Meeting and NEER Conference Session 2007

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Current by Toby Burrows
on May 07, 2007 15:53.

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\*3. "Variation and Mutabilities: Representing Variants in Shakespeare's Texts."*Michael Best Coordinating Editor, Internet Shakespeare Editions Professor Emeritus of English, University of Victoria (B.C., Canada)
One of the most interesting challenges - and opportunities - in the development of interfaces for Early Modern texts in the electronic medium is the representation of variation and uncertainty. Early Modern texts typically present a range of variants and silences, challenging a modern edition as it has to grapple with multiple possible readings. Most  obviously, there will be variant readings from different witnesses; in the Shakespeare world, quarto and Folio versions will often differ in multiple and significant ways. The centuries-old practice of conflation has come under close scrutiny in recent discussions of Shakespeare's texts, and editors have become increasingly uncomfortable with making final decisions about the ambiguities they necessarily face. Early printed plays often omit entrances or exits, with the result that an editor has to choose from many possible alternatives in inserting the appropriate stage direction, and the process of modernization will often force an editor to choose between multiple possibilities, either because the original is suspect, or because words originally ambiguous have become represented by more than one modern alternative. Two recent editions - the Bate/Rasmussen{-}- Folio, and the Thompson/Taylor Arden- Hamlet - push the limits of the print medium in grappling with the representation of multiplicity and uncertainty; both, I will argue, create an "interface" that is fraught with problems, and which obscures as much as it reveals. The computer screen provides us with an opportunity to rethink and re-imagine the interface between text and reader. This paper will discuss the issue of conflation versus deconflation, and will illustrate the problem of choice between variants with representative examples, suggesting how they might be displayed on the screen.

\*4. "Staging Early Drama for the Electronic Age: The Brome and Queen's Men Projects."*Helen Ostovich General Editor, _The Queen's Men Editions_ Professor of English, McMaster University (Canada)