Trey Jansen "'Come, let me see what task I have to do': New Considerations of Collaboration, Revision, and Variation in the Production of a Postmodern Edition of Titus Andronicus"

In her 2007 essay, Editing Shakespeare in a Postmodern Age, Leah S. Marcus, argues that we must "update our editing of Shakespeare if we wish Shakespeare to remain alive and compelling to today's readers and performers" (129). Marcus argues that editors need to reconsider even recent editorial tradition, as they make decisions in the production of new editions of the plays; the argument moves on to make several suggestions for Shakespeare's texts that would allow for the "uncomfortable uncertainty" that is central to the postmodern age. In this essay, I will be discussing how a postmodern approach to editing Titus Andronicus can both clarify and problematize key issues in the production of a scholarly edition. Central to this discussion will be a consideration of the authorship question concerned with Peele's level of collaboration with Shakespeare, the variation between the three quartos and the First Folio text, and the role that revision by Shakespeare and possibly others had in producing the several extant texts of Titus Andronicus.