Talk:Bad quarto

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The article says: "He focused on four early quartos: Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry V (1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), and Hamlet (1603). His reasons for citing these three texts(...)" Is 'three' a mistake there or is something missing in this paragraph? (forgot to login, sorry) --LodeRunner 03:50, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, "three" was a mistake. Ugajin 03:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The bad quartos are a problem throughout Elizabethan drama, not a special Shakespearean issue. Greene's Orlando Furioso, Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (1604), Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster (1620), Peele's Edward I and the anonymous The True Tragedy of Richard III are all examples of non-Shakespearean bad quartos. Also The Taming of a Shrew is not usually considered an example of a bad quarto. And there is no mention of Leo Kirschbaum's work on the subject, which given his importance in the field, seems a glaring oversight, especially as Hardin Craig is mentioned, whose work was much less influential.

While my personal sympathies are with the POV expressed in this article, it does seem to me to be slanted against the standard mainstream view of the subject (or at least what was the standard mainstream view when I was in school). Torkmusik (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

— I added a paragraph to give at least an acknowledgement of the non-Shakespearean bad quartos. How detailed a treatment of the matter do you think is needed? Ugajin (talk) 10:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have two problems with this article.

1. There are very few sources within the article, however as this is a low priority article, this is not exactly a pressing issue in my opinion.

2. This is my main problem. The article needs "dumbed down," so to speak. Quite honestly, it currently reads as though someone used a thesaurus even when there was no need for one. I understand that someone with a large amount of knowledge on this particular subject could have written the article, however it is not accessible to the average person (without a dictionary) who may have, like me, clicked on the article link out of curiosity and would like to learn more about it. I am uncomfortable editing this article because I fully admit that in certain parts, I am completely unsure about what the original author was talking about. On a similar note, do we really need that many semicolons?

@Clockchime: "Piracy" in the sense being used in this article refers to copyright infringement (unauthorized and unlawful copy of copyrighted material), which makes no sense at all in this context, because at the time being discussed (1600 to 1630), copyright simply did not exist. As such, use of the term here implying lack of authorization by the copyright holder is an anachronism by several decades. It also makes no sense, and is biased, to call the copying "unauthorized" (in the lead, no less!) if there was no legal requirement to obtain authorization in the first place.

In addition, I may have missed that, but I see no in-text attribution of "piracy" or "pirate" in the article as you claim.

good and bad examples), and as such it's one step further from simply having inline references, which is all I see here. LjL (talk) 14:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply

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Note: I brought this to the attention of WikiProject Law. LjL (talk) 14:47, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The word “piracy” was used in the 1500s and in the 1600s for a practice that is described in the article, it cannot be said that the term is being used anachronistically. It should be understood that the “Bad Quarto" idea is a modern theory that regards practices in the world of printing in the English Renaissance. Not everyone agrees with the theory, but the scholars (like Pollard) who formulated the theory are the source of the words and definitions that express the theory. Some scholars may disagree with the words they chose when the theory was formulated — but the theory is now stuck with those words. And if the theory is beginning to show its faults, then so be it. It is legitimate for scholars to criticize the expression of a theory for its vocabulary, and if Wikipedia attempts to “clean up” the language, to make it “sound better” or for any other reason, then Wikipedia would be removing from the subject and the article a legitimate area of criticism. This rather short article has a wealth of sources that use the word “piracy” as Pollard used it: there are twenty-six attributions to reliable sources. The legal situation for ownership of texts was not a free-for-all before the system of copyrights fully developed. Plays were registered with the Stationers' Register, and that was a nascent version of the copyright law. Perhaps a compromise might be to have the word “piracy” attached to a phrase like “piracy, as the word was used in the 1500s …” or “piracy as it was used in by Pollard”? Clockchime (talk) 04:38, 23 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The latter type of thing ("piracy as it was used by Pollard", or something like "Pollard described this practice as 'piracy'") is exactly what

WP:NPOV dictates that the lead section describe the article's subject and make a summary; its place is not to develop on specific scholarly theories. Those can be elaborated on in the body. LjL (talk) 16:40, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply

