I’ve been editing the play Pericles – that sprawling romance of families scattered and the rejoined, written by William Shakespeare and (almost certainly) inn-keeper and persistent criminal George Wilkins. The play is a thing of patches: it has an electrifying reunion scene in Act 5 between Pericles and his lost daughter Marina (‘My dearest wife was like this maid, and such / A one my daughter might have been’), but there’s also quite a lot of bad writing in the opening 2 acts. Critics argue about who wrote which part, tugging at the seams of the play. The bad stuff generally gets assigned to Wilkins, and Shakespeare is understood to take over in Act 3, in the brilliant storm scene — wandering on stage, as it were, as the rain lashes down and the skies light up.
I wonder how this newly altered anthology would have been classified had it been returned to the library for circulation.
Would it be listed as, 'Shakespeare, William and George Wilkins. Pericles, Prince of Tyre: Act 1 Anthology. A revised edition, altered by Adam Smyth. Oxford: Smyth Press (knife), 2024’?
I cut pages out of books so often but I always use a scalpel. Always! I like the rough edge of the bread knife though - definitely adds something to this.
hmm are you saying then that the play Pericles is more concerned with food than bodies? Or that the body is food for the protagonists or the playwright....
I am no Viper, yet I feed / On mother's flesh
or that your approach is more like cooking than surgery...
I don't know here I am going with this absurd analysis but it is fun!
I wonder how this newly altered anthology would have been classified had it been returned to the library for circulation.
Would it be listed as, 'Shakespeare, William and George Wilkins. Pericles, Prince of Tyre: Act 1 Anthology. A revised edition, altered by Adam Smyth. Oxford: Smyth Press (knife), 2024’?
I cut pages out of books so often but I always use a scalpel. Always! I like the rough edge of the bread knife though - definitely adds something to this.
A breadknife has always been an indispensable instrument of the bookbinder's art, I'm told
We hurt the ones we most love. 💔
hmm are you saying then that the play Pericles is more concerned with food than bodies? Or that the body is food for the protagonists or the playwright....
I am no Viper, yet I feed / On mother's flesh
or that your approach is more like cooking than surgery...
I don't know here I am going with this absurd analysis but it is fun!