Measure for Measure Ed3 Arden (Arden Shakespeare Third): Third Series (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series)

The first Arden “Measure for Measure” was published in 1905. The second or “New Arden” arrived in 1965. It is the final play to be published in the series that is published as “The Third Arden”. It will be over 60 years before you see another. The front cover has been featured on Amazon for over two years; then a publication date of July 2019 was announced. Publication stalled obviously. It is January 2020 now.Harold Furness did not live to add this play to the trophies that bend my bookshelves that hold his mighty burned-orange Variorums. Rightly described as “magisterial”, the work of this exemplary Victorian will never be surpassed. He reviewed or reprinted every scrap of criticism ever published on the plays. Every Arden has tried to do more, more cheaply. Furness is entertaining in a way that the Ardens rarely allow space for. Deep in his longest expatiations Furness is funny where there is revelation.It was not until 1980, thirty three years after starting work in 1947, that Mark Eccles finished working on the same play for the edition known as “The New Variorum”. Harold’s joyful ghost looks with dismay at the less effective type layout and the proliferation of CAPITALISATION, abbreviations and no jokes; as those who will haunt the empty seats to witness a young woman in a crown leering above a selection of Kellogg’s cereals in the 2020 RSC production of “King John”. But at least we have a Variorum to consult and this Arden is deeply in its debt. One of the most noticeable flaws in this particular Arden is the tedious iteration of references, page after page, to the OED. The Arden has always used The Oxford English Dictionary as a final arbiter and often, like this one, demurely offers suggestions for its next addendum. There is so much of the OED, lifted and updated from Eccles, that it seems that the pedantically obtuse Braunmuller has used its entries at great length as space filler.The play opens with famously unintelligible speech from an unbalanced Duke. Dressed to leave town, he is talking about handing over the reins of his rule to his “first in question” Escalus. I’m quoting from Eccles’ text reproducing The First Folio. Shakespeare, perhaps purposely obtuse, puts a convoluted language into mouth of The Duke of Vienna:Of Gouernment, the properties to vnfold,Would seeme in me t’affect speech & discourse,Since I am put to know, that your owne ScienceExceedes (in that) the lists of all aduiseMy strength can giue you: Then no more remainsBut that, to your sufficiency, as your words is able,And let them worke.After all these years, this last Arden manages to make this bizarre language even more impenetrable. Kenneth Colley, an idiot as a friar and even more idiotic as The Duke, besmirches the BBC 1976 performance of the play. Clearly with no idea that meaning might be attached to these words Colley offers little more than perfect recall. It is a really bad beginning to the play. Perhaps, as some commentators assert: Shakespeare wanted his plays to start with such impenetrable “seeming” merely to create curiosity. If this was the case back then, Shakespeare’s legerdemain now is counter-productive. It’s just too impenetrable. These words have weighed as heavily as variorums, ever since the stage was lumbered with them. Not one of the three Ardens provides clarification. The meaning still escapes, even me, as I read the lines now. It demonstrably escapes Eccles too. The Ardens all avoid paraphrasing passages like this for good editorial reasons, but I hope that in sixty years’ time the Fourth will offer paraphrases with the advisory that they should all be taken advisedly.In charge of the textual part only of this new edition, Braunmuller says: “This amounts to an elaborate refusal to speak of a subject the speaker himself has broached, introduced by a tortuous first line, backed up by a periphrasis (“put to know”) and conveying a diplomatic compliment coupled with self-deprecation”.Perhaps the reason the publishers delayed this swan-song of The Third Arden was the depressing prospect of dumping this turkey from Braunmuller. Let us look at his work as the speech continues: “Editors have found the passage puzzling or incomplete (Bawcett for example, finds half-lines missing after “sufficiency” and before “And”, respectively). If “that”(8) refers to “your own science” (5) and “them” (9) refers to “sufficiency” and “worth” (8), the sentence may be paraphrased as, “There is no more to be done (“no more remains”) than to “let” your knowledge combined with your ability (“sufficiency”) and integrity (“worth”) govern (“work”)”. It is a shame that Samuel Johnson’s very small emendations have not been promoted here instead of this gibberish. If we go back to Arden2 the same passage excited a passage twice as long and admits that it is useless.Here is my fiendishly amateur paraphrase:“I am at a loss for words Escalus when I consider that you know more about the ways of government than I do. Nothing more remains therefore for me to say to you, except that I trust your experience will combine with your talents and free them both to work”.It comes down to manners. James 1 decreed that The Name of The Lord could not be taken in vain. When those friendly compositors A and B of The First Folio got round to M4M and they came across the word “God” in their copy, due to censorship laws, they set the word “Heaven”. Nowadays, instead of “that word” beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet, we explete: “fiddlesticks”; or mouth the “f” word without sound. This signals humour and restraint and MANNERS. Instead of exclaiming “What a way to dress!” Belgian former pro cyclist-turned-reporter Sven Spoormakers faced with an eye-popping picture taken in South America of the low cut T-shirt and microphonic nipples of reporter Belen Mendiguren