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This article is about the “Bad Quarto” theory, which was invented in 1909. The man who invented it used the word “pirate” to describe the theory. The word “pirate” in his usage is a definitive component, as the word “gravity” is to the theories of Einstein. “Pirate” has been used ever since in the literature that discusses the “Bad Quarto”. Various forms of the word (pirate, pirated, piracy, piratical) have been commonly used in Shakespearean scholarship and to describe literary theft in Elizabethan London dating back at least to 1565. It is a word with a long, venerable history and tradition. When “piracy” is used for “literary theft” it has it’s own entry in most dictionaries, and is not there labeled as an obscenity or anything inappropriate. A synonym for the word, such as “thief”, is not any more neutral or euphemistically sensitive to the person being referred to. The word’s etymological credentials are respectable, it has evolved from the ancient Greek language. It is a principle of Wikipedia to accurately reflect the reliable sources, which in this case commonly use the word “pirate” to discuss the “Bad Quarto” theory. If there is an objection to the use of the word being used to describe this part of the “Bad Quarto” idea and the particular Elizabethan thieves, the objection needs to be stated: What is really at issue? What is the principle? Why should we reduce WP’s use of the English language by limiting this word? If we are concerned that the thieves themselves will be offended, those particular “pirates”, are no longer with us; if they were still alive they would be near to their 500th birthday. The problem can’t possibly be that we need to protect children who might run across the word “pirate” while reading Wikipedia. I can’t agree with the suggestion that Wikipedia “requires” in-text attributions in this case. It seems too elementary, similar to articles that hyperlink common words like dog and cat. We’re not children, right? When you say that WP “requires” in-text attributions — “requires” is a strong word that is contradicted by Wikipedia’s fifth pillar. At any rate I can’t find the word “requires” in the guideline that you are probably referring to. It may be your own contribution to give some rhetorical emphasis to the idea you’re promoting. You suggest that the word should be restricted “if some scholars actually disagree with that label”. Those scholars don’t exist. The word “pirate” is commonly and freely used in the literature regarding the “Bad Quarto” theory by scholars, and no one disagrees with it, no one blushes, no one appears to be bothered. And, come to think of it, what is wrong with a word being “value laden” — isn’t that a good thing? You suggest that “the article itself also, and primarily, exists to simply describe these texts”. Not true. This particular article exists to describe the concept that is the title of the article. I appreciate that we are both interested in the “Bad quartos” idea, it is a topic that lately, unfortunately, seems to be fading in interest, and that we are able to discuss all this in good faith. Clockchime (talk) 14:35, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

   The concept obviously apply beyond the Bard's plays, but surely his are a topic relative to which other BQs are am obscure sidelight: his can be discussed without any reference, other than a hatnote, to theirs, and theirs can profitably be shortened by saying that many considerations relevant to his are applicable to theirs, listing only those that apply with at most slight modification to theirs, and explaining in detail those that are irrelevant to his or that fail to parallel the pattern in his.
--Jerzy•t 07:06, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The article already contains a summary of some leading sources which oppose the bad quarto theory of 1909. The alternative explanations being offered include the suggestion that Shakespeare revised his plays, leading to the Folio of 1623 differing from the earlier Quartos (something which I will discuss in a moment), and the suggestion that he abridged his plays for performance by a reduced cast (something else which needs further discussion).

The article doesn't appear to consider as significant the fact that, although the folio is a printed text, these are plays for performance; and it is a striking failing (not of the article but of the scholarship on which it reports) that a lack of attention has been given to the fact that the text of 1623 is ipso facto the publication of these plays in only their latest form, and which therefore must not be treated as if the text was that of a novel: it is not unchanging, because it is a performance-based entertainment, subject to continuous development in performance, and which evolved over the course of many performances.

The most important point to be made is that, in the theatre, a play can never (unlike a novel) be said to have a fixed and immutable form. When written down, the most that can be said of a play is that this is a snapshot of its text, as it stands at that moment: one which has been contributed to by the actors - no doubt unintentionally as much as deliberately - and that it is an on-going collaboration between the author and his cast. Shakespearean scholars have, unimaginatively, treated the Folio as if it was a novel, written down on a once-for-all basis, as a product of one man. In theatrical terms, that is a nonsense. Theatrical performance is inevitably a collaboration, and there is nothing at all unexpected to see that a snapshot of Hamlet, as written down in 1603, in a Quarto, is significantly different to the form in which it was being performed in 1623, 20 years later, as recorded in the Folio.

Too much literary "scholarship", too little understanding of the theatre, has been the governing principle in this field. It took 300 years to come up with the absurd idea, in 1909, that in 20 years of performance between 1603 and 1623 the text of the play, as performed, would not have changed (in an age in which, most likely, none of the cast could read or write, so had to carry 4 hours of dialogue in their memory). In the modern theatre, today, actors develop their part over a long run, changing lines here and there, and over a few short weeks can end up with a much altered (and improved) production.

The bad quarto theory, reluctantly giving ground to the notion that Shakespeare did some re-writes, continues to ignore the reality that he most likely could not read nor write (but dictated his dialogue to a clerk), and that the changes would have evolved in performance (since his cast could not read either, so could not be given pink pages of script revisions).

The bad quarto theory is simply a bad theory. But there are still too many academics treating play scripts as if they were holy writ, which were only writ down after the fact: ex post facto. Stephen Poppitt 08:58, 15 April 2019 (UTC)