts. Lewis Theobald expressed the hope that the editing of English texts might render the same service to the English language that classical textual criticism had performed for standards of Greek and Latin, and declared his intention of modelling his edition of William Shakespeare on Richard Bentley's Amsterdam edition of Horace.
Lori Leigh
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter examines the cross-dressing role for the female character Violante in Double Falsehood, based on episodes in Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, and asks whether this heroine’s theatrical ...
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This chapter examines the cross-dressing role for the female character Violante in Double Falsehood, based on episodes in Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, and asks whether this heroine’s theatrical transvestism may tie the early eighteenth-century version to its Jacobean source, the lost Shakespeare and Fletcher play Cardenio. The chapter examines the efficacy of Violante’s male disguise in both Shakespeare and Fletcher’s work and Theobald’s — efficacy with regards to successful deception, but also as a protective tool. Enveloping these questions is the broader question of gender and its relation to power. The question of Violante’s rape (or seduction) and subsequent attempted rape is central: in particular, the fascinating sequence in which Violante as a transvestite confronts her rapist and accuses him of ‘bobbing’ her, not as a woman — but as a boy.Less
This chapter examines the cross-dressing role for the female character Violante in Double Falsehood, based on episodes in Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, and asks whether this heroine’s theatrical transvestism may tie the early eighteenth-century version to its Jacobean source, the lost Shakespeare and Fletcher play Cardenio. The chapter examines the efficacy of Violante’s male disguise in both Shakespeare and Fletcher’s work and Theobald’s — efficacy with regards to successful deception, but also as a protective tool. Enveloping these questions is the broader question of gender and its relation to power. The question of Violante’s rape (or seduction) and subsequent attempted rape is central: in particular, the fascinating sequence in which Violante as a transvestite confronts her rapist and accuses him of ‘bobbing’ her, not as a woman — but as a boy.
Simon Jarvis
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182955
- eISBN:
- 9780191673924
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182955.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Lewis Theobald remarked, only half ironically, that Shakespeare's text was sufficiently corrupt for him to stand ‘in the Nature of a Classic Writer’, and hoped that what classical textual critics had ...
More
Lewis Theobald remarked, only half ironically, that Shakespeare's text was sufficiently corrupt for him to stand ‘in the Nature of a Classic Writer’, and hoped that what classical textual critics had done for contemporary standards in Greek and Latin might be done by editors of William Shakespeare for English. John Barrell's account of eighteenth-century grammars and dictionaries has argued that their authors and editors relied on an idea of a community of polite speakers and writers of the language which was closely modelled on the community of the electorally enfranchised. Many of those who were to argue for this conception of the language, however, were themselves not propertied gentlemen but professional writers or scholars; and the same applied to editors of Shakespeare. Alexander Pope's view of Shakespeare, and of the state of Shakespeare's text, is decisively influenced by an idea of just taste and language as disinterestedly gentlemanly.Less
Lewis Theobald remarked, only half ironically, that Shakespeare's text was sufficiently corrupt for him to stand ‘in the Nature of a Classic Writer’, and hoped that what classical textual critics had done for contemporary standards in Greek and Latin might be done by editors of William Shakespeare for English. John Barrell's account of eighteenth-century grammars and dictionaries has argued that their authors and editors relied on an idea of a community of polite speakers and writers of the language which was closely modelled on the community of the electorally enfranchised. Many of those who were to argue for this conception of the language, however, were themselves not propertied gentlemen but professional writers or scholars; and the same applied to editors of Shakespeare. Alexander Pope's view of Shakespeare, and of the state of Shakespeare's text, is decisively influenced by an idea of just taste and language as disinterestedly gentlemanly.
