The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition Volume 7: A European Society, 1947–1953 by Ronald Schuchard

Author:Ronald Schuchard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1. As printed in Der Vers: Vier Essays. Berlin and Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1952. Pp. 150, [1]; 51-79. The lecture “The Development of Shakespeare’s Verse” was first delivered in two parts at Edinburgh University on 27-28 Oct 1937 and then at Bristol University on 2-3 Oct 1941 (5.531). It was then extensively revised and delivered in English in Hamburg on 30 or 31 Oct 1949, and elsewhere in Germany during TSE’s three-week tour, as well as at the University of Wisconsin on 13 Nov 1950. The text was translated into German anonymously by Gerhard Hensel and published as “Shakespeares Verskunst” [Shakespeare’s Versification], Der Monat, 2 (May 1950), [198]-207. It was reprinted with very minor revisions in a German collection of TSE’s essays, Der Vers: Vier Essays (1952).

In his letter to John Palmer, editor of the Sewanee Review, TSE wrote on 14 Sept 1949: “There will be a lecture on Shakespeare’s versification which I have already delivered in this country and which I don’t want to print until I have expanded it.” In his 1956 preface to OPP, TSE explained: “I wish that I could have found worthy of inclusion two lectures delivered at Edinburgh University before the War, on ‘The Development of Shakespeare’s Verse’; for what I was trying to say still seems to me worth saying. But the lectures struck me as badly written, and in need of thorough revision – a task to be deferred to some indefinite future” (8.225). The text was never published in English.

TSE’s copy of George Pierce Baker’s The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (New York: Macmillan, 1907), bearing his bookplate and signed and dated 1909, is in his library.

The spelling of the German translation has been modernized following the orthography reform of 1996 (revised in 2004 and 2006).

2. Hamlet, first performed 1600-01, first printed 1603; Macbeth, composed ca. 1606, first performed 1611, first printed in the First Folio of 1623; Othello, composed 1602, first performed 1604, first printed in quarto 1622; King Lear, composed 1605-06, first performed 1606, printed in quarto 1608; Antony and Cleopatra, composed ca. 1606-07, first performed 1607, first printed in the First Folio.

As TSE traces the development of Shakespeare’s versification, the works discussed are here dated variously by composition, entry in the Stationers’ Register, first performance, and first printing.

3. Romeo and Juliet, composed 1594-95, first printed in quarto 1597

4. TSE may be criticizing his own earlier assessment of Hamlet as a “failure,” a view that he shared with J. M. Robertson in 1919 (2.128, n.21).

5. Richard II, composed ca. 1595, first printed 1597, first recorded performance 1601; Richard III, composed 1592-93, first printed 1597, first recorded performance 1600-01; Troilus and Cressida, entered in the Stationers’ Register on 7 Feb 1603, first printed 1609; Measure for Measure, first performed 1604, printed in the First Folio.

6. The Merchant of Venice, composed ca. 1595-96, entered in the Stationers’ Register 1598, printed in quarto 1600; first recorded performance 1605. Sir Henry Irving first produced The Merchant of Venice and played the role of Shylock at the Lyceum Theatre on 1 Nov 1879.

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