by Ben Crystal
Why bother using it, then, when I have very handy, port able, modern editions of Shakespeare’s plays scattered around my house?
The Folio edition of the plays, while far from perfect, is the closest thing we have to the plays as Shakespeare intended, and if anyone questions its worth, I always come back to this basic argument: Shakespeare wrote his plays for his actors, and this is the only version of the plays they had a hand in.
* * *
Folio, The First …
There were about 1,000 copies printed of the First Folio of 1623, and about 229 of those survive today, having somehow lived through the regime of the Puritans, the Great Fire of London (to which it is thought many copies of plays, manuscripts, etc., were lost) and three more centuries of life. Copies have been found dusty on shelves of libraries, and mouldy in attics in northern England. Seventy-nine copies live in the Folger Library in Washington. Copies rarely come up for sale, and when they do, they sell for millions.
The First Folio had four reprints in the 17th century:
The Second Folio of 1632, with minor corrections added;
The Third Folio of 1663, with minor corrections – and some new errors! – added;
The Third Folio, second impression, of 1664 – the rarest of Folios, as many copies were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Seven plays were added to the 36 extant, most of which are considered not to have been written by Shakespeare;
The Fourth Folio of 1685, which was essentially a reprint of the Third Folio, with more corrections and errors added.
It’s a rare and very valuable book. Go on, go and check those bookshelves and attics …
* * *
Scene 3
Backstage at Shakespeare’s Globe, 1599
A play would rarely be found all in one place before the First Folio was printed. The actors would have their parts written out on separate rolls of paper (scrolls), with the three cue words of whoever was speaking before them written above their speeches. Due to the frequency of new plays and the short rehearsal time, they probably didn’t have much time to find out what was going to happen next, how the play ended, or who was playing which part …
There was a platt (a piece of paper with a hole in the middle, through which it was nailed up backstage) which detailed the order of the scenes, the fights and dances, the exits and entrances that took place, and all the doubling up of parts that the boy-actors would take care of, all switching hats and costumes as fast as possible.
The scripts were handed out this way because it would be time-consuming and costly to write out the entire play for every actor. Also, by making sure that entire copies of the plays were scarce, the theatre company limited the chances of rival companies stealing their brand-new product.
The actors’ cue-scripts were copied from the prompt-copy of the play, held by Edward Knight, the Book-keeper of the company, who would have ensured that any cuts or changes made by the acting company or the Master of the Revels would be copied down and followed. Some say the actors copied out their own parts, which would undoubtedly help them to learn their parts quickly.
So the scripts – what we now know as literary texts – really were solely and simply the tools of actors. The complete prompt-copies or, if they couldn’t be found, the actors’ cue-scripts were what Condell and Hemmings used to put the First Folio together.
They obviously couldn’t ask Shakespeare how he would want the plays presented, so it’s likely they printed the plays as they would want to use them. Note I say use not read. They were the equivalent of plumbers organising a tool-box. A plumber’s tool box would not be for looking at, it would be for using. This is a book of how to act William Shakespeare’s plays, is what they’d have been thinking.
There are a number of clues in the Folio that show an actor where, for instance, they should stand on the stage. Whether they should speak quickly or slowly. Which words they should carefully stress because those particular words are crucial to the story-telling (as an Elizabethan actor wouldn’t have been able to read the whole play, how would he know otherwise?). I’ll go through some of these clues shortly.
Now the reason I suggest you go to the First Folio when looking at a speech or scene or a play of Shakespeare’s is because a lot of the modern editions have edited these clues out. Modern editors, over the years, forgetting these are actor’s tools and thinking of the plays only as literary works, have tried to neaten the texts up a bit.
When preparing a Shakespeare play for publication, modern editors will go back to the Folio and the Quarto versions, and decide which punctuation is right, and which is wrong. They’ll add exclamation marks to try to make a character’s intention clearer. They’ll remove the capitalisations of words in the middle of a sentence – because that’s not how we write now, or because it appears to be random and without meaning.
All of which is completely understandable: the written language hadn’t begun to standardise in Shakespeare’s time, and it would be easy to mistake these clues for errors. And certainly we know that the Folio typesetters introduced many errors when the First Folio was being printed. There were five ‘Hands’ involved – five different compositors – evidently of varying intellects and each with their own idiosyncratic way of spelling, so despite being as close as we can get to Shakespeare, the Folio is by no means flawless.
But modern editors are not actors, and they will remove or replace words, add full stops in the middle of thoughts, or change prose to verse (Mercutio’s ‘Queen Mab’ speech in Romeo and Juliet is a good example of that) because the text as it stands doesn’t seem to make sense.
The thing is, sometimes a particularly odd turn of phrase won’t make any sense at all unless it’s spoken on stage in front of an audience, no matter how much editing work is put into it.
