NEW DIRECTIONS IN EDITING RENAISSANCE DRAMA: READING, PERFORMANCE, AND THE DIGITAL AGE A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Margaret E. Uttke Peter Holland, Director Graduate Program in English Notre Dame, Indiana April 2008 © Copyright 2008 Margaret E. Uttke NEW DIRECTIONS IN EDITING RENAISSANCE DRAMA: READING, PERFORMANCE, AND THE DIGITAL AGE Abstract by Margaret E. Uttke While Renaissance dramatists like Middleton have long stood in the shadow of Shakespeare’s modern editorial presence, new critical spotlights have focused on the dearth of editions and neglected editorial consideration for Shakespeare’s contemporaries, spurred by projects like the recently released Oxford Thomas Middleton. In this thesis, I examine current editorial trends and interpretations informing critical editions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, acknowledging the continued impact of Shakespearean editing on the larger field of textual criticism. This examination also extends to the new realm for editions of Renaissance drama – electronic editions and hypertext. Ultimately, I argue that, while electronic editions offer new, exciting methods for editorial representation unavailable in codex form, editors must carefully consider the implications of readers as “critical performers” of these new editions, as well as effective usage of digital media to enhance and promote better understanding of performance- friendly, accessible texts highlighting collaboration between Shakespeare and his contemporaries. This is for my classmates in a long ago undergraduate seminar on Renaissance Drama – I owe my obsession with Thomas Middleton all to you, my fellow Revenger’s Tragedy enthusiasts. ii CONTENTS Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Overview .......................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Considering Shakespeare with his Contemporaries in Editorial Theory ....... 5 1.3. Argument and Chapter Summaries ................................................................ 9 Chapter 2: Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the history of editing ........................ 14 2.1. Background on Renaissance Dramatists ........................................................ 14 2.2. A Brief History of Editorial Theory and Shakespeare’s Looming Presence . 23 2.3. Editorial Concerns and ‘Hot Topics’ for Renaissance Drama ....................... 31 Chapter 3: Current major projects of Non-Shakespearean editing ................................... 42 3.1. Overview ........................................................................................................ 42 3.2. The Revels Plays and Arden Series ............................................................... 43 3.3. Cambridge Ben Jonson ..................................................................................46 3.4. Oxford Thomas Middleton ............................................................................. 51 3.5. Summary ........................................................................................................ 57 Chapter 4: The Future of early modern drama editions .................................................... 59 4.1. Editing in the Digital Age .............................................................................. 59 4.2. Overview of Electronic Editorial Theory ...................................................... 61 4.3. Definition of an Electronic Edition ................................................................ 63 4.4. Benefits to an Electronic Edition of Renaissance Drama .............................. 67 4.5. Disadvantages to an Electronic Edition of Renaissance Drama .................... 73 4.6. Shakespeare Digitized .................................................................................... 74 4.6.1. Summary Observations ......................................................................... 86 4.7. Shakespeare’s Contemporaries Digitized ...................................................... 87 4.7.1. Beaumont & Fletcher ............................................................................ 88 4.7.2. Marlowe ................................................................................................ 92 4.7.3. Cleary’s Thomas Middleton ..................................................................97 4.7.4. Digital Companions to Cambridge Jonson and Oxford Middleton .......99 4.7.5. Digital Renaissance Editions – Hypermedia Archive ........................ 103 4.7.6. Luminarium Editions – Hypermedia Archive ..................................... 104 4.7.7. Suggestions for a Future Hypertext Edition ........................................ 108 iii 4.8. Summary ...................................................................................................... 116 Chapter 5: Conclusion..................................................................................................... 121 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 127 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to first and foremost acknowledge my husband’s support throughout the completion of this project. He put up with many late hour musings on Renaissance drama and electronic editions with good humor. Thanks to the support from the English Department at Notre Dame for allowing me the time needed to complete this project. I would also like to thank my advisor, Peter Holland, without whose patience, advice and understanding this work would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank Gretchen Minton for instilling a love of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in me early on in my academic career. She has been a true friend and mentor to a young scholar, and I would never have delved into the fascinating world of editing without her prompting. v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Overview What is the editor, but the unrepresentable other of the author? - Gary Taylor1 What do readers do when they usually look at a text? They examine the text for its interpretive meanings, its metaphors, symbols and its form. They might comment upon its aesthetic beauty, or try to derive some new meaning of the work through a Marxist reading, or look at its historical sources or cultural influences. But, do they ever think about the marks on the page and how these markings shape the meaning of the text—how features such as punctuation, footnotes, titles, white space, and editorial annotations contribute to the text’s meaning? G. Thomas Tanselle, a well-known textual theorist, once observed that “every act of reading is in fact an act of critical editing: we often call critical essays ‘readings,’ and critical editions are also the records of readings.”2 So, 1 Andrew Murphy, “ ‘To Ferret Out Any Hidden Corruption’: Shakespearean Editorial Metaphors,” Text 10 (1997): 202. 2 G. Thomas Tanselle, “Textual Criticism at the Millennium,” Studies in Bibliography 54 (2001): 1-80. A disciple of the Fredson Bowers school of critical editing, Tanselle publishes a review of the past half decade of important textual scholarship every five years, fending off attacks against the theory of copy- text editing while also providing a more flexible description of the critical edition than his theoretical predecessors – Fredson Bowers and W.W. Gregg. 1 while the typical reader might be ‘editing’ the text through observations on the historically-charged political implications for a play like Thomas Middleton’s Revenger’s Tragedy (staged in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot),3 critical editors are also “reading” the text – they are scrutinizing it for the phenomena of literary production that typical readers might ignore in their literary interpretations: interesting cruxes and problematic moments in the genesis, production and variation of documents and texts.4 Editors think about items such as: what punctuation mark is indicated obscurely here in the manuscript? What could the author possibly have meant to write? Could this be a slip of the pen? What could the compositor’s copy have read given that the sense in the printed document is faulty here?5 Editors are faced with decisions such as which reading to use as the ‘base text’ for Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus when text A and text B present different readings of the same passage, which of the eight variant readings of Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess to relegate to the apparatus (appendices, commentary, etc.), and which to entirely disregard, as well as whether they should emend (or not to emend) the original spelling and punctuation of Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Further, they have to consider what type of edition they are going to create – whether it 3 First staged in 1606-7 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, the Catholic conspiracy of 1605 to blow up the King and Parliament, which was justified by claims that King James was a heretical tyrant. The Revenger’s Tragedy contains a particularly sensitive and politically charged subject matter relevant to this historical event, depicting the problem revenge represents for public order when Vindice, the main protagonist, kills an immoral and licentious monarch on the basis of exposing the corruption of his social