Item 38 - Letter from Alice Walker to R. B. McKerrow

2 Bankfield Lane, Southport.—Has received 3 Henry VI, Act I. Asks for guidance regarding speakers’ names and stage directions.

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Transcript

2 Bankfield Lane, Southport.
19 June 1936.

Dear Dr. McKerrow,

Thank you for your letter and the first act of 3 Henry VI. There isn’t much so far (to the end of I. i.) that I suspect has been omitted. The slips mainly concern textual alterations in stage names and stage directions. Do you want me to query these—or, say, when you have once altered Plant. to Yorke can the printer be left to make later alterations uniform? If so, then I won’t bother about these, but if not, shall I query them as I have been doing or shall I do what is necessary to your ‘copy’? Also, are you making speakers’ names (like Exeter) uniform throughout the plays or only within each play? Another thing that keeps cropping up is the character of your additions to stage directions. Should these follow more or less F1’s normal practice in the use of the apostrophe, spelling of proper names etc. or should these follow the modern practice? Thus would you add Somerset’s or Somersets as a possessive, York or Yorke as a name?

Yes, I did know that there was no need to tie and seal a registered packet if it was licked up, but I generally seal a fairly full envelope, in case it isn’t adequately licked—it is so much simpler to guard against the loss of the envelope’s contents by using my own green tape than to have the envelope burst asunder and to have to wrestle with the post office’s red tape! I have, however, decided not to shame you by using my own brand of the red variety. It is too blatant!

Yours sincerely,
Alice Walker.

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Typed, except the signature.