The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [203]
Our gratitude extends equally to the dozens more professors of English language and literature, theater directors, linguists and critics, historians and Shakespeare experts who formed our ad hoc advisory board, as well as the specialists in ink, paper, and printing led by Dr. Peter Bryce and a legion of researchers, editorial assistants, and legal experts. The contributions of Professors David Crystal, Tom Clayton, and Ward Elliott (whose Claremont Shakespeare Clinic conducted the stylometry tests) demand particular recognition.
This first edition comes with a unique appreciation by a Random House author, Arthur Phillips. As his family played a central role in bringing the play to light and corroborating its authenticity, he was invited to write a brief introduction to this monumental work, even though he certainly does not claim to be a Shakespeare expert. He also edited and annotated the text of the play. Professor Verre has kindly amended some of Mr. Phillips’s notes.
Despite Phillips’s importance to the work’s discovery, we would suggest that general readers plunge directly into the play, allowing Shakespeare to speak for himself, at least at first. Then, if some background is helpful, look to this very personal Introduction or to the many other commentaries sure to be available soon.
THE EDITORS
Random House/Modern Library
January 2011
INTRODUCTION
ARTHUR PHILLIPS
INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
Prague, The Egyptologist, Angelica, AND The Song Is You
If you do not feel the impossibility of this speech having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is that you may have ears—for so has another animal—but an ear you cannot have.
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, about Henry VI, Part One
•
Shakespeare never did this. He never did this.
—THE BLOW MONKEYS, “Don’t Give It Up”
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Believe me, my friends, that men, not very much inferior to Shakespeare, are this day being born on the banks of the Ohio.
—HERMAN MELVILLE
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Phillips himself evidently wanted to carry the performance outside the walls of the playhouse.
—STEPHEN GREENBLATT, Will in the World
1
I HAVE NEVER MUCH LIKED SHAKESPEARE. I find the plays more pleasant to read than to watch, but I could do without him, up to and including this unstoppable and unfortunate book. I know that is not a very literary or learned thing to confess, but there it is. I wonder if there isn’t a large and shy population of tasteful readers who secretly agree with me. I would add that The Tragedy of Arthur is as good as most of his stuff, or as bad, and I suppose it is plausible (vocabulary, style, etc.) that he wrote it. Full disclosure: I state that as the party with the most money to be made in this venture.
As a cab driver asked in an ironic tone when I told him I was contractually bound to write something about Shakespeare, “And what hasn’t been written about him yet?” Perhaps this: although it is probably not evident to anyone outside my immediate family and friends, my own career as a novelist has been shadowed by my family’s relationship to Shakespeare, specifically my father and twin sister’s adoration of his work. A certain amount of cheap psychology turns out to be true: because of our family’s early dynamics, I have as an adult always tried to impress these two idealized readers with my own language and imagination, and have always hoped someday to hear them say they preferred me and my work to Shakespeare and his.
Even as I write that—as I commit it to print and thereby make it true—I know it is ridiculous. I cannot really feel