Reviewed by:

• The Invention of Shakespeare and Other Essays by Stephen Orgel
• Fran Teague

The Invention of Shakespeare gathers twelve of Stephen Orgel’s essays. In his opening essay, he declares the collection’s theme to be “the invention of Shakespeare, the creation of an author suited to [End Page 113] the increasing canonicity of the works” (1). The book steadily resists canonization, however, for the pleasure of the glitches (Orgel’s term).

In chapter one, the glitches include the way that rumor, forgery, and misjudgment have forged our understanding of Shakespeare’s life and works. If a teacher talks about what the Chandos portrait tells us about Shakespeare the man, how sailors staged Hamlet off the coast of Sierra Leone, or why Shakespeare used Don Quixote in his lost play Cardenio, the class learns things likely to be false. The history of how the myth of Shakespeare’s life and works came to be, so well discussed by scholars like Schoenbaum and Taylor, is an important part of this book, but unlike his predecessors, Orgel uses the textual glitches as a heuristic, generating new ways of understanding why the glitches matter. Orgel remarks early on, after noting that the text as we have it today is a script: “The script is not the play, it is only where the play starts. The actors turn it into a play, and every revival of the play—and indeed, every performance—is different. There is never a “final version” (2). In literary discussions, critics often want to believe in a master-text and may resist the idea that editing a play, reading a play, and watching a play differ from editing, reading, or experiencing prose fiction or poetry or other forms. Chapter two, “The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole,” focuses on canonicity. Specifically, it concerns editors and the way that they imagine and improve on Shakespeare in the guise of improving on previous editions. The dizzying way that certain plays are in the canon, out of the canon, ping-ponging back and forth, makes for fascinating (and sometimes comic) reading. After the first chapter, however, the essays are varied: Orgel writes some in his role as a textual editor, some as a sophisticated reader, and some as a play-goer.

In his introduction, Orgel groups together five of the essays, “No Sense of an Ending,” “The Poetics of Incomprehensibility,” “Two Household Friends,” “Getting Things Wrong,” and “Revising King Lear.” These essays “focus in various ways on the sorts of problems I have termed glitches, whether typographical, grammatical, or discursive” (3). He also mentions that two essays, “Food for Thought” and “Venice at the Globe,” were written for groups that share an interest in early modern culture. Two others, “Danny Scheie’s Shakespeare” and “Shakespeare all’italiana,” consider performance from the perspective of an audience member. One essay, “Lascivious Grace,” is perhaps the most personal, but goes unmentioned in the introduction.

Chapter three, “No Sense of an Ending,” concerns Shakespeare’s poetry (and that of others) and the way that a poem may seem incomplete rather than the product of an artistic or printer’s choice. The argument also suggests that the sonnets are personal, autobiographical, in what they say about homosexual and adulterous relationships. The following chapter, “Lascivious Grace,” presents Orgel as a reader, analyzing character (especially Iago) in Othello and picking up on threads from the previous essay. This chapter is a revised version of work published in Orgel’s Spectacular Performances, and it shows him as reader, as textual editor, and as a director who “stages the play in my own mind” (50). But he also writes that “two friends to whom I have proposed this [character analysis of Iago] haven’t liked it; both objected that making Iago gay explains too much, that malignity ought to be left motiveless” (51). As a reader, I have no problem acknowledging that productions may certainly offer homoeroticism as an important part of the play, but I think other important elements are race and Desdemona’s choices (and agency), which the essay does...

