Editing, Performance, Texts New Practices in Medieval and Early Mode
The essays in this volume challenge current 'givens' in medieval and early modern research around periodization and editorial practice. They showcase cutting-edge research practices and approaches in textual editing, and in manuscript and performance stud
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for Randall McLeod Introduction (Un)editing with non-fictional bodies turns to debates around ‘theatricality’ to unmake and remake the playtext and decentre the fixity of the script.1 The occasion for this attempt or chapter is the recent attention being paid to the two manuscript versions of The Humorous Magistrate which has led us to think through the implications of editing, unediting and (un)editing for a text that has never before been edited, and at the same time, to bring to scholarly editing the impact of a complex and sophisticated understanding of the theatre. The two versions of the play, The Humorous Magistrate, are found in Arbury Hall A414, Warwickshire, and Osborne MsC 132.27, University of Calgary Special Collections.2 Dating from the early seventeenth-century, the two versions represent distinct stages in the composition of the play: the Arbury manuscript presents a heavily worked over and revised early version of the play, and the Osborne presents a more polished presentation copy and incorporates many of the revisions witnessed in the Arbury (and some other revisions, as well). The play itself is a five-act romantic comedy set in rural England, featuring a corrupt Justice Thrifty, his daughter and her suitor, and several other comic characters who explore the themes of love, loyalty, and familial and marital duty. The chapter asks several questions of these two playtexts: what is signified when we use the word ‘theatre’ or ‘theatricality’? how can one unedit something never edited, and is doing so relevant to a newly found seventeenth-century playtext? and why would we want to bring theatre knowledge to the process of editing? A further complexity: there 171
10.1057/9781137320117.0018 - (Un)Editing with (Non-)Fictional Bodies, Lynette Hunter and Peter Lichtenfels
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Heriot-Watt University - PalgraveConnect - 2014-12-30
(Un)Editing with (Non-)Fictional Bodies: Pope’s Daggers
Editing Through Performance
are oceans of difference between literary, bibliographic and theatre studies. This chapter is a critical study of the theatre practitioner as an editor bringing theatre materiality to the process and impact of historical and contemporary productions. Section one looks at reading and editing as engaged processes; section two looks at theatre production as an engaged process; and section three looks at how theatre production can contribute to editing and reading as engaged processes. We draw critical approaches from the materiality of books, of book history and of editing. We also focus on the ways a theatre ‘eye’ or ‘ear’, a theatre-informed body, can contribute to the editing of a ‘new’ script, one that has not before been published or produced, by treating it as a new playtext. Initially, we began by concentrating on the Arbury version of The Humorous Magistrate, aware that Margaret Jane Kidnie has conjectured from manuscript evidence that there might have been a script prior to that script.3 We considered not only the ways in which a
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