Partial Knowledge: Contingencies of Editing Shakespeare

The UHM Department of English Colloquium Series

Presents...

A talk by Professor Valerie Wayne, "Partial Knowledge: Contingencies of Editing Shakespeare"

When the Oxford Shakespeare was published in 1986, its two versions of King Lear showed how strongly editions of plays could be affected by what happened on the early modern stage, because the two texts represented different performances. Plays came to be perceived as performance-related texts. Then in 2003, Lucas Erne countered centuries of opinion to argue that Shakespeare was also a "literary" playwright who gave careful attention to the publication of his plays. His work prompted renewed attention to what happened on the early modern page. This talk will explore recent shifts in editorial theory and the partial knowledge of editors, who are affected by their gender as well as their emphasis on performance or publication. It relates these concerns to editing Cymbeline by examining three textual cruces: one involving disputes between James I and Parliament that occurred while the play was being written, another concerning the ways in which wives could prove their marital fidelity, and a third regarding the textual presentation of letters pivotal to the plot. In these instances the 300-year tradition of editing Shakespeare has sometimes obscured rather than clarified the meanings in the earliest editions. Texts created by that tradition are much more tenuous and contingent than we would like them to be, however definite they look on the page.

Valerie Wayne, Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, is currently at work on an edition of Cymbeline for the Arden Shakespeare, third series. A specialist in early modern English literature with an emphasis on gender and culture, she is an associate general editor for The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, which has just been published by Oxford University Press. She currently serves as a Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and is on the editorial board of Shakespeare Quarterly. She is a former president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Event Sponsor
English, UH Manoa

More Information
English Dept.

Ongoing Events