审核人：

• 斯蒂芬奥格尔的莎士比亚和其他散文的发明
• 弗兰蒂格

莎士比亚的发明收集了斯蒂芬奥格尔的十二篇文章。在他的开篇文章中，他宣布该系列的主题是“莎士比亚的发明，一位适合[End Page 113]作品日益正典的作家的创作”(1)。然而，这本书坚决抵制经典化，以寻求故障的乐趣（Orgel 的术语）。

在第一章中，错误包括谣言、伪造和误判如何影响了我们对莎士比亚生平和作品的理解。如果一位老师谈论 Chandos 肖像告诉我们关于莎士比亚这个人的什么，水手们如何在塞拉利昂海岸上演哈姆雷特，或者为什么莎士比亚在他失传的戏剧Cardenio中使用堂吉诃德，班级学到的东西可能是错误的。莎士比亚生平和作品神话的历史是本书的重要组成部分，像 Schoenbaum 和 Taylor 这样的学者对此进行了深入讨论，但与他的前辈不同，Orgel 使用文本错误作为启发式方法，从而产生新的方法理解为什么故障很重要。Orgel 在注意到我们今天拥有的文本是一个剧本后，很早就评论道：“剧本不是剧本，它只是剧本的开始。演员们把它变成了戏剧，而戏剧的每一次复兴——​​事实上，每一次表演——都是不同的。从来没有“最终版本”（2）。在文学讨论中，评论家通常希望相信大师文本，并且可能会抵制编辑剧本、阅读剧本和观看剧本不同于编辑、阅读、或体验散文小说或诗歌或其他形式。第二章“整体的欲望与追求”着重于正典性。具体来说，它涉及编辑以及他们以改进先前版本为幌子对莎士比亚进行想象和改进的方式。某些戏剧在经典中、在经典之外、来回乒乓球的令人眼花缭乱的方式，使阅读变得引人入胜（有时是喜剧）。然而，在第一章之后，随笔有所不同：Orgel 以文本编辑的身份写了一些文章，一些以老练的读者的身份写了一些，还有一些是作为一个看戏的人写的。某些戏剧在正典中、在正典之外、来回乒乓球的令人眼花缭乱的方式，使阅读变得引人入胜（有时是滑稽的）。然而，在第一章之后，随笔有所不同：Orgel 以文本编辑的身份写了一些文章，一些以老练的读者的身份写了一些，还有一些是作为一个看戏的人写的。某些戏剧在正典中、在正典之外、来回乒乓球的令人眼花缭乱的方式，使阅读变得引人入胜（有时是滑稽的）。然而，在第一章之后，随笔有所不同：Orgel 以文本编辑的身份写了一些文章，一些以老练的读者的身份写了一些，还有一些是作为一个看戏的人写的。

在他的介绍中，Orgel 将五篇文章组合在一起，“没有结束的感觉”、“不可理解的诗学”、“两个家庭朋友”、“弄错了”和“修订李尔王”。这些文章“以各种方式关注我称之为故障的各种问题，无论是印刷、语法还是话语”(3)。他还提到两篇文章，“思想的食粮”和“环球威尼斯”，是为对早期现代文化有共同兴趣的群体而写的。另外两个，“Danny Scheie's Shakespeare”和“Shakespeare all'italiana”，从观众的角度考虑表演。一篇名为“Lascivious Grace”的文章可能是最个人化的，但在引言中没有提及。

第三章，“没有结尾的感觉”，涉及莎士比亚的诗歌（以及其他人的诗歌），以及一首诗可能看起来不完整的方式，而不是艺术或印刷者选择的产物。该论点还表明，这些十四行诗在讲述同性恋和通奸关系时是个人的、自传体的。下一章“淫荡的恩典”以读者的身份介绍了奥格尔，他分析了《奥赛罗》中的人物（尤其是伊阿古） ，并从上一篇文章中汲取灵感。本章为发表于《Orgel's Spectacular Performances》的作品的修订版, 它展示了他作为读者、文本编辑和“在我自己的脑海中上演剧本”的导演 (50)。但他也写道，“我向他们提出这个 [伊阿古性格分析] 的两个朋友并不喜欢它；两人都反对让伊阿古成为同性恋解释太多，恶意应该是没有动机的”（51）。作为读者，我承认作品肯定会提供同性恋作为戏剧的重要组成部分，但我认为其他重要元素是种族和苔丝狄蒙娜的选择（和代理），这篇文章确实......