The Douai Project: Douai Manuscript: Annotations on Comedy of Errors

Douai Manuscript: Annotations on Comedy of Errors

The Famous Comedy of Errors

This is the only play transcribed in the Douai Manuscript that has a full title that shows the editor’ or scribe’s appreciation. Although several Restoration promptbooks of The Comedy of Errors have survived in the form of annotated printed copies of F1 or F2, the play had not been reissued in the Restoration.

the renowned poet

An expression of appreciation by the editor or scribe, it is also the only time in the manuscript when the name of Shakespeare is mentioned—although the manuscript might have lost some preliminary pages.

The names of the Actors

This is the first list of characters for this play, and it predates Rowe’s.

Antipholis Erotes

Antipholis of Syracuse. The character is identified in the stage directions in F2 as Antipholis Erotes (twice), Antipholis Syracusan or Antipholis of Syracusa. The Latinate term Erotes is unknown, and could be a misprint; it is thought to be derived from the verb errare (or “to wander, to err”), or one of its derivatives, erratus (for “gone astray”), or erraticus (“roving”). The Douai manuscript retains a similar variety in the character names, both in stage directions and speech prefixes, but uses Antipholis Erotes more often than F2.

Antipholis Sereptus

Antipholis of Ephesus. He is either identified in the Stage Directions in F2 as Antipholis Sereptus, which is Latin for “stolen”, or as Antipholis of Ephesus. The Douai manuscript uses either, but uses Sereptus more often than F2, both in stage directions and speech prefixes.

mades

A scribal error.

apprehendend

Scribal error.

beaty

Error for beauty.

where England … against her hair

The editor switches the mention of England and France around, perhaps because the reference to the Channel offers a transition between the two.

owing

The scribe first wrote growing, as in F2, but checked himself and struck out the first two letters, which solves a difficulty and constitutes an original emendation predating Pope.

Raccat

For carrat. The Douai scribe retains the readling of F2, failing to correct a mistake.

the the

Erroneous repetition.

Dromio. Sir:

For Dromio Syracusan (the Douai scribe also specifies that Antipholis is Antipholis Erotes, i.e. of Syracusa).

Ant: S:

For Antipholis Sereptus (Antipholis of Ephesus). The Douai scribe or editor is more precise than F2. This might have appeared necessary as the speech prefix in the F2 text is E. Ant. in this passage (for Ephesian Antipholis).

thee

For the.

senior

For Signior in F2. An original emendation, which downplays, however, the pun that implies a rivalty for status, or master (Rowe follows F3’s Signiority).

Error for wth with.

Antiplolis

Error for Antipholis.

one one

Erroneous repetition.

her

An original emendation for your in F2, which antedates Rowe.

thy wife

Error for my wife in F2.

Prosopography

Côme Saignol

Côme Saignol is a PhD candidate at Sorbonne University where he is preparing a thesis about the reception of Cyrano de Bergerac. After working several years on Digital Humanities, he created a company named CS Edition & Corpus to assist researchers in classical humanities. His interests include: eighteenth-century theatre, philology, textual alignment, and XML databases.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Line Cottegnies

Line Cottegnies teaches early-modern literature at Sorbonne Université. She is the author of a monograph on the politics of wonder in Caroline poetry, L’Éclipse du regard: la poésie anglais du baroque au classicisme (Droz, 1997), and has co-edited several collections of essays, including Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish (AUP, 2003, with Nancy Weitz), Women and Curiosity in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2016), with Sandring Parageau, or Henry V: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury, 2018), with Karen Britland. She has published on seventeenth-century literature, from Shakespeare and Raleigh to Ahpra Behn and Mary Astell. Her research interests are: early-modern drama and poetry, the politics of translation (between France and England), and women authors of the period. She has also developed a particular interest in editing: she had edited half of Shakespeare’s plays for the Gallimard bilingual complete works (alone and in collaboration), and, also, Henry IV, Part 2, for The Norton Shakespeare 3 (2016). With Marie-Alice Belle, she has co-edited two Elizabethan translations of Robert Garnier (by Mary Sidney Herbert and Thomas Kyd), published in 2017 in the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translation Series as Robert Garnier in Elizabethan England. She is currently working on an edition of three Behn’s translations from the French for the Cambridge edition of Behn’s Complete Works

Mahayla Galliford

Assistant project manager, 2024-present; research assistant, encoder, and remediator, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons) English from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. She continues her studies through the UVic English master’s program and focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscript writing in collaboration with LEMDO.

Navarra Houldin

LEMDO project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

William Shakespeare

Bibliography

Pope, Alexander, ed. The works of Shakespear. 6 vols. London: Jacob Tonson, 1725. ESTC N26060.

Rowe, Nicholas, ed. The Works of Mr William Shakespear. 6 vols. London, 1709; rpt. 8 vols. 1714. ESTC T138296.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title	Douai Manuscript: Annotations on Comedy of Errors
Type of text	Annotation
Publisher	Sorbonne Université and University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series	Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project
Source	Born-digital, peer-reviewed annotations written by Line Cottegnies for publication in the Douai 1.1 anthology on the LEMDO platform
Editorial declaration	Edited according to the Douai Manuscript Project’s Editorial Procedures
Edition	Released with The Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project 1.1
Sponsor(s)	The Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project Anthology Lead: Line Cottegnies. The project is a scientific collaboration between Sorbonne Université and the University of Victoria.
Encoding description	Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status	published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s)	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Fonds France Canada pour la Recherche / France-Canada Research Fund Sorbonne Université University of Victoria
License/availability	This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author, Douai Manuscript Project, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of Douai Manuscript Project, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited. Images provided by the Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. They can be downloaded and reproduced in scholarly publications and presentations provided that credit is included. Credit must include the phrase: Used by kind permission of the Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Douai, and must include the shelfmark MS 787 and the folio numbers. We ask that a copy of any scholarly publication be sent to the Douai library via email attachment to the Curator, currently Jean Vilbas at jvilbas@ville-douai.fr, or via mail to the following address: Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 61 Parvis Georges Prêtre, BP 20625, 59506 Douai cedex, France.