One of the important areas of contention among editors of Shakespeare plays is explained very well in the introduction to the chapter entitled, Textual Criticism and Bibliography from Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, edited by Russ McDonald. In it, he summarizes the issue as follows: In the past the assumption was that "a skilled editorial weaving of folio and quarto readings will give us an authentic record of Shakespeare's original intentions..." But now there is a growing movement toward looking at the many quartos and the Folio in a very different way, that being that "the multiple versions in which the plays exist represent different, authorially created texts of these plays", and therefore the belief underlying the old attitude is a mistaken one, and there is no ideal, perfect version that editors should be trying to re-create. It's a very interesting field of study, certainly, and one with big implications for everyone interested in Shakespeare. And I mention all of this today for two reasons: first, to try to balance out yesterday's post in which I went off a bit regarding what I feel is a wrong direction in Shakespeare scholarship (i.e. appropriating his writing for ideological purposes). In other words, I think the opposite about this field of study - this one is a right direction for it. The second reason is that it relates to some interesting things that I learned about the different versions of 2 Henry VI, which I'll be writing about tomorrow.

I've mentioned several times the excellent Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory: 1945-2000 (2004), edited by Russ McDonald, as recently as Monday, in fact, and it came to mind again as I was looking through Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) for yesterday's post. Yesterday, I quoted Bloom in regard to the critical position appropriate to working with Shakespeare. Today, I'll quote his thoughts on some of the various critical schools that have sprung up over the last fifty years of Shakespeare study:

"Explaining Shakespeare is an infinite exercise, you will become exhausted long before the plays are emptied out. Allegorizing or ironizing Shakespeare by privileging cultural anthropology or theatrical history or religion or psychoanalysis or politics or Foucault or Marx or feminism works only in limited ways. You are likely, if you are shrewd, to achieve Shakespearean insights into your favorite hobbyhorse, but you are rather less likely to achieve Freudian or Marxist or feminist insight into Shakespeare. His universality will defeat you, his plays know more than you do, and your knowingness consequently will be in danger of dwindling into ignorance."

Not subtle, I'll grant you, but not wrong.

I continue to get the feeling that we're still quite a long way from fully understanding Shakespeare's work. Having spent a fair bit of time recently with the splendid Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory: 1945-2000 (Russ McDonald, editor), and taking in its overview of the trends and highlights of the last fifty years of Shakespeare scholarship, I was most impressed at how he still manages to stay ahead of everyone. The fact that one writer could inspire so many different ideas, so many schools of thought, for 400 years- it's simply staggering. And although I was impressed by the variety of thought, I'm not sure that the book shows that many strides have been made toward understanding either the size of Shakespeare's accomplishment or the sophistication of his themes and techniques. Furthermore, many important plays and poems are practically not discussed at all, in favour of the more familiar ones, those we would find in high school programs. That's fair enough I suppose, but I do hope that some progress is made on all the fronts mentioned above in the fifty years to follow. To sum up: I do recommend the book, but Shakespeare, for the most part, remains an undiscovered country.

One of the most interesting critical comments that I've read recently comes from the book that I mentioned in last Tuesday's post: Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000, edited by Russ McDonald, and more specifically the essay entitled Rabbits, Ducks and Henry V by Norman Rabkin. The puzzling title is entwined with its premise, as it refers to a piece of op-art which "we can see as either a rabbit or a duck". Rabkin argues that the two possible interpretations of the character of Henry V (either as a great leader and king or as a vicious war criminal) are almost impossible to mentally compromise, and that this was done intentionally. Here is how he puts it: "I am going to argue that in Henry V Shakespeare creates a work whose ultimate power is precisely the fact that it points in two opposite directions, virtually daring us to choose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us." This strikes me as being both revolutionary and accurate, and it brings me back to a point I argued in an earlier post - that Shakespeare's primary interest was not the characters in his plays, but rather the people in the audience. The spectator (or reader) is the true protagonist of a Shakespeare play. She or he is the only real battleground.

I've just started reading Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000 (Russ McDonald, editor) from 2004, and it looks like it's going to be splendid. McDonald has selected representative essays from each of the schools of criticism that were (and are) prevalent in the recent study of Shakespeare and given each a brief but thorough introduction. I'll be writing more about the book as I make my way through it in the days ahead, but for today's post I'd just like to share my wonder at how a body of work written 400 years ago can stand up to being viewed from perspectives as diverse as those contained in the fourteen chapters of this book (have a look at the table of contents: http://www.amazon.ca/Shakespeare-Anthology-Criticism-Theory-1945-2000/dp/0631234888) and still not be exhausted in terms of meaning. I'd like to see any of the literature proposed as its replacement in the curriculum do the same.