Shakespeare's errant texts : textual form and linguistic style in Shakespearean 'bad' quartos and co-authored plays / Lene B. Petersen.

Shakespeare's errant texts : textual form and linguistic style in Shakespearean 'bad' quartos and co-authored plays / Lene B. Petersen.

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

xx, 310 p. : ill. ; 24 cm

"If more than half of Shakespeare's texts survive in more than one version, and an increasing number of his texts appear to have been co-authored with other playwrights, how do we define what constitutes a 'Shakespearean text'? Recent studies have proposed answers to this crucial question by investigating 'memorial reconstruction' and co-authorship, yet significantly they have not yet considered properly the many formal and stylistic synergies, interchanges and reciprocities between oral/memorial and authorial composition, and the extent to which these factors are traceable in the surviving playtexts of the period. It is precisely these synergies that this book investigates, making this site of interaction between actorly and authorial input its primary focus. Petersen proposes new quantitative methodologies for approaching form and style in Shakespearean texts. The book's main case studies are Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus - plays drawn from the middle of Shakespeare's working career"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Oral-memorial transmission and the formation of Shakespeare's texts
The Elizabethan dramatic industry and industrious Shakespeare
Decomposing the text: oral transmission and the theory of the Zielform
The popular play and the popular ballad: evidence of 'Quarto mechanics' in the multiple texts of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet
Conclusion
Recomposing the author: some tools for positioning the role of the playwright in dramatic transmission
Introduction to quantitative textual analysis: computational stylistics, cognition and the missing author
Stylometry and textual multiplicity I: contextual stylistics and the case of Titus Andronicus
Stylometry and textual multiplicity II: testing the grading between authorship and 'orality' in the scenes of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet
Conclusion
Appendix I. Scenic units in Q1 Hamlet/Der Bestrafte Brudermord and Romeo and Juliet/Romio und Julietta
Appendix II. 'Meet it is I set it downe': verbal evidence of quarto mechanics in the short versions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet
Appendix III. Table of results for discriminant analysis on 257 plays, using 50 principal components
Appendix IV. Examples of principal component scree plots for three-text Hamlet by scenes and three-text Romeo and Juliet by scenes.

Great Britain -- England -- Cambridge.

PR3071 .P48 2010