Douai Manuscript: Annotations on Romeo and Juliet
Drammatis Personæ
There is no Dramatis Personae in F2. This is the first known list of characters for
this play.
young prince
The Douai editor makes an interesting choice in describing the Prince as young, which
allows him to keep a line of the first scene that is usually emended, when Escalus
says:
You, Capulet, shall goe along with me, / And, Mountague come you this afternoone, / To know our Fathers pleasure in this case.Editors since Rowe have tended to follow the lesson of Q1 and Q2, and emendated Fathers as further or farther, but in Q3, F1, and F2 this word reads Fathers. Although this father figure is not mentioned again in the play, the choice to make the Prince a young man is a rich dramatic one, in view of his lack of authority over his subjects, not to mention the fact that the part might have been read or acted by a young actor (see Cottegnies,
Shakespeare Anthologized).
Peter
There is some confusion surrounding the identity of Romeo’s servant in F2 as in Douai.
In Sp566,
Romeo’s Manis called Baltazar, but in the last scene of the play in F2 (as in F1), he is called Peter in the speech prefix of Sp595. The Douai editor calls Romeo’s servant Peter in this list of characters, but keeps the reference to Baltazar in the text, and in the speech prefixes from Sp566 to Sp571, without mentioning him here.
his brother
This character is silent in the Douai MS. He is only mentioned once by Capulet as
Cosin Capuletin Sp148. F2 includes two relations of Capulet’s designated as
2. Capu.and
3. Capu.
Act I
The play has no title in the Douai MS. The scribe or editor follows F2 in omitting
the Prologue and all the act numbers except the first one, but they do not retain
the indication of the first scene. This is the only play in the Douai manuscript for
which there is no consistent act numbering (they have been added here between brackets
for the reader’s convenience).
G.
By treating
Gregory(F2) as the first speech prefix of the dialogue, rather than the first word of the speech as is common practice, the scribe or editor is faced with the problem of the next line again being attributed to Gregory. This is solved simply by inverting the speech prefixes in the next eight cues, attributing to Sampson what F2 attributes to Gregory, and vice versa.
I
Scribal error for
Is.
fathers
The scribe or editor retains F2’s reading (also F1), often emendated as
further(as in Q1, Q2 and Q4). For the implications of this choice, see annotation to the description of Escalus as a
young princein the Dramatis Personae.
saing
For
saying.
live live
Accidental repetition.
1 Cap:
F2 distinguishes here between two relations of Capulet’s,
1. Capu.and
2. Capu.,i.e. Old Capulet and his brother or cousin, but the Douai manuscript leaves out the exchange, which makes the distinction unnecessary. The figure 1 was crossed out in the manuscript.
Act II
There are no act numbers after the first act in the Douai MS (as in F2). They have
only been provided between brackets for the reader’s benefit. The Douai MS omits the
Chorus which closes Act I and opens Act II, perhaps because it was considered as not
dramatic enough.
thee at
These two words are overwritten over a long horizontal stroke, which makes it look
like they are crossed out, but it is not the case.
(they whisper
A stage direction added by the scribe or editor, probably on a second reading, which
tries to make sense of the passage, possibly to make up for the fact that the dialogue
does not tell anything definite about Romeo’s plans, or rather that the information
seems to be given in the wrong order. Although the first half of the dialogue ends
with Romeo’s comment,
Nurse, commend me to thy lady(Sp286), and the nurse later adds,
this afternoon, sir? well she shall be there,nothing has yet been revealed about the appointment. By adding the stage direction, the editor makes the spectator or reader assume that Romeo and the Nurse have already exchanged vital information, thus making the scene dramatically more efficient.
Petruchio
This character, spotted by the Nurse and Juliet as they leave the Capulets’ ball,
has only one line in F2, but this line has been excised from the Douai MS.
N:
The Douai editor corrects a misattribution in F2, restoring half the cue to Juliet
and moving the speech prefix
Nurseone line down.
hear
Error for
heart.
[Lark warbles
This stage direction, like the following one (
warbles again), was added by a later reader whose hand has been identified as
Hand 2throughout the manuscript. It seems to be meant more for the reader than for a specific performance because it does not describe a stage business as such.
thinst
Error for
thinkst.
at the Doore
The scribe or editor substitutes this stage direction for F2’s
Enter Mother.
disclout
For
dish-clout.
henes forth
Error for
henceforth.
overe
For
over.
et Nurse
These two words were visibly added on a second reading in a fainter ink by the scribe
or editor; the addition shows an interesting interference of Latin or French,
etbeing used here instead of and.