Modern editors – and modern productions, for that matter – are also prone to cutting, and before removing something from a Shakespeare play, it’s worth going to fairly extreme lengths to find out why it was there in the first place.
I always work from the assumption that Shakespeare is right more often than not, brilliant playwright that he was, and knew more about drama than I do. If something doesn’t make sense I’ll work at it, and work at it again. I’ll go away, think about it, work at it again, then question whether it might just be bad writing. It’s too easy to cut or rewrite something because it doesn’t make sense immediately.
Even if it’s a quick look, I always find it’s worth at least comparing the Folio with a modern edition, to see what I might be losing. And even if this system is a haphazard accident of typesetters – it still works.
Take a look at a speech from Titus Andronicus. The Goth is describing how he discovers Aaron the Moor talking to his baby, and how he captures them both (the bold type marks out the end of a thought):
PENGUIN EDITION
Second Goth
Renowned Lucius from our troops I strayed
To gaze upon a ruinous monastery,
And as I earnestly did fix mine eye
Upon the wasted building, suddenly
I hear a child cry underneath a wall.
I made unto the noise, when soon I heard
The crying babe controlled with this discourse:
‘Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dam!
Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art,
Had nature lent thee but thy mother’s look,
Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor.
But where the bull and cow are both milk-white,
They never do beget a coal-black calf.
Peace, villain, peace!’ – even thus he rates the babe –
‘For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth
Who, when he knows thou art the Empress’ babe,
Will hold thee dearly for thy mother’s sake.’
With this my weapon drawn, I rushed upon him,
Surprised him suddenly, and brought him hither
To use as you think needful of the man.
FOLIO EDITION
Goth.
Renowned Lucius, from our troups I straid,
To gaze vpon a ruinous Monasterie,
And as I earnestly did fixe mine eye
Vpon the wasted building, suddainely
I heard a childe cry vnderneath a wall:
I made vnto the noyse, when soone I heard,
The crying babe control’d with this discourse:
Peace Tawny slaue, halfe me, and halfe thy Dam,
Did not thy Hue bewray whose brat thou art?
Had nature lent thee, but thy Mothers looke,
Villaine thou might’st haue bene an Emperour.
But where the Bull and Cow are both milk-white,
They neuer do beget a cole-blacke-Calfe:
Peace, villaine peace, euen thus he rates the babe,
For I must beare thee to a trusty Goth,
Who when he knowes thou art the Empresse babe,
Will hold thee dearely for thy Mothers sake.
With this, my weapon drawne I rusht vpon him,
Surpriz’d him suddainely, and brought him hither
To vse, as you thinke needefull of the man.
(Titus Andronicus, Act 5, Scene 1, lines 20–39)
The capital letters are probably the first things that will jump out at you as being different – and, rather handily, a quick glance at them will give you an idea of what the speech is all about:
Lucius
who the Goth is talking to
Monasterie
a place
Tawny
a colour
Dam
mother
Hue
reference to a colour
Mothers
mother
(thou mightst have bene) an Emperour
prediction of future
Bull and Cow (are both milk-white)
reference to colour
Coal-blacke-Calfe
reference to colour
Goth
reference to Aaron’s alliance
the Empresse babe
reference to the baby’s mother
thy Mothers sake
reference to the baby’s mother
These capital letters tell us who the Goth is talking to, where he was when he found Aaron, a number of descriptive words about Aaron’s baby, and Aaron’s main concerns – the mother and the Emperor. By this point in the play we know the child is illegitimate, that the Empress and Aaron have been having an affair behind the Emperor’s back, and that the colour of the babe’s skin would make it clear who the real father was …
But if you didn’t know all this plot information – as indeed the actor in Shakespeare’s time speaking the speech most likely wouldn’t, not having read the whole play – but you are used to your writer’s style, a quick scan of the speech tells the whole story.
Every capitalised word except Lucius and Goth is lost from the Penguin edition.
Also, the way the speeches are presented to you is quite different in the two editions. The Penguin version has six thoughts, and two exclamation marks, whereas the Folio has four thoughts, and one question mark. It may seem pedantic, but full stops and exclamation marks are pretty demanding things, and very hard not to follow. The extra full stops in the Penguin version break the speech up a lot more and halt the flow, and exclamation marks all too often get interpreted as ‘time to shout’.
The Folio version flows more, and is less measured – more a breathless account of a foot soldier than a piece of classical poetry.
Actors often don’t like being told how to say a line by anyone other than the writer or the director. If writers want a word or a sentence exclaimed, they’ll probably add an exclamation mark. If they don’t, they won’t. How can Shakespeare editors – fine, upstanding people though they are – have any idea about whether a line should be exclaimed or not, when it can take weeks for a modern actor to decide how to deliver a line?
