Mind's eye: Theatrical editing of Shakespearean text

The director or dramaturg crafting a production script for the performance of a Shakespeare play will use one or more printed versions of the text as a primary source. Due to the eccentricity and diversity of the original printings of the plays in Folio and quarto, subsequent published versions must be edited, but there is little agreement among editors regarding textual practice, and concerns about legibility often outweigh theatrical considerations. Thus, no single edition (other than the Folio) has emerged as a primary resource preferred by practitioners for making theatrical decisions.;This dissertation is a study of published Shakespeare text as source for production scripts examining, in particular, the history of Shakespeare editing for general publication and its relationship to the needs and preferences of theatre practitioners. Using facsimiles, prefaces, and published editions as source materials, this study addresses the privileging of literary versus theatrical concerns in editors' polices and practices as found in widely published editions, and compare them to trends in emendation and adaptation by theatre practitioners as drawn from playscripts, interviews, directors' notes, performance reports, and playing editions. Finally, this study explores the possibility that "theatrical editing"---editing that privileges practitioners and serves primarily as a basis from which to produce theatre---is definable, desirable, and can be made available to practitioners in a reasonably accessible and affordable way.