Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe

‘As it was, is, or will be played’: Title-pages and the Theatre Industry to 1610

“…it would surely have been possible for the publisher, Matthew Lawe, to have obtained a fair copy prepared for stage use" (Clare 1990, 89). There is ample evidence that a written text might contain more than was performed, whether because the actors cut what they did not want to use--as Humphrey Moseley claimed in the preliminaries of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio (Fletcher & Beaumont 1647, A4r)--or, to look at essentially the same phenomenon another way, because the company had a "maximal" text authorized by the Master of the Revels but only ever played a subset of it, the "minimal" text suited to the particularies of occasion and cast (Gurr 1999).…”

Rival monarchs: The two versions of 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI

“…Unlike Hart, who tends to absolve Shakespeare from any responsibility for abridgements, Gurr leaves it open whether some of the changes were authorially sanctioned, 'initiated by Shakespeare'. 16 Maguire in Shakespearean Suspect Texts casts doubt on the guiding principles underlying the New Bibliography, arguing that the term 'memorial reconstruction' has never been 'clearly defined and consistently used' by those who try to apply it to particular texts, with subjective a priori judgements that aspects of a text make it 'Bad'. She does not reject the category entirely, but argues that 'the blanket-term "memorial reconstruction"' has often been misapplied.…”

Precision, Consistency and Completeness in Early-Modern Playbook Manuscripts: The Evidence from Thomas of Woodstock and John a Kent and John a Cumber

“…It would follow from the presence of Buc's marks in Thomas of Woodstock that this manuscript was the licensed book, which New Bibliographers assumed was the promptbook. But Gurr may be right that the licensed book was too valuable to be used directly to run performances and was kept as a reference document from which a promptbook would be transcribed as needed (Gurr 1999). Without more evidence, just what the manuscripts of Thomas of Woodstock and John a Kent and John a Cumber were used for cannot be determined.…”

“…Among the many important studies that have approvingly cited Long's essays on this topic are Werstine 1988;Werstine 1990;Trousdale 1990;De Grazia & Stallybrass 1993;Tipton 1998;Gurr 1999;Kidnie 2000;Werstine 2001;Edelman 2002;Calore 2003;Tribble 2005;and Keefer 2006. 2 The latest Arden Shakespeare Hamlet credits Long with having "undermined confidence that a text containing indeterminate stage directions necessarily predates theatrical performance" (Shakespeare 2006, 501), as does the latest Arden Pericles (Shakespeare 2004, 84).…”