Item 26 - Letter from J. G. McManaway to R. B. McKerrow

1 single sheet, 1 envelope

Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington.—Praises McKerrow’s Prolegomena, and discusses his own work on Spenser.

(With envelope.)

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Transcript

Office of the Director
The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington
August 15, 1939

Dear Dr. McKerrow:

Your Prolegomena is a joy to read. I only wish it had appeared in 1929 so that Heffner, Strathmann and I (beginning scholars all) might have benefited by reading it before we started preparing the text of the the† Variorum Faerie Queene. As it is, we have the satisfaction of knowing that many of our ground rules coincide with yours. In particular I am glad to find you insisting (p. 24) that an intelligent reading of a line will often obviate the necessity for adding or removing a syllable. In the later books of F. Q. I argued repeatedly for the elimination of “normalizing” readings that earlier editors had inserted.

Another comment interested me: the suggestion (p. 17) that later texts may contain readings that were introduced because the line as delivered on the stage contained a superior (possibly Shakespear-ian) reading. It has long seemed to me that a study of early prompt books might yield valuable results, and in the not too distant future I want to make a test case of the Hamlets in our collection. Van Lennep and I recently offered a suggestion of this sort in M.L.R. about Hamlet 3.2.392 ff. {1} We realized, of course, that the MS alterations may not be a return to what Shakespeare wrote but merely the actors’ rationalization of a difficult passage.

I have been puzzled, in examining Sir Edmund Chambers’ William Shakespeare and the volumes of the New Cambridge edition, to discover that no account has been taken of the late Professor Greenlaw’s article in Studies in Philology (1916) on “Shakespeare’s Pastorals.” {2} His comments on Jaques seem to me much more to the point than anything else in print, and his observations about the indebtedness of Shakespeare to Spenser and ultimately to Sidney extremely suggestive. Do the English scholars reject Greenlaw’s discussion, or has it simply failed to come to their attention?

We are all glad to hear of your improvement in health, and we look forward eagerly to the appearance of your Shakespeare.

Very truly yours,
James G. McManaway
Executive Assistant to the Director

R. B. McKerrow, Esq.,
Picket Piece, Wendover, Bucks., England.
JGM:VL

[Direction on envelope:] R. B. McKerrow, Esq., | Picket Piece, | Wendover, Bucks., | England.

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This letter was apparently taken to London by hand and posted there. The envelope was postmarked at London, S.W.1, at 1.45 p.m. on 24 August 1939. Another postmark advises ‘ROAD USERS | TAKE CARE | AVOID RISKS’. It has been marked in pencil ‘To be answered’ and, elsewhere, ‘Work’.

{1} James G. McManaway and William B. Van Lennep, ‘A “Hamlet” Emendation’, Modern Language Review, xxxiv. 68–70 (Jan. 1939).

{2} E. A. Greenlaw, ‘Shakespeare’s Pastorals’, Studies in Philology, xiii (1916). 112–54.