The Tempest in the First Folio has a crucial textual crux: a speech prefix. Introduced by director Trevor Nunn, the programme includes snippets of famous productions of The Tempest over the years and looks at what happens when a male Prospero is replaced by a female one. For a characterful description of the meaning of the wedding masque as well as why it might have been cut short, see Shakespeare Uncovered: The Tempest here, which also addresses other major themes including how biographical the play may be. Given the long wedding masque in the play – a masque that does not entirely fit its context – the First Folio text may well preserve the 1613 court performance, and it is important to try to recover that grand occasion, its colours, its candles, its courtly audience and their servants, when editing the text. But what text does the First Folio supply? We know from court records that The Tempest was put on in front of King James at Whitehall in 1611, and that it was later performed at court in 1613 for the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V, Elector Palatine. The Tempest only survives in the First Folio, so there aren’t any other versions of the play to consider. The result will foreground the complexity of the printed text, and the important detective work that editors face when recovering and reconstructing texts.īelow, Peter Holland, Tiffany Stern, and Zachary Lesser explore how seemingly small textual differences can significantly impact our understanding of a play, working with The Tempest, King Lear and Macbeth. These decisions will be made on a text-by-text basis in the light of what the First Folio (and quartos/octavos) have revealed. This might be the manuscript Shakespeare gave the company, the play put on in first performance, the play as revived or revised, the court version, or perhaps a readers’ transcript. Editors must work out which version of the play is behind their text, and, if there are also alternative ‘quarto’ or ‘octavo’ texts, (books made from papers folded two or three times) how those often different versions relate to the First Folio.Ĭritically, the editors will also need to decide what moment in the life of the play to work towards. The manuscripts behind the First Folio do not all have the same origin: some may have come from pre-performance texts, some from prompters’ books, some from transcripts for readers, some from court versions. A ‘folio’ describes a large book made of sheets of paper folded only once. Among all the other early texts which they will be addressing in detail, there is the play collection known as Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623). Learn from The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series general editors how different versions of Shakespeare’s plays can significantly alter their interpretation, and explore how Drama Online’s resources can support understanding of different textual interpretations through the play scenes and book chapters referenced below.īrowse more of the Shakespeare content available on Drama Online here.Įditors for The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series (due to launch on Drama Online in late 2024) are reconceiving Shakespeare for the 21st Century.
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