Laura Estill

Spare your arithmetic, never count the turns: A Statistical Analysis of Writing about Shakespeare, 1960–2010

By taking a quantitative approach to Shakespeare studies, this paper reveals patterns in how and what we write about Shakespeare. Using statistics from the World Shakespeare Bibliography (WSB), we track publications about individual plays from 1960 to 2010. In addition to reporting descriptive statistics that offer a bird’s-eye view of Shakespeare studies over the last half century, we identify trends in relation to particular plays, such as The Tempest’s growing popularity and Julius Caesar’s relative decline. We demonstrate temporal trends in relation to genre and non-English Shakespeareana. This paper concludes by suggesting the value of further quantitative analyses of Shakespeare studies.

Seventeenth-century approaches to The Devil’s Law-Case

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, The Duchess of Malfi has been Webster’s most anthologized and performed play; in the seventeenth century, however, commonplacing readers showed a preference for The Devil’s Law-Case, a play now often neglected. Commonplacing was a practice commonly taught to Tudor and Stuart schoolchildren: they selected extracts from the works they read and then copied them in their personal notebooks for future reference. It was common practice to commonplace, that is, to extract selections from larger texts that could be used as commonplaces, or sententiae, which were well-phrased words of wisdom with universal applicability (see Smyth; Schurink; and Beal, “Notions”). Print and manuscript collections with dramatic extracts started to appear around the end of the sixteenth century; the practice of collecting dramatic extracts in miscellanies or in more carefully organized compilations, called commonplace books, became increasingly popular in the first half of the seventeenth century. In Webster’s day, readers and playgoers would copy parts from plays: sometimes dialogues, songs, or speeches, but also commonplaces, those pithier textual snippets. Studying these dramatic extracts allows scholars to glimpse how some readers engaged with plays, and what they considered useful to copy and keep for their personal use. This essay looks at all known extant examples, both in manuscript and print, of extracts taken from Webster’s plays: in this case, three manuscripts and a printed commonplace book. Of those readers who took the time to copy parts from Webster’s oeuvre into their manuscripts, all three copiedmore fromThe Devil’s Law-Case than any other Webster play, despite the fact thatLaw-Casewas published only once (Weis xxi; DEEP), andTheDuchess ofMalfi and TheWhite Devilwere publishedmore than once (DEEP). The only known published text of The Devil’s Law-Case (1623) announced on the title page that it was “approvedly well Acted by her Maiesties Seruants” in 1619 and 1623. Unlike The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, we have no known evidence of The Devil’s Law-Case being revived in the Restoration (Van Lennep). René Weis, editor of theOxford edition ofWebster’s plays—whose very title, JohnWebster: TheDuchess ofMalfi and Other Plays, reveals current scholarly preferences—declares that it is “for his two tragedies [TheDuchess of Malfi andTheWhite Devil] thatWebster is best known, and bywhich his achievement ultimately needs to be measured” (ix). The modern fascination with Webster’s tragedies often revolves around the violent and taboo moments dramatized; archival evidence, however, suggests that a number of early modern readers did not share our titillation. Turning to dramatic extracts suggests that some early readers valued TheDevil’s Law-Casemore thanWebster’s tragedies and shows that early readers appropriatedWebster’s plays in a variety of ways: as commonplace wisdom, as templates for dialogue, and as vivid, original images often unrelated to violence and gore. Indeed, as this essay will explore, three of the readers analyzed here were clergymen, and their Websterian extracts are examples of material that could be practically applied when writing sermons. This essay analyzes four documents that provide evidence of The Devil’s Law-Case’s early modern reception: two manuscripts from the first half of the seventeenth century, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D 952 (c. 1632–33) and British Library MS Add 22608 (c. 1640s), one printed commonplace book from the middle of the century (John Cotgrave’s The English Treasury of Wit and Language, 1655), and, finally, a manuscript compilation from the later part of the century (Bodleian Library MS

Shakespeare and Disciplinarity

This chapter explores the outliers of writing about Shakespeare: academic works in medical journals, law reviews, agricultural journals, and other unexpected places. Shakespeare’s plays function as a lingua franca—across disciplines, writers expect audiences to be familiar with the Bard and his works. The chapter argues that academic use of Shakespeare by non-Shakespeareans functions in four ways: (1) to make their work interesting and accessible to different readers; (2) to perform cultural capital; (3) to offer insight into concepts beyond Shakespeare; and (4) to analyze Shakespearean texts from different disciplinary lenses. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s works can be deployed both as a heuristic (a way to access other knowledge) and an epistemology (an underpinning framework that shapes the knowledge itself) in modern academic discourse.

Shakespeare and the digital world

Due to the unique cultural capital of his works, Shakespeare has long been the test subject for new methods and digital advances in arts scholarship. Shakespeare sits at the forefront of the digital humanities – in archiving, teaching, performance and editing – impacting on scholars, theatres and professional organisations alike. The pace at which new technologies have developed is unprecedented (and the pressure to keep up is only growing). This book offers seventeen new essays that assess the opportunities and pitfalls presented by the twenty-first century for the ongoing exploration of Shakespeare. Through contributions from a broad range of scholars and practitioners, including case studies from those working in the field, the collection engages with the impact of the digital revolution on Shakespeare studies. By assessing and mediating this sometimes controversial digital technology, the book is relevant to those interested in the digital humanities as well as to Shakespeare scholars and enthusiasts.

Archbishop William Sancroft's Emendation of 3 Henry VI: Rereading “rook'd”

The owl shriek’d at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees; The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top, And chatt’ring pies in dismal discords sung; Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope, To wit, an indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. (5.6.44–52)1