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Abbreviations Titles of Shakespeare's Plays Are Abbreviated As in the SQ Notes Abbreviations Titles of Shakespeare's plays are abbreviated as in the SQ Annotated World Bibliography, except that the name Lear is given in its full form. Periodicals are referred to by standard or perspi- cuous abbreviations, but the following may be noted: Cahiers: Cahiers elisabethains ES: English Studies SS: Shakespeare Survey SSt: Shakespeare Studies SAS stands for Straiford-upon-Avon Studies; and Sources for Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, I-VIII (1957-75). Modern editions of Shakespeare's plays are referred to as follows: Arden: The Arden Shakespeare, new series inaugurated in 1951. Cam.: The New Shakespeare edited by Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch and John Dover Wilson. New Cam.: The New Cambridge Shakespeare inaugurated in 1984. Oxf.: The Oxford Shakespeare inaugurated in 1982. INTRODUCTION I. William Web be, A Discourse of English Poetrie ( 1586), quoted from G. Gregory Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, vol. I (1904) p.249. See also E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, vol. II (1903) p.209. 2. Margeson, The Origins of English Tragedy (1967) pp. 82, 72. See also Clifford Leech, Shakespeare's Tragedies (1965) p.27. It has to be emphasised that 'tragedy' did not necessarily mean drama. 216 Notes to pp. 2 -7 217 3. See also Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (1977) pp. 51-7. 4. Dessen, Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays (1986) pp. 134-5. 5. See T. W. Baldwin, Shakspere's Five-Act Structure (1947, 1963), chs. I-XVI; and Smidt, Unconformities in Shakespeare's Early Comedies (1986) pp. 4-7. 6. See M. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy ( 1935, 1966) pp.54-66. 7. Baldwin, op. cit., pp.545, 573. 8. Jones, op. cit., pp.3-20, 85-107. 9. Shakespeare's general familiarity with neoclassical critical doctrine can only be inferred, but there are some clues in his plays. Hamlet sees the play as an art of imitation ('the mirror up to nature'), the Prologue in Tro. speaks of 'beginning in the middle', and the word 'catastrophe' is used several times in a technical sense (LLL IV.i.77, AWW I.ii.57, Lear I.ii.l34). Choruses, prologues and epilogues occur in a group of early plays (Rom., 2H4, H5) and a group of late plays (Per., WT, HB, TNK). 10. Jones thinks Tit. was imitated from Euripides; see Jones, op. cit., pp.90-107. 11. Margeson, op. cit., pp.59-66; quotation from p.59. See also A. R. Braunmuller, 'Early Shakespearian Tragedy and its Contemporary Context' in Shakespearian Tragedy, SAS 20 (1984) p.109. 12. Bevington, 'Shakespeare the Elizabethan Dramatist', in K. Muir and S. Schoenbaum (eds), A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies (1971) p. 130. See also Jones, op. cit., p.4. Bradbrook adds 'Bale's King Johan and perhaps The Troublesome Reigne, Tarlton's play on Henry V, and almost certainly some Peele' to Bevington's list (The Living Monument, 1976, p. 39). 13. See Jones, op. cit., pp. 51-7; Bradbrook, The Living Monument, p.19, and Shakespeare the Craftsman (1969) pp.l3-15. 14. Gorboduc, in 1565, was The Tragedie of Gorboduc; in 1569 was printed A Lamentable Tragedie mixed full of Plesant Mirth, Containing the Life of Cambises [etc.]. Meres lists R2, R3, H4, Jn., Tit., and Rom. as tragedies which may compare with Seneca. 15. Bradbrook, The Living Monument, p. 25. 16. Margeson, op. cit., p. 65. 17. Bevington, op. cit., p. 139. 18. Leech, Shakespeare's Tragedies, pp. 42-3. 19. I refer particularly to Horatio's words to the dying Prince: 'Good night, sweet prince, I And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.' Rene E. Fortin finds a very ambivalent metaphysical attitude in the last act of Ham.: 'Even the redeemed Hamlet who returns from his sea voyage to speak so confidently of a special providence, of a heaven ordinant in his good fortune, cannot be comfortably accepted by the audience. For it is possible to interpret his quietism 218 Notes to pp. 7-12 as a submission to pagan fatalism rather than the will of God' ('Shakespearean Tragedy and the Problem ofTranscendence', SSt, VII, 1974, p.313. 20. See john Lawlor, The Tragic Sense in Shakespeare (1960) chs. III-IV. 21. Newton, 'Hamlet and Shakespeare's disposition for comedy', Cambr. Qu. 9.1 ( 1979), [39]-55. 22. Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions, pp. 4-5. 23. Ibid., pp. 30, 37, 39. 24. Bradbrook, The Living Monument, pp. 40-3. 25. 'I -like most scholars- believe that Shakespeare revised during the course of composition: which is no more than to say that he did not totally and finally compose his plays in his head before putting pen to paper' (Stanley Wells in a letter to the TLS, 8 Feb. 1985). 26. How conservative I am may be seen by comparing my analyses with the audacious hypothetical reconstructions of two of Shake- speare's plays published by Professor Daniel Amneus: The Mystery of Macbeth (1983) and The Three Othellos (1986). 