Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts

Monday, November 17, 2008

Preliminary thoughts on the display

If we structure the display around a chronological publication history of Shakespeare, here's one way we could organize it:

Shelf 1 - Earliest texts and first generation of editors / Age of Pope
1600 Midsummer Night's Dream quarto
1632 Second Folio
[1709 Nicholas Rowe - EEBO - skip?]
1725 Pope - SC Archives
1733 Theobald - attacked Pope
[1747 Warburton - SC Archives - skip?]

Shelf 2 - Second generation of editors / Age of Johnson
1765 Johnson - best known for his preface
1768 Capell - first editor to base his text on quartos and folios
1773 Steevens - worked with Johnson, extremely quarrelsome

Shelf 3 - Third generation of editors / Romantic Age
1793 Reed - first variorum
1818 Bowdler - SC Archives
1821 Boswell - third variorum

I'm least certain about that first shelf - my instinct is that it's important to show an example of an early quarto and folio, just so people know what the editors were drawing from. It might leave us a little squeezed for space, though. Thoughts?