English Literature & Creative Writing
The Taylor MacDonald Hamlet Manuscript: A Project of Descriptive and Interpretive Bibliographic Scholarship
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Location
Indianapolis, IN
Subject Area
English Literature & Creative Writing
Start Date
13-4-2018 2:00 PM
End Date
13-4-2018 2:45 PM
Sponsor
Joe Ricke (Taylor University), Ashley Chu (Taylor University)
Description
George MacDonald, a Victorian writer well known for his fairy-tales, was also popular in his day for lectures on literature, especially and including works of Shakespeare. In 1885, he published his own critical edition of The Tragedie of Hamlet, but before doing so, he heavily annotated a copy of the play interleaved with blank pages. Taylor University acquired this manuscript in 2002. Since December 2016, undergraduate students at Taylor have actively engaged in both self-directed and faculty-mentored studies of the manuscript. Our team, under the leadership of two faculty advisors, spent the summer of 2017 comparing the manuscript to the published 1885 Tragedie of Hamlet. During the course of our study, we hoped to learn the provenance of the manuscript by studying its physicality and connecting it to MacDonald's life. Through bibliographic study, we hoped to provide additional proof of MacDonald's extensive scholarship, especially as it pertains to drama and Shakespeare. Furthermore, we began the search for other known MacDonald manuscripts, and aside from the other two known Hamlet manuscripts attributed to him (at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and at the Shakespeare Library in Stratford, UK), we discovered similar interleaved manuscripts by MacDonald of King Lear and Timon of Athens. Each of the three students contributed their own individual study to the project-a literary critical look at MacDonald's perspectives on Shakespeare and Hamlet; a comparative analysis of the manuscript; and a biographical study of MacDonald's development as a Shakespearean scholar.
The Taylor MacDonald Hamlet Manuscript: A Project of Descriptive and Interpretive Bibliographic Scholarship
Indianapolis, IN
George MacDonald, a Victorian writer well known for his fairy-tales, was also popular in his day for lectures on literature, especially and including works of Shakespeare. In 1885, he published his own critical edition of The Tragedie of Hamlet, but before doing so, he heavily annotated a copy of the play interleaved with blank pages. Taylor University acquired this manuscript in 2002. Since December 2016, undergraduate students at Taylor have actively engaged in both self-directed and faculty-mentored studies of the manuscript. Our team, under the leadership of two faculty advisors, spent the summer of 2017 comparing the manuscript to the published 1885 Tragedie of Hamlet. During the course of our study, we hoped to learn the provenance of the manuscript by studying its physicality and connecting it to MacDonald's life. Through bibliographic study, we hoped to provide additional proof of MacDonald's extensive scholarship, especially as it pertains to drama and Shakespeare. Furthermore, we began the search for other known MacDonald manuscripts, and aside from the other two known Hamlet manuscripts attributed to him (at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and at the Shakespeare Library in Stratford, UK), we discovered similar interleaved manuscripts by MacDonald of King Lear and Timon of Athens. Each of the three students contributed their own individual study to the project-a literary critical look at MacDonald's perspectives on Shakespeare and Hamlet; a comparative analysis of the manuscript; and a biographical study of MacDonald's development as a Shakespearean scholar.