Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England i RELATED TITLES The Arden Introduction to Reading Shakespeare ISBN 9781472581020 Jeremy Lopez Imagining Cleopatra: Performing Gender and Power in Early Modern England ISBN 9781350058965 Yasmin Arshad Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ISBN 9781350109506 Will Tosh Shakespeare and the Gods ISBN 9781474284271 Virginia Mason Vaughan Shakespeare and the Politics of Nostalgia: Negotiating the Memory of Elizabeth I on the Jacobean Stage ISBN 9781350067226 Yuichi Tsukada Shakespeare on the Record: Researching an Early Modern Life ISBN 9781350003514 edited by Hannah Leah Crummé Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance ISBN 9781408146927 edited by Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern ii Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England Edited by Tiffany Stern iii THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Arden Shakespeare logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Tiffany Stern and contributors, 2020 Tiffany Stern and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xv–xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Marks of Genius exhibition display (© Bodleian Library, University of Oxford) This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third- party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-350-05134-8 ePDF: 978-1-350-05136-2 eBook: 978-1-350-05135-5 Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To fi nd out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters . iv CONTENTS List of Illustrations viii List of Contributors x Acknowledgements xv Introduction 1 Tiffany Stern Part One Documents Before Performance 1 Writing a Play with Robert Daborne 17 Lucy Munro 2 A Sharers’ Repertory 33 Holger Schott Syme 3 Parts and the Playscript: Seven Questions 52 James J. Marino 4 Undocumented: Improvisation, Rehearsal, and the Clown 68 Richard Preiss v vi CONTENTS Part Two Documents of Performance 5 Rethinking Prologues and Epilogues on Page and Stage 91 Sonia Massai and Heidi Craig 6 Title- and Scene-B oards: The Largest, Shortest Documents 111 Matthew Steggle 7 What Is a Staged Book? Books as ‘Actors’ in the Early Modern English Theatre 128 Sarah Wall-Randell Part Three Documents After Performance 8 ‘Flowers for English Speaking’: Play Extracts and Conversation 155 Andr á s Kis é ry 9 Shakespearean Extracts, Manuscript Cataloguing, and the Misrepresentation of the Archive 175 Laura Estill 10 Typography After Performance 193 Claire M. L. Bourne 11 Shakespeare the Balladmonger? 216 Tiffany Stern CONTENTS vii Part Four Lost Documents 12 Lost Documents, Absent Documents, Forged Documents 241 Roslyn L. Knutson and David McInnis Afterword: ‘What’s Past Is Prologue’ 260 Peter Holland Index 273 ILLUSTRATIONS 4.1 The Book of Sir Thomas More , B.L. MS Harleian 7368, fol. 7r. By permission of the British Library. 75 5.1 Rate of publication and rate of inclusion of Prologues and Epilogues in First Editions. 93 5.2 First Editions featuring Prologues and Epilogues, per Type of Play. 96 6.1 Signs imagined by William Percy, superimposed onto an image of the Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia. By permission of the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse. 116 7.1 The Geneva New Testament (1557), B.L. C.17.a.15. By permission of the British Library. 141 9.1 ‘Songs from Otway’s Plays’ in Peter and Oliver Le Neve (1661–1729), and Thomas Martin (1697–1771), Manuscript Collection ( c .mid seventeenth century), B.L. Add MS 27406, f. 114 v. © The British Library Board. 185 10.1 A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598), A4v–B1r. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 200 10.2 A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598), E1r. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 205 10.3 A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598), E2v–E3r. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 206 viii ILLUSTRATIONS ix 10.4 A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598), E3r. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 207 10.5 A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost (London: Cuthbert Burby, 1598), G3v–G4rr. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 208 11.1 Anon, No- body, and some-b ody (1606), title page. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 225 11.2 Anon, A Ballad of the Lamentable and Tragical History of Titus Andronicus (c. 1660), Huth 50 (69). By permission of the British Library. 228