27. See especially Gary Taylor and Michael Warren (eds), The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare's Two Versions of 'King Lear' (1983). 28. 'Some plays ... survive in a printed text which is unperformable without titivation, which it doubtless received.' (Stanley Wells in TLS, 8 Feb. 1985). 29. Empson, 'Falstaff and Mr. Dover Wilson', Kenyon Rev., XV.2 ( 1953) pp. 220-3. 30. Without necessarily endorsing Charles Lamb's view in 'The Tragedies of Shakspeare' one may to some extent sympathise: It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare are less calculated for performance on a stage, than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is a reason that they should be so. It is amusing to see that Anthony Brennan, after saying in the Preface to his book on Shakespeare's Dramatic Structures ( 1986) that he 'cannot sympathize with the critic who prefers to confine himself to the ideal productions he can work up in his own mind' (p.viii), goes on in the Introduction to complain of the frequent maltreatment of Shakespeare's plays at the hands of directors and actors who for three hundred years and more 'have undertaken every possible strategy in seeking to avoid failure' (p.3). 31. A typical statement of the latter view by a major Shakespearean is that of Clifford Leech in Shakespeare's Tragedies, pp. 96-8: 'Shakespeare, formerly an actor and still a house-keeper, aimed at and achieved a unity of impression in the theatre: it would not have occurred to him that minor contradictions, unnoticeable in the theatre, had any importance whatever.' Notes to pp. 13-16 219 32. See, for example, Oliver's discussion in the Arden Introduction, pp. xl-xlii. It is hardly possible to tell where Tim. would have been placed in F if it had not been requisitioned out of turn to fill the gap left by the postponement of Tro. As it is, Tim. is coupled illogically with Rom. For it does look as if the editors had a logical pairing in mind when arranging the order of the tragedies; thus: Coriolanus two great Roman military heroes Titus disowned by the state Romeo Troilus } young love Julius Caesar } . "d Macbeth regiCI e Hamlet Lear } Northern chronicles, madness Othello Antony } African lovers 33. Unless, of course, he did complete it and the manuscript disap- peared or was unavailablt to Heminge and Condell. This theory has been suggested by E. A. ]. Honigmann, see p.l97 2 LOPPED LIMBS AND CHOPPED PURPOSES l. Wilson, 'An Essay in Literary Detection' (1948), pp. xxv, xxxvii. 2. Ibid., pp. xii, li. 3. Evans, Shakespeare's Tragic Practice (1979) pp. l-21. Another severe critic is Larry S. Champion in Shakespeare's Tragic Perspective ( 1976) pp. 8--26. 4. A similar repetition is to be found in the Clown episode in IV.iii. This is admirably dealt with by E. M. W aith in his Oxford edition of Tit. ( 1984) Appendix E. There is also a certain amount of confusion in the speeches of Marcus and Lucius at V.iii.67-ll9. Maxwell notes that 'Alarbus and Mutius are both absent from the seventeeth-century Dutch and German versions which are in some way derived from Titus' (Arden Tit., p.xxix, n.). For a theory connecting interpolations with innovations in playhouse architec- ture, seeJ. C. Adams, 'Shakespeare's Revisions in Titus Andronicus', SQ, XV.2 (1964), [177]-90. 5. See, for example, A. Sommers, ' "Wilderness of Tigers": Structure and Symbolism in Titus Andronicus', EC X.3 (1960) 275--89; Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeare's Early Tragedies (1968, 1973) pp. 24, 44;]. Pearson, 'Romans and Barbarians: The Structure of Irony in 220 Notes to pp. 17-23 Shakespeare's Roman Tragedies', in Shakespearian Tragedy, SAS 20 (1984) pp. [159)-82. 6. Dessen, Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays ( 1986). 7. See my Unconformities in Shakespeare's Early Comedies ( 1986) pp. 94-108. 8. See Brooke, op. cit., pp. 15--19. 9. The eighteenth-century chapbook which is thought to represent a main source of the play says in ch. VI: 'Andronicus, upon these Calamities, feigned himself distracted, and went raving about the City ... ' See Sources, VI, p. 43. 10. A. L. and M. K. Kistner, however, think 'the intention of portraying Titus mad is clear' and that Shakespeare conforms to a Senecan pattern; see 'The Senecan Background of Despair in The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus', SSt, VII (1974) pp. 1-9. Champion finds serious fault with the portrayal of Titus. 'The thrust of the play,' he says, 'is toward some final and climactic development in the character of Titus', but What Shakespeare provides is the very conclusion the structure will not support- the sudden and (from the perspective of the audience) absolutely unanticipated emergence of Titus as a sophisticated revenger outwitting his adversaries at their own game.
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