Publisher's Synopsis
This is the latest volume in a series of the earliest known prompt-books of Shakespeare's plays. It presents a carefully reproduced facsmile of the Smock Alley revision of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", with detailed collations (including comparison with six other theatre versions of the play, four of them from the 18th century) and a historical critical introduction.;Unlike most of the other Smock Alley acting versions, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is not properly speaking a full-fledged prompt-book. It shows no evidence of actual stage production, lacking the usual advance calls for entering actors and act breaks or the occasional use of actors' names for minor characters that turn up sporadically in most Smock Alley prompt-books.;This absence of markings makes the dating of the revision and its relation to the other 17th-century Smock Alley prompt-books more difficult to determine. Evan's careful research does show that two revision hands may be readily distinguished - Hand I, responsible for nearly all the revisions and additions and, presumably, for all the cutting, and Hand II, an intrusive mid-18th-century hand, probably having no connection with the theatre, that inserts occasional emendations first introduced by editors from Nicholas Rowe (1709) through Thomas Hanmer (1744).;Evans also explained how the existence of a carefully prepared Smock Alley revision of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is in itself somewhat puzzling. The Smock Alley (Dublin) company tended to follow the lead of the London theatres in its choice of plays, and the fact that London audiences evinced a lack of interest in this play raises the question why, or when, such an extensive and time-consuming revision was undertaken.
