Voice

I attended outdoor performances of Hamlet all through the summer of 1972. Those long days began in a Central Park queue at dawn and paid dividends at dusk when James Earl Jones's voice would sensurround us as the Ghost.

One night, aged seven, I was invited backstage or rather under it. Stacy Keach our Hamlet sat in the crook of the angle and they let me sit in the quiet with him. Act V hung in the air.

────────────────────────────

Glyphs

A small system of glyphs is used throughout to preserve sound and motion.

þ, Þ
þ → th (þem → them)
Þ → Th (Þem → Them)

ē, ō
ē → en (þē → then)
ō → om (frō → from, whō → whom)

Y̆, ß
Y̆ → You
ß → sharp s (kiß → kiss, busineße → business)

────────────────────────────

Language

I have not removed friction; I have shaped it.

William Shakespeare's manuscripts are lost. What remains is not an author's hand, but the work of actors, prompters, compositors, and publishers. Across the quartos and folios, the language shifts. What survives here is not a fixed text, but one in motion.

I thank my son Anton (13 now 16), who sits with me — often on a phone line, listening, judging, and amending. My daughter Nell (19) joined us for The Tempest. Good times.

────────────────────────────

Pamphlets

My grandfather Richard Alcock, a professor emeritus of English at Rutgers–Newark, gave us the Kittredge Shakespeare upon its publication in 1969. Over the years most of these volumes disappeared, but in attempting to reacquire it second-hand I found myself wanting more.

Shakespeare's early modern English is not as forbidding as often suspected; I discovered this decades ago reading unannotated copies. From this arose the idea of a pamphlet rolled up and stuffed in a pocket — whether for actors or those in transit.

An early edition of King Richard II in 2017 for family and friends made clear that the work would require reassembly from the ground up.

GREGORY ANTHONY BITTAR

from Love's Labour's Lost