Here is some work I did for NYU Gallatin’s current production of Measure for Measure. You can find it on their blog, at nyugallatin.org/m4m, under “Mapping the Text.” It can also be found on the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival’s website, at http://phillyshakespearetheatre.blogspot.com/.

This is a 4-part series explaining why the original Folio makes a great rehearsal text. So, without any further ado, here’s Part 1!

WTF PUNCTUATION?

Modern editions of Shakespeare are full of nifty things – definitions of arcane words, translations of outdated phrases, notations by editors, introductions and essays by very smart people. If you’re in the classroom or curled up in your bed reading Shakespeare (which we all do, right?), then by all means pick up the Arden edition and enjoy. But if you want to perform Shakespeare, then you have no need of definitions and notations (that’s what dictionaries and the internet are for). You need a roadmap for making interpretive choices; you have to delve into the text and find not just understanding and comprehension but the human experience as well. You have to make it yours. This is by no means an easy feat, even if the plays in question hadn’t been written 400 years ago. Thankfully, Shakespeare gave us a map: the verse.

The pathways for finding interpretive choices are in the verse. Shakespeare is telling the actor something when the verse rhymes (or when it seems it ought to), when the rhythm falters (or when it holds strong), when words repeat, when assonance appears, or when alliteration shows up, etc. Every punctuation mark is a clue, an invitation to a choice, a change in tone. Shakespeare’s actors didn’t get many rehearsals and Shakespeare didn’t write stage directions, but they didn’t need them. He handed it to them in the text.

We use the Folio because it is a primary text. Modern editions dilute all those cool road signs Shakespeare put in the words to guide the actor. The road signs start with punctuation – it’s where actors start mapping a pathway through the text, it’s what editors take their red pens to first, and it’s how readers get tripped up when looking at the Folio. There’s so much punctuation, and it doesn’t seem to be used consistently or correctly. So, part 1 of our “Why the Folio?” series begins with a segment I like to call, “WTF Punctuation?”

Anybody who has suffered through high school English knows that punctuation is annoying and omnipresent. Let’s all just take a moment to be grateful we aren’t living in Elizabethan England: punctuation was even worse, because there was no standardization. Nobody had gotten together to write the Handbook on when to use MLA, when to use APA, or what the heck a semicolon actually does. At the time, punctuation was more of an art than a science, and Shakespeare, Shakespeare was an artist. Understand where the punctuation is pointing you and you’ve got the framework of your text.

The Elizabethans used each punctuation mark employed by the English language in a rather different (but not entirely unrelated) way from the way we use them today. Here is a chart, because I like charts:

Modern Punctuation Elizabethan Punctuation Period Full stop Full stop WITH EMPHASIS Comma Short pause, breath Shift in thought Colon Introduction to a new idea LEAP into new thought Semicolon Pseudo-period, semi-full stop, favorite of English majors, grad students, and JK Rowling Continuation of already stated idea, explanation

The full stops (periods, question marks, and exclamation points) serve the same function in both our time and Shakespeare’s, the difference is the frequency with which they’re used. A full stop indicates the end of a complete thought, and lines of thought in Shakespeare can be long and complicated. You could go through 10 lines of text without ever encountering a full stop, because once you’ve hit one, you’ve reached the end of a road. The sentences following that stop cease to elucidate on that thought. They may offer counter-arguments, exaggerations or rationalizations, but the primary information relating to any given thought is contained within the sentence. So when an actor reaches a full stop, he must bestow on it the requisite importance and get off the highway. The text is a road and the punctuation marks are road signs. Full stops are highway exits, commas are speed limit signs, semicolons are yield, stoplights, one way signs, and colons are the deer that stop in the middle of a dark road, freeze, and then charge your car, breaking their own necks and then limping into the forest to die alone. In other words, pay attention to them.

Let’s look at a bit of this in action. Check this out, from the 1623 Folio, which includes Measure:

These are the first lines from Angelo’s famous post-meeting-Isabella-wow-I’d-hit-that speech. Now, let’s look at them as they appear in the Arden’s edition (edited by J.W. Lever):

From thee: even from thy virtue!

What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault, or mine?

The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha?

And lastly, here’s how it appears on www.opensourceshakespeare.com, a lovely free website containing unedited transcriptions of the complete works for the viewing pleasure of the public:

From thee, even from thy virtue!

