The Complete Readings of William Shakespeare project is about more than just grabbing a Shakespeare script and jumping in front of an audience. Our advertising slug will tell you that the series presents a unique opportunity to experience these plays in a way that hasn’t been possible since the King’s Men originally performed them 400 years ago. But there’s more to that than just a novelty: We think there’s something exciting, for example, about seeing the cycle of history plays literally unroll before your eyes with a continuity of character and actor.

As a member of our audience, you’re getting a chance to discover things that can only be seen when Shakespeare’s plays are viewed a living body of theatrical work. And part of what we hope will make that experience memorable are the discoveries we’re making as performers. The American Shakespeare Repertory wants to delve deep into the rich depths of Shakespeare’s plays, and we believe that the Complete Readings will prove to be a powerful foundation on which the future work of the company will be built.

That work begins with the script.

BRIEF HISTORY OF SHAKESPEARE’S TEXTS

As many of you probably already know, we have inherited our Shakespeare scripts from an eclectic variety of sources. No manuscript copy of a complete Shakespeare play exists. Instead, the earliest version of Shakespeare’s plays we possess are quartos which were printed in the 1590’s. (Quartos were roughly the cultural equivalent of modern paperbacks.) These were sold by at least half a dozen different publishers, many of whom apparently didn’t possess any sort of authoritative (or even complete) copy of the plays they were publishing. The next milestone in Shakespeare publication was the famous First Folio of 1623, without which many of his plays would have been permanently lost. (Folios were much larger volumes.)

These various editions were reprinted and reissued in a variety of ways over the next hundred years, with each subsequent printing accumulating a fresh set of errors and variants. The modern editorial tradition began in the 18th century, as editors attempted to return to the earliest versions of each text in an effort to produce a more authoritative edition. Modern editions of Shakespeare generally follow the same basic practices established in the 18th century:

1. Modernization of Spelling

2. Regularization of Punctuation and Verse

3. Emendation of Text

Because every editor makes different choices (particularly when it comes to texts which exist in more than one original edition), every edition of a Shakespeare play is slightly different from every other edition of the same play. But over the past couple hundred years, each play has generally (and slowly) accumulated traditions of emendation.

THE COMPLETE READING SCRIPTS

This accumulation of emendation is generally a good thing: When one editor finds a particularly apt solution to a textual problem, other editors copy their work and then try to find other ways to repair the text of the play.

But sometimes the best choice (or the seemingly best choice) eliminates other choices that might also bear fruit if fully pursued. An actor or director, in particular, will scour a play’s script looking for the clues buried within it. And sometimes modern editorial practices can resemble a criminal wiping away the fingerprints at a crime scene: Important information can be lost.

Which is why every Complete Reading is based on a freshly prepared script specifically designed to preserve as many of those clues as possible (while also conveying all the benefits of a fully modern edition).

The script used for our first reading, Macbeth, which I’ll be sharing next week, is fairly representative of the process.

Originally posted September 8th, 2010.

The problem with GURPS-style advantage/disadvantage character creation systems is that the actual impact of a given advantage or disadvantage is highly dependent on the circumstances of actual play: “Immune to psionic attacks” is totally amazing if your campaign is The War Against the Illithids; it’s completely wasted if your character never encounters a psion. Similarly, “Horrifically Claustrophobic” is a crippling disadvantage in a megadungeon campaign; it’s basically a non-factor if you’re playing Lawrence of Arabia.

So in order for these systems to work, the advantages and disadvantages need to be made equally relevant in actual play.

IME, however, there are two typical actual play dynamics in RPGs:

First, the players are given a free rein. Players will naturally seek to play to their advantages and play away from their disadvantages. This isn’t even really abusive play: It’s just a logical way of interacting with the world. (If I had no legs, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time buying ladders.)

Second, the GM is railroading the players. You might initially expect this to reverse the dynamic, but it typically doesn’t because (again, IME) most railroading GMs are more focused on achieving a predetermined goal: Their focus is an internal one. It might inadvertently force players into confronting their disadvantages, but often will not. (While the players will still be able to tactically exploit their advantages.)

