Synopses & Reviews
This is the first modernized and edited version of the 1622 Othello. By taking this earliest published version of Othello as a book in its own right, Scott McMillin accounts for the mystery of its thousands of differences from the Folio version. This edition, which consists of a detailed introduction, quarto text, select collation and textual notes, is an important book for scholars in Shakespeare and Elizabethan-Jacobean drama, with wide ramifications for other Shakespeare textual studies and for students of early theater history.
Review
"[McMillin's] challenging introduction makes a keen case for rethinking not only the relation between the two printed texts and their manuscript progenitors but also for the relation among writing, performance and print in the early modern theater." Studies in English Literature"This new edition, using modernized spelling and offering substantive textual and collation notes, makes the First Quarto (Q1) accessible for study or performance in nearly original form. Essential for theater practicioners and historians as wel as students and scholars of Shakespeare." Choice"There have been published facsimilies, but Scott McMillin's The First Quarto of Othello is the first modernized and edited version of the 1622 original.... citations in the introduction are plentiful and clearly documented.... university students of Shakespeare and of textual bibliography will find editions in this Early Quartos series both accessible and illuminating." Sixteenth Century Journal
Synopsis
The first modernized and edited version of the 1622 Othello.
About the Author
Scott McMillin is Professor of English at Cornell University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Abbreviations and conventions; Introduction: The textual problem; Q1 and foul papers; Greg sets the standard; Economy in the New Bibliography; Revision or abridgement; New evidence of foul papers?; Grounds for doubt; Walkley, Okes and the 'Cameron Group'; Punctuation; Compositorial prudence; Scribal punctuation and the Barnavelt Manuscript; Other King's-Men plays, 1619-22; Actors' interpolations; Listening; Dictation in the theatres; Mislineation; Playhouse scripts; Summary; Date of the Q1 playscript; Editorial procedure; The Play.