What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Ha!

The colon after “from thee” seen in the Folio and the Arden as opposed to OSC’s comma tells the actor there’s a connection between “from thee” and “even from thy virtue” that goes deeper than wordplay. Isabella said “Save your honor” and then exited. Angelo said either “My honor needs saving from you and your virtue” or he said “My honor is in danger… because of you, because your virtue excites me and will cause my honor to slip” One is significantly more sinister than the other. With a comma, the ideas are connected. With a colon, one idea springs out of the other. Imagine Angelo is driving on the highway of his thoughts. He says “from thee,” and then a deer jumps headlong in front of his car carrying a sign that says “EVEN FROM THY VIRTUE.” As the car hits the deer, the realization that he needs saving from her virtue hits Angelo. In many cases (including this one) the information following a colon holds an emotional impact for the character equal to the physical impact of the car hitting the deer. We like to act this out in workshops, since NYU won’t sanction us driving cars into deer…

The Folio keeps “What’s this? What’s this?” as two separate sentences. As I said, a full stop contains enormous significance. Here, it is telling the actor to stop. Seems obvious, yes? But think about it – if you see, “What’s this, what’s this?” you would phrase the line as if both questions are part of the same thought, as if they are one question. But they aren’t! Think about what a momentous moment this is for Angelo. His entire world has been shattered. Repetition in itself is important (something being repeated is something that needs to be paid extra attention to) and when Angelo repeats the same question, twice, with a full stop between them, Shakespeare is practically screaming, “PAY ATTENTION TO THIS.” The question mark gives permission to the actor to take a breath between the questions.

Finally there is the use of “ha?”. This is a word that “has been persecuted by editors. Pope excluded it on metrical grounds, Capell made it a loud expletive, and the Cambridge editors gave it a line to itself. Steevens rejected it as a vulgar actor’s gag (‘this tragedy – Ha!’), Hart wished to ‘throw it out,’ and N.C.S. displaced it to begin line 165” (Lever, note on line 164, Arden Edition Measure for Measure). One little word, 6 different opinions. This in itself is enough to make an actor throw up his hands and say, “Forget it, show me the original, I’ll decide for myself.” The original puts the “ha” as it’s own question, but not its own line. What conclusions can we draw? It is a thought but not an important one – as Lever goes on to say, “As an Elizabethan half-query, half-grunt, ‘ha?’ is unobtrusive and metrically harmless.” But Shakespeare places it at the end of an already completed line, giving that line 11 syllables and a feminine ending. What might this mean? Is Angelo signifying a sort of impotence or block when it comes to answering his own questions? Who knows! But the Folio is giving us the opportunity to ask these questions, which might go otherwise overlooked or ignored.

One thing not contained in this sentence is the lovely semicolon. In fact, it doesn’t appear once in the Folio version of this entire speech. The Arden version uses one, as does the OSC, but in a different place. In general, semicolons appear much more frequently in modern editions than they do in the Folio, because today the semicolon is a useful demi-period and since Shakespeare was a bit scant in his use of full-stops, the use of a semicolon gives the reader a break, so it’s often used to replace commas and colons.

Shakespeare meant for the semicolon to be used the way we use a colon today. It goes statement: explanation or elucidation of statement. As in, “Beer: The cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Or, more to the point, it can be seen here, in Isabella’s closing lines from 2.4, after Angelo has propositioned her:

Arden:

Then, Isabel live chaste, and brother, die:

More than our brother is our chastity.

OSC:

Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:

More than our brother is our chastity.

As I’m sure you all spotted, these three versions are already strikingly different due to their use of the comma. But let’s stick to the semicolon. Using the colon, as Arden and OSC do, turns “more than our brother is our chastity” into some big discovery Isabella is making to herself for why her brother should die, as if this is the first time she realized her piety is more important than her brother’s life. But it’s not. It’s attaching more importance to her statement than is necessary. But for Isabella, “more than our brother is our chastity” is a no-brainer, and she voices it as an explanation and a conclusion to the last 15 lines. Chastity > brother = brother dies. Simple enough. Sometimes a road sign is just a sign, and not a kamikaze deer.

Okay, this concludes the “WTF Punctuation” segment of our show. Stay tuned for the next issue: When Rhythm Isn’t Rhythmic!