In order for an advantage/disadvantage system to really work, IMO, you need a GM who’s willing to advocate as strongly for the inclusion of a PC’s disadvantage as the player is to advocate for the inclusion of the PC’s advantage.

The GMs most willing to do this are (in terms of the Threefold) dramatists and gamists. Simulationists are much less likely to put their thumb on the scale and “force” the inclusion of disadvantages.

This becomes a particular problem for GURPS because most the features in that system are heavily focused on supporting simulationists: So the people most likely to be running GURPS are the ones least likely to adopt the GMing techniques necessary to keep the advantage/disadvantage system balanced.

Go to Part 1

Hamilton may be clearly wrong in identifying the Second Maiden’s Tragedy as the lost Cardenio, but there remains an important and lingering question: If the handwriting in the Second Maiden’s Tragedy manuscript does belong to William Shakespeare, what does that mean?

Well, it could mean that this is, in fact, a lost play by Shakespeare. It’s almost too easy to conjure up a hypothetical scenario in which Shakespeare and Fletcher, fresh from their success with Cardenio (assuming they actually wrote it), decided to pluck a different story from the pages of the popular Don Quixote and use it as the B-plot in a new play.

Or perhaps Shakespeare somehow ended up scribing the fair copy for one of the scripts purchased by his company. (And perhaps cleaning it up a bit in the process?) In the modern world it’s perhaps too easy to imagine that a shareholder would hold themselves aloof from such a “common” duty, but theater has always seemed to engender a spirit in which everyone pitches in to make the magic happen.

Another possible explanation would be that Shakespeare asked the company’s scribe to write out the fair copy of his will. (This assumes that Hamilton is wrong in claiming that the will was both written and signed in the same hand, but right in claiming that Shakespeare’s will and The Second Maiden’s Tragedy were.)

Of course, even if Hamilton is wrong about the handwriting entirely, some of his other conclusions may have merit. For example, he hypothesized that the play shows clear stylistic signs of having been a collaboration. W.W. Greg, in the Malone Society Reprint edition of the play, similarly hypothesized the potential for two literary correctors working on the manuscript (although both of those correctors were in hands different from the scribe’s).

Hamilton is also likely right in believing that the play was never performed under the title The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. In Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, for example, Martin Wiggins argues that even George Buc wasn’t referring to it as such. When he wrote “this second Maydens tragedy” he didn’t mean “this [play called] The Second Maiden’s Tragedy“; he meant “this second [play called] The Maiden’s Tragedy“ (in either case referring to the Beaumont/Fletcher play The Maid’s Tragedy written a few years earlier).

It’s certainly true that the script would have originally possessed a paper cover (now lost) which would have contained its proper title. In light of that, some have simply titled the play as they pleased. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, for example, Julia Briggs published it as The Lady’s Tragedy (after the unnamed protagonist).

And it is, in fact, Thomas Middleton to whom the play is most commonly ascribed in a scholastic consensus which has, if anything, only strengthened over the course of the past decade in response to Hamilton’s claims.

For myself? Middleton seems like the most plausible candidate. I am occasionally teased by the thought that the play might be Massinger’s lost tragedy The Tyrant, but in this I think it likely I’m being led astray by the same temptation I suspect plagued Hamilton: To recover something precious which has been lost.

After all, Massinger didn’t start writing plays until two years after Buc had approved The Second Maiden’s Tragedy for performance.

Originally posted August 2010.

In a thread on the RPGsite (see post #15), Barbatruc proposes an interesting method for tracking torches and lanterns. He later mentions being inspired by Intwischa’s method for tracking ammo. Talysman drops in a little later (post #26) to mention that he does something similar with wands. (Which, I’ll note, is very similar to Numenera‘s artifact depletion roll.)

For my own reference, I’m going to archive these methods here briefly:

LIGHT SOURCES: In OD&D, set aside a d6 for each lit torch and a d24 for each lit lantern. At the beginning of each turn roll all the dice set aside: Anything that comes up 1 goes out and gets marked off the character sheet. (This results in torches and lanterns having by-the-book durations on average, but introduces an element of uncertainty and variability. More importantly, it simplifies bookkeeping.)

