"Shakespeare in/and Manuscript"
Shakespeare Association of America (SAA)
Toronto, Canada
28 - 30 March 2013

While the only extant Shakespearean holograph manuscript is notoriously limited to a short scene in a collaborative play (Sir Thomas More), there is a wealth of other Shakespearean manuscripts. Traditionally, the value of these manuscripts was seen to reside in the fact that their texts could provide potentially useful variants for editors in pursuit of a so-called authentic Shakespearean text. Today, although these views have evolved, our understanding of the social and historical dissemination of Shakespeare’s text tends to be informed mainly by the rise of Shakespeare in print.

Participants in this seminar will be invited to consider such phenomena as the cultural mobility of Shakespeare in manuscript, textual bricolage, or indeed the elaboration of a parallel cultural economy—separate but also intimately tied the world of print. Contributors will delve into the archive to explore these other manuscripts, including promptbooks, miscellanies, commonplace books, and manuscript marginalia in printed books. Beyond literary manuscripts that contain Shakespearean text, this seminar encourages participants to consider alternative sources such as account books, songbooks, and diaries, which may also offer insight into particular productions. This investigation of primary materials will highlight the varied and contingent responses to Shakespeare’s plays and poems from the early modern period to the present.

The goal of this seminar is to encourage participants to consider the wide range of Shakespearean manuscripts, to showcase a variety of critical approaches to these primary texts, and to explore some of the new (and often digital) ways to access these sources. Participants will share their expertise in bibliography and textual studies while also providing historical and cultural contexts in which to understand these materials. If possible, the members of this seminar will visit the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library or the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (University of Toronto).

If you are interested, please register for the seminar by 15 September 2012 on the website of the Shakespeare Association of America. Feel free to contact us also if you have any questions.

Laura Estill
University of Victoria, Canada
lestill [at] gmail.com

Jean-Christophe Mayer
French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS)
and University of Montpellier
Jean-Christophe.Mayer [at] univ-montp3.fr