tweeted, much as H.H.Furness might have done: “IS IT COLD IN ARGENTINA?”The first Arden “Measure for Measure” was published in 1905. The second or “New Arden” arrived in 1965. It is the final play to be published in the series that is published as “The Third Arden”. It will be over 60 years before you see another. The front cover has been featured on Amazon for over two years; then a publication date of July 2019 was announced. Publication stalled obviously. It is January 2020 now.Harold Furness did not live to add this play to the trophies that bend the bookshelves that hold his mighty burned-orange Variorums. Rightly described as “magisterial”, the work of this exemplary Victorian will never be surpassed. He reviewed or reprinted every scrap of criticism ever published on the plays. Every Arden has tried to do more, more cheaply. Furness is entertaining in a way that the Ardens rarely allow space for. Deep in his longest expatiations Furness is funny where there is revelation.It was not until 1980, thirty three years after starting work in 1947, that Mark Eccles finished working on the same play for the edition known as “The New Variorum”. Harold’s joyful ghost looks with dismay at the less effective type layout and the proliferation of CAPITALISATION, abbreviations and no jokes; as those who will haunt the empty seats to witness a young woman in a crown leering above a selection of Kellogg’s cereals in the 2020 RSC production of “King John”. But at least we have a Variorum to consult and this Arden is deeply in its debt. One of the most noticeable flaws in this particular Arden is the tedious iteration of references, page after page, to the OED. The Arden has always used The Oxford English Dictionary as a final arbiter and often, like this one, demurely offers suggestions for its next addendum. There is so much of the OED, lifted and updated from Eccles, that it seems that the pedantically obtuse Braunmuller has used its entries at great length as space filler.The play opens with famously unintelligible speech from an unbalanced Duke. Dressed to leave town, he is talking about handing over the reins of his rule to his “first in question” Escalus. I’m quoting from Eccles’ text reproducing The First Folio. Shakespeare, perhaps purposely obtuse, puts a convoluted language into mouth of The Duke of Vienna:Of Gouernment, the properties to vnfold,Would seeme in me t’affect speech & discourse,Since I am put to know, that your owne ScienceExceedes (in that) the lists of all aduiseMy strength can giue you: Then no more remainsBut that, to your sufficiency, as your words is able,And let them worke.After all these years, this last Arden manages to make this bizarre language even more impenetrable. Kenneth Colley, an idiot as a friar and even more idiotic as The Duke, besmirches the BBC 1976 performance of the play. Clearly with no idea that meaning might be attached to these words Colley offers little more than perfect recall. It is a really bad beginning to the play. Perhaps, as some commentators assert: Shakespeare wanted his plays to start with such impenetrable “seeming” merely to create curiosity. If this was the case back then, Shakespeare’s legerdemain now is counter-productive. It’s just too impenetrable. These words have weighed as heavily as variorums, ever since the stage was lumbered with them. Not one of the three Ardens provides clarification. The meaning still escapes, even me, as I read the lines now. It demonstrably escapes Eccles too. The Ardens all avoid paraphrasing passages like this for good editorial reasons, but I hope that in sixty years’ time the Fourth will offer paraphrases with the advisory that they should all be taken advisedly.In charge of the textual part only of this new edition, Braunmuller says: “This amounts to an elaborate refusal to speak of a subject the speaker himself has broached, introduced by a tortuous first line, backed up by a periphrasis (“put to know”) and conveying a diplomatic compliment coupled with self-deprecation”.Perhaps the reason the publishers delayed this swan-song of The Third Arden was the depressing prospect of dumping this turkey from Braunmuller. Let us look at his work as the speech continues: “Editors have found the passage puzzling or incomplete (Bawcett for example, finds half-lines missing after “sufficiency” and before “And”, respectively). If “that”(8) refers to “your own science” (5) and “them” (9) refers to “sufficiency” and “worth” (8), the sentence may be paraphrased as, “There is no more to be done (“no more remains”) than to “let” your knowledge combined with your ability (“sufficiency”) and integrity (“worth”) govern (“work”)”. It is a shame that Samuel Johnson’s very small emendations have not been promoted here instead of this gibberish. If we go back to Arden2 the same passage excited a passage twice as long and admits that it is useless.Here is my fiendishly amateur paraphrase:“I am at a loss for words Escalus when I consider that you know more about the ways of government than I do. Nothing more remains therefore for me to say to you, except that I trust your experience will combine with your talents and free them both to work”.It comes down to manners. James 1 decreed that The Name of The Lord could not be taken in vain. When those friendly compositors A and B of The First Folio got round to M4M and they came across the word “God” in their copy, due to censorship laws, they set the word “Heaven”. Nowadays, instead of “that word” beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet, we explete: “fiddlesticks”; or mouth the “f” word without sound. This signals humour and restraint and manners. Instead of exclaiming “What a way to dress!” Belgian former pro cyclist-turned-reporter Sven Spoormakers faced with an eye-popping picture taken in South America of the low cut T-shirt and microphonic nipples of reporter Belen Mendiguren tweeted, much as H.H.Furness might have done: “IS IT COLD IN ARGENTINA?”