INTWISCHA’S AMMO: The PC has an “ammo die” of a size determined by the amount of ammunition they’re carrying. They roll this die with each attack roll and if it comes up 1, their die type decreases by one size. If they purchase ammunition or find a stash of it during the adventure, they can increase the die size instead.

ALTERNATIVE AMMO: Have your PCs buy ammo in lots equal to the die size of the system you’re using. (d20 in 3.5, for example.) When you roll a 1 on your attack roll, mark off one lot of ammo. (Trail of Cthulhu uses a similar mechanic in pulp mode, but when you roll the 1 you’re actually clicking on an empty cylinder and automatically miss. I’m ditching the “critical failure” aspect of the mechanic and just using it to track ammo.)

WANDS: Roll percentile dice. On a roll of 1 or 2, the wand has run out of charges. (Note: This system doesn’t work if you want the PCs to have some method of determining exactly how many charges are left in a wand.)

What I’m seeing here is a cluster of techniques that I think can be trivially generalized to cover any form of consumable that are likely to be carried in large quantities for frequent use. I suspect it’s particularly useful if you can incorporate it into a general resolution mechanic (instead of rolling a separate die on every single check).

Go to Part 1

THE MISSING FLETCHER

Because the 1653 entry in the Stationer’s Register assigns The History of Cardenio to both Fletcher and Shakespeare, Hamilton is forced to acknowledge Fletcher’s involvement in the play. But one rather gets the feeling that he’d rather not be bothered by it.

For example, the entire foundation of his argument rests on two principles: First, that he has identified the handwriting in the manuscript as belonging to Shakespeare. Second, that the script constitutes a rough draft in which the names of the characters had been replaced or removed (prior to the original names being restored).

But if the entire rough draft were written by Shakespeare, what happened to Fletcher’s contribution? Hamilton wants to assign the entirety of the sub-plot to Fletcher (the bit that was actually based on Don Quixote), but if Fletcher wrote it, why is it (according to Hamilton) in Shakespeare’s handwriting? If Shakespeare wrote half the play and Fletcher wrote the other half, then we would expect to find the original manuscript written in two different hands. (For example, the manuscript for Sir Thomas More shows how scenes written by multiple authors would be stitched together into a single, cohesive manuscript before, presumably, being copied out by a scribe.)

IN CONCLUSION

These constitute the major flaws in Hamilton’s argument. But Hamilton’s scholarship is also frequently incoherent in its specific details, as well. And many of these inconsistencies seem to be driven from his need to reach for the conclusion he desires.

For example, when Hamilton feels a need to explain why The Second Maiden’s Tragedy would so drastically deviate from the “source material” of the Cardenio story he starts by trying to expose the “serious flaws of Cervantes as a writer” and, thus, discredit the quality of Cervantes’ original tale. To that end, he writes:

Now, when a distraught maid, armed with a bare bodkin in her bodice, confronts the villain of the piece, the laws of drama require that she use the bodkin, either to stab herself or the villain, or to have the weapon wrested from her in a suspenseful struggle. To permit her to faint is a cheap trick. It is the same shabby device used by otherwise reputable writers of the last century (Thomas Hardy, for example) who, in a concession to Victorian prudery, would “draw the curtain of charity” over any scene that promised to be delectably prurient. (pg. 192)

But just three pages later, this “shabby device” and “cheap trick” has becomes a tour de force on the part of Shakespeare:

The dramatists deftly solved the problem and at the same time astonished and horrified their audience. Cardenio, with naked sword pointed at his beloved’s bosom, rushes at her, but the murderous task is too much for him and he falls in a dead faint at Luscinda’s feet. (pg. 195)

I suspect that a large part of Hamilton’s over-zealousness is born in his hero-worship of Shakespeare. In his Preface to the Play, for example, Hamilton writes:

I urge you to read at least scenes two, three, and four of Act IV, in which the necrophilic Tyrant steals the body of The Lady and the theft is disclosed to her lover, Govianus. Judge for yourself whether the chilling beauty of these nocturnal scenes in the cathedral does not evoke the magic touch of the Wizard of Stratford.

Hamilton’s love for the “Wizard of Stratford” is clear. But this is not scholarship. This is blind faith coupled to undying adulation.

Go to Part 6

Originally posted August 2010.