(Lyes down a penknife
This stage direction, added by the Douai editor or scribe, apparently on a second
reading, anticipates Johnson’s addition
Lays down a knife.The reference to the
penknifeis fascinating: as an object used for cutting pens (among other things), it would be found in all closets, and therefore would be particularly appropriate for a woman; and it is of course tempting to see it as a reference to an implement used for writing and present in all cubicles in colleges and monasteries.
Exeunt
This stage direction is followed in F2 by a scene with the musicians, which, because
it is a digression, is often left out in performance. The scene itself has not been
included in the collation.
Baltazar
The Douai scribe or editor follows F2 in giving Romeo’s man two different names. He
is not named earlier, but he is called Peter in the graveyard scene in the denouement.
See annotation in the list of characters.
raing
Error for
raign.
Exit
The Douai MS does not make the Friar exit, although the stage directions tend on the
whole to be more precise than in F2.
to thence
For
To take thence.Accidental omission in the Douai MS.
(steps forth
Added stage Ddrection. The stage directions are very precise and abundant in this
scene, in which there are few cuts.
made
Scribal error for
mad.
(he enters the vault:
Another original stage direction added by the Douai editor.
shall I beleeve
The Douai editor edits the F2 text which erroneously reads:
I will beleeve, / Shall I beleeve.
(Fight
Behind
An original stage direction.
(takes the Poison)
An original stage direction.
Dies
An original stage direction.
Pe:
The Douai editor edits F2 by consistently substituting
Peterfor Man in the speech prefixes of this scene, to align them with the previous stage direction, which indicated Peter’s entry. The text is also innovating in making the servant hover close by, or
behind,as indicated in Sp601.
Goes on & calls
An original stage direction. Some of these added stage directions repeat the text
and testify to a new usage, a desire to spell out the implicit stage directions.
Enters
An original stage direction.
arises
An original stage direction.
(takes Romeos dagger
An original stage direction. The Douai MS editor is the first one to specifically
identify the dagger used by Juliet as Romeo’s, anticipating a modern usage.
conveniniently
Error for
conveniently.
her serselfe
Error for
herself.
tediou
Error for
tedious.
warbles again]
This stage direction, added by a later hand (Hand 2), is positioned in the left-hand margin.
beseeh
Error for
beseech.
gives him a viol]
This stage direction, by a later hand, is positioned in the left-hand margin, as well
as the following one.
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.
Si Micari-Lawless
Si Micari-Lawless is a research assistant with LEMDO and MoEML, and an incoming fourth-year
English major at the University of Victoria.
William Shakespeare
Bibliography
Capell, Edward, ed. Mr William Shakespeare: His Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. 10 vols. London: J. and R. Tonson, 1767–1768. ESTC T138599. Murphy 304.
Cottegnies, Line.
Shakespeare Anthologized: Taking a Fresh Look at Douai Manuscript MS787.Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 37 (2019). DOI 10.4000/shakespeare.4289. https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/4289.
Johnson, Samuel, ed. The Plays of William Shakespeare. 8 vols. London: J. and R. Tonson, 1765. ESTC T138601.
Rowe, Nicholas, ed. The Works of Mr William Shakespear. 6 vols. London, 1709; rpt. 8 vols. 1714. ESTC T138296.
Theobald, Lewis, ed. The works of Shakespeare: in seven volumes. Collated with the oldest copies, and corrected;
with notes, explanatory, and critical. 7 vols. London: A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, J. Tonson, F. Clay, W. Feales, and R. Wellington, 1733. ESTC T138606.
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/Notes on scribal hands
Douai MS Hand 2
A second, later hand is used in the Douai MS, which is MS 787 in the
Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore repository. It is responsible
for the insertion of stage directions. This later hand is smaller,
thinner, and more slanting than the main scribal hand. It does not appear in
Macbeth.
Metadata
| Authority title | Douai Manuscript: Annotations on Romeo and Juliet |
| 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 | |
| Edition | Released with The Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project 1.1 |
| Sponsor(s) |
The Douai Shakespeare Manuscript ProjectAnthology 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 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 787and 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. |