All that said, we need modern editions, and they’re bloody useful. For one thing, the metre is laid out as it should be (I’ll show you what I mean by that in a moment), and, unsurprisingly, that gets my vote.
Going to the Folio – which, as my Father the Linguist would be quick to point out, is (a) far from reliable and (b) has punctuation and spelling that was far from standardised; and so (c) to rely on the placing of a comma would be foolhardy – is still, in my mind, going as far back and getting as close to Shakespeare’s intention as we ever will. It wipes the canvas of the text as clean as possible, without modern interpretations forced on us. The Royal Shakespeare Company seems to agree: their latest edition of the plays, despite making some editorial changes and additions, attempts to follow the Folio texts throughout.
Another reason why I like and recommend it so much is that the Folio spelling reminds you how olde the texts are, which reminds you of the world they were written in, and so keeps more of an Elizabethan head on your shoulders.
In Act 1 we looked at why a general idea of the Elizabethan life and theatrical context was important in getting to grips with Shakespeare; now we’ll see just how vital a little bit of background knowledge can be, when we take a look at Shakespeare’s hidden clues to his actors.
* * *
Shockingly exclaimed …!
A great example of the changes modern editors make is in Patrick Tucker’s Secrets of Acting Shakespeare. Tucker uses lines of Romeo’s from Romeo and Juliet (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 22–4), providing all the Elizabethan versions. Romeo has just been told (inaccurately, as it turns out) that Juliet, his love, has died:
First Quarto (1597)
Pardon me Sir, that am the Messenger of such bad tidings.
Rom: Is it euen so? Then I defie my Starres.
Second Quarto (1599)
O Pardon me for bringing these ill newes,
Since you did leave it for my office Sir.
Rom. Is it euen so?
Then I denie you Starres.
First Folio (1623)
O pardon me for bringing these ill newes,
Since you did leave it for my office sir.
Rom. Is it in so?
Then I denie you starres.
Now, putting on the hat of a modern editor, you can see it would be hard to work out which version of the line Shakespeare intended. The interesting thing, though, as Tucker points out, is that none of the modern editors choose any of the lines handed down from the Elizabethans in their entirety, rather choosing to amalgamate the lines, and (surprise surprise) most adding an exclamation mark for good effect.
Kittredge (1940):
Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!
Riverside (1974):
Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!
Arden (1979):
Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!
Oxford (1986):
Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars.
This is just one example of the changes modern editors make. It’s right to try to make more sense of the line, but one of the meanings of denie in Elizabethan times was renounce; the starres were fate or destiny. So the Folio and Second Quarto versions do make sense as they are.
As for the added exclamation mark, well, at this moment, Romeo could be crying, screaming, or speaking softly, but the added mark doesn’t leave very much room for interpretation …
* * *
Scene 4
Brooklyn, 1990
When you’re faced with having to analyse, write about, or simply just enjoy a piece of Shakespeare that you don’t know, it can seem like a daunting task. So to take things to the other extreme for a moment, have a read through the song extract below:
High flyin like the Millennium Falcon, piloted by Han Solo
I never roll for dolo, frontin on me’s a no-no
Understand? Doin this for my family
Ha ha, check it out y’all
Yo I’m tryin to make a dollar out of what makes sense
Add it up, told my daddy
I’d be a rich man
You never know when your fate gon’ switch hand
Get today’s solid ground out of yesterday’s quicksand
I was a young boy – who dreamt about being a big man
on small looseleaf sheets I sketched a big plan
Gotta handle business properly, boost up my economy
Store it up and get my mom some waterfront property
Yesterday was not for me but nowaday it’s time for me
The streets is watchin me, I watch back, that’s the policy
Movin along my oddesey like blood through the artery
Navigate the treacherous and make it seem effortless
Let those who make the exodus seekin the North beacon
from beatin and hog-eatin, from punishment all season
from hands cracked and bleedin – cotton thorns in your palms
It’s for y’all that I sketch these songs, and it goes.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow
I fear no man, because faith is the arrow
My vocal chord travel worldwide to block narrow
We can blow with the ammo or go mano-a-mano
Kweli is you wit me? (Whattup whattup?) Let’s make it happen
I *BURN* through your argument with action
My eyes stay fastened to tomorrow lookin for a brighter day
When y’all wanna leave y’all? Right away …
‘Know That’, by Brooklyn hip-hop artist and actor Mos Def
The most obvious thing to say about it is that it’s written like poetry, with capital letters at the start of most lines. Not to mention the rolling rhymes – shadow-arrow-narrow-mano, effortless-exodus, beacon-beatin-eatin-bleedin.