. I love the books. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not cheap and flimsy, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not beautiful. If they were beautiful, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d worry about ruining them.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Introduction points out the difficulties in getting the text right. For example, this edition of Romeo and Juliet uses the quote above. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a single early text that matches that exact quote.<\/p>\n
The earlier texts each have their own slightly different variations, and editors have to decide whether to pick one of them, or go with some mix of them, basically guessing at what the original could have been.<\/p>\n
So there are apparently three early texts to choose from. Here are their versions:<\/p>\n
First Quarto, 1597. (This almost matches the modern version, but leaves out a whole line, and seems to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153band\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hand.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d):<\/p>\n
Whats Mountague? It is nor band nor foote,
\nNor arme, nor face, nor any other part.
\nWhats in a name? That which we call a Rose,
\nBy any other name would smell as sweet:<\/p>\n
Second Quarto, 1599. (This one is pretty different from the modern. A major difference is that she asks Romeo to be another name belonging to man. The modern version doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say that at all):<\/p>\n
Whats Mountague? it is nor hand nor foote,
\nNor arme nor face, o be some other name
\nBelonging to a man.
\nWhats in a name that which we call a rose
\nBy any word would smell as sweete,<\/p>\n
First Folio, 1623. (This is similar to the last one, but weirder.):<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mountague? it is nor hand nor foote,
\nNor arme, nor face, O be some other name
\nBelonging to a man.
\nWhat? in a names that which we call a Rose
\nBy any other word would smell as sweete,<\/p>\n
The punctuation changes don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean much, as this was to be spoken, not read, and the spelling doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter either. But the changes in words and meaning are significant, and we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know which is right. And, as the Introduction says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this is the most famous speech in the play.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In the end, I find it interesting, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it matters much. This stuff was entertainment. Every night, the actors probably read them slightly differently, anyway. And they probably changed lines here and there in response to the way that audiences reacted to earlier shows.<\/p>\n
In Shakespeare\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s day, no one suspected that each exact word would be some precious jewel for future literary miners to extract. Get the point across, get the poetry across (when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to be poetry), entertain the audience, and call it a day.<\/p>\n
But there are still high-schoolers across the world who are told that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re memorizing Shakespeare, rather than the best guess of a modern editor. And they still probably think it impresses women, and it still probably does not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So I got my Shakespeare, as mentioned in an earlier post. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}