Intent…

…on what exactly?

The writer himself chooses how much of himself he reveals through writing. (Freudians may answer differently on this last sentence). He has a subject and a form in which to explore that subject.

The finished product (poem or play) is no longer the writer’s. I, you, we read the finished product and project our, your, myself onto the writer’s intent in writing in the first place.

But wait…since the writer finished writing, his work has passed through others hands.

And so with Shakespeare. His work had to go two ways: the theatre or the printer. (Oblivion is a third way).

If the theatre, then original manuscripts (aka foul papers) had to be copied (aka fair copies) so that actors and stage-manager could put on the production of the play.

But wait… who did the copying? How many copies were made? Did they make any changes to the original?

But wait… Elizabethan actors, we are told, only got their parts in a scroll with the last word of the speech before as a cue word. So who had the whole script? Was it someone watching the whole thing unfold and directing it? Was there time for a run-through before it was performed to a paying audience?

But wait…the stage manager would make a Platt or Plot of what scenery, costumes, special effects, entrances and exits happened during the play. This plot would be hung up backstage, we are told. Who made these platts and how many exist now?

But wait… actors were performing up to 5 different plays a week in season. Surely not everyone’s memory is that good? (sickness, hangover, fatigue, distraction of any kind). There must have been a prompter who had an entire script.

But wait…wouldn’t the author keep a copy, fair or foul?

But wait… some of the plays were printed in Quarto form. did the theatre authorise the printing or sale to the publisher? Or did the writer have some say?

but wait… this form is outside of the writer’s realm of influence. A publisher had to find or was a printer to take such a copy of said foul or fair papers for setting into said Quarto form. Sometimes publisher and printer were one and the same.

But wait…we know our author published the poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece in 1593 and 1594, through his Stratford and London contemporary, the printer Richard Field. And his Sonnets were published by Thomas Thorpe and sold by 2 different booksellers in 1609.

But wait… in the above cases the poems were best-sellers in his lifetime, going through 8 and 6 editions respectively, and continued to be popular after his death. His Sonnets did one edition and then was killed off, allegedly through the influence of their author.

So did the printers have a blueprint copy, or did they print the new edition from the last version they printed?

But wait…the printer had people who set the typeface into order. These compositors were the people who could have changed, altered, or deleted text that the author had intended.

But wait… they could have changed the spelling (capitalisation or italicisation) and punctuation. they might also have skipped lines or made composition errors. And in the case of play Quartos, altered character names for actors names.

But wait… the author is generally agreed to have seen his poems through the press. And what is out of his hands is out of his hands and mistakes inevitably do happen.

But wait… the story is now about what happened to the artefacts (fair and foul papers, Quartos and Folios) after the writer is dead and done with them.

But wait…what happened to the author’s intent during the composition of each original? Did it die with him? Or is it our romantic egotism that thinks it’s there for us to find and re-interpret?

My intention here is to show that there are many questions still unanswered. But to study Shakespeare is to study the closest text we have closest to his pen.

Or to trust that generations of editors don’t and didn’t have any kind of agenda in re-publishing his work. And that is clearly not the case. The debates continue.

But wait…this disclaimer swears that no conspiracy theory is at work in any part of my questioning Shakespeare’s Age, Influence or Intent. Even more so towards the modern edifices of Shakespeare scholarship and its editors, some of whom I know personally to be equally as sceptical when relating to the past. All the deficiencies in intellect are mine, the mistakes mine, the false pride in deriding myself so, mine. All mine.

‘And all that is in me’. Q133 f.c.
‘And yet am I not free’ Q134 f.c.
and me in that one Will. Q135 f.c. Capitalisation intentional.