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Reference
[Review of] Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance / Terri Bourus. - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
ERNE, Lukas Christian
ERNE, Lukas Christian. [Review of] Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance / Terri Bourus. - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Around the Globe , 2015, vol. 60, p. 54
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S4 QUARTO
ND KYDDING
Lukas Erne
Young Shakespeare's Young Ham/et by Terri Bourus, Palgrave Macmillan, 296pp, f57.50
W
hen the first quarto edition of Hamlet, originally published in 1603, was rediscovered in the early 19th century, it was at first assumed that its text - only about half as long as that of the second quarto of 1604/5 and qui te different from it - constituted an early version of the play Shakespeare later revised and expanded. What more natural than to assume that chronology of publication corresponds to chronology of creation? But saon after, discordant voices started to make themselves heard, arguing that the text of the first quarto in fact derives from the longer versions printed in the second quarto and the First Folio (1623). This became the majority opinion and has remained so ever since, with scholars variously arguing that the first quarto reflects a theatrical abridgement (whence the many stage directions), a short-hand report, a memorial reconstruction, or a combination or variation of these.The early textual history of Shakespeare's most famous play has remained contested though. What adds to its complications is an allusion to a Hamletplay as early as 1589 (Thomas Nashe), which was performed in 1594 and 1596 (as recorded by Philip Henslowe and Thomas Lodge). The evidence that this earlier play was by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy (1587), is strong,
and the hypothesis that it might have been by Shakespeare faces a number of problems, such as its absence from Francis Meres's list of Shakespeare plays in 1598 or the widely-held assumption that Shakespeare did not start writing plays for the London stage until 1590 or 1591. But the gravitational pull of Shakespeare's name has been such that a series of scholars have been tempted to relate ali Hamlets to Shakespeare. From there, it is only one step to argue that there is no razor like Occam's and that the first quarto is in fact the Hamlet referred to from 1589 to 1596. Among those who have taken this line of argument are Charles Knight (editor of The Pictorial Shakespeare) in the 19th century and Eric Sams (who also argued for Shakespeare's authorship of Edmund Ironside) in the late 20th.
In Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet, Terri Bourus revives this view and builds on it a series of other arguments: the Q2 text (usually dated c.1600) did not come into existence until 1604 and constitutes the last step in the play's evolution (pp.
185-96); Gabriel Harvey's famous comment that Shakespeare's Ham let is stuff 'to please the wiser sort' refers to the text of 1589 (pp. 138-40), and this version is an early 'Shakespeare-Burbage collaboration' (p. 156); its language and verse, whose unevenness has often been commented upon, 'is typical of the best poems and playwrights of the late 1580s' (p. 172). Bourus does not leave a stone unturned to try to justify her daims and put in their place the many scholars with whom she disagrees. Her association with Gary Taylor, who is working with her on a new Oxford edition of Shakespeare, who has written a preface to her book, and whose revisionary rhetoric pervades the book, guarantees her arguments sorne time in the limelight. Once the dust will have settled, the scholarly community may weil rediscover the good sense of what has long been the orthodox view.
Lukas Erne is Professer of English at the University of Geneva.
GRAHAM'S TALES
Andrew Hadfield
Tales from Shakespeare: Creative Collisions by Graham Holderness,
Cambridge University Press, 245pp,f25
W
hen he passed the old eleven plus to get into grammar school Graham Holderness's proud father gave him a collection of books purchased through a subscription from The Daily Express. The most influential of these was the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. In a bold act of hamage to that work, as weil as to his parents, the older Holderness has now returned to his intellectual origins and fashioned his own version of the work that made Shakespeare accessible for generations of children.One would have to be a hardened and humourless reader not to enjoy much of this engaging and interesting work.
There are four sections, each consisting of an essay and a creative retelling of an important historical moment in the history of Shakespeare or a Shakespeare play. Part one provides an analysis of the performance of Hamlet on board the Red Dragon off the West African coast, followed by a short story based on the episode; part two explores the relationship between Shakespeare and the King James Bible as the two great classics of English writing, together with a play imagining Shakespeare and Jonson discussing the monarch's project before Shakespeare dies and seeks entrance into heaven; part three examines adaptations of Coriolanus
