Talk:The Tragical History of Guy Earl of Warwick

Status/Plans

I have summarized the play here, and provided analysis from Alfred Harbage, E. A. J. Honigmann, Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Berryman, Helen Moore, Helen Cooper, and John Peachman.Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 18:33, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Additional literary criticism could be added from sources that are not focused on the Shakespeare angle.Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 19:41, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

1/19/2016 edits

Thank you for adding the image of the cover page for the play. I'm going to undo the other changes you have made, though. The first thing is, it's very important that before making changes you discuss the proposed changes on this talk page. With respect to the change of the section heading, I'm very confident that the original way was better. The way you have changed it makes it seem like "one of the characters," among various characters, may have been Shakespeare. But we know precisely which character it is supposed to be. That character is clearly identified in the introduction, in the cast of characters, and then in the first sentence of the section itself.

Among the various changes in the edits to the introduction, I'm confused by deletion of the word "early." That this may be an early impression of Shakespeare is one of the things that makes the play interesting.Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 20:57, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

This article is a excellent story that deserves attention from readers and scholars, and you deserve credit for creating it and for the work you've done on it. Since you are requesting "talk" on this page before any editing (which is fine, and why not?), I thought I'd take your suggestion and make a couple of comments. The trouble I see with the word "early" in your phrase: "Phillip Sparrow -- is considered by some scholars to be an early lampoon of ... " -- is that it is not clear to the general reader what "early" means. Does "early" refer to: the beginning of a time in London when many lampoons were published? Is it "early" in Shakespeare's habit of lampooning others? Is it "early" in the literary history of lampoons? Of course YOU know and Harbage knows. But I believe it needs to be made clear to those who don't know. I agree with you that the "early" aspect is one of the things that makes the play interesting -- extremely interesting. however, there are two interesting facts contained in your phrase: First, it is interesting as a lampoon, and second it is interesting for the fact that it may date to the 1590's Those two facts each deserve more individual explication. I also think the article could be expanded. There are references that Shakespeare made in his plays regarding Guy of Warwick as well as Phillip Sparrow (according to your Duncan-Jones reference). The play's epigraph, "carper gel noli rostra gel de too" is comic. I think it would be good to re-format the footnotes so that they are more standard. Moore's Malone Society edition of the play could be referenced. The section heading "Phillip Sparrow as Shakespeare -- may be clear to you, and as far as any one else goes: if it is at all confusing to them at first, or if their understanding stumbles slightly, it will son become clear after they start reading the section. But I think the title should be able to stand alone and be clear. The section heading brings the "authorship" question to mind: Some people see Marlowe as Shakespeare, some see De Vere as Shakespeare, and at first glance it appears that this article sees Phillip Sparrow as Shakespeare. That idea, if it occurs, is corrected by reading the article, but I think the words "Phillip Sparrow" in the section heading at least need quote marks -- so that it's clear that it's a fictional element and that their partner, Shakespeare, is not fictional. When you say (I think you do) that Shakespeare left for London after getting married, it is not known exactly what was the order of events. He may have gone to London, returned home, then got married, then returned to London. Assumptions that were popularly repeated in the previous century, are beginning to be seen for what they were -- assumptions. Those are just a few thoughts for whatever they're worth. Anyone is welcome to disagree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.88.8.220 (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. My main concern with both the removal of the word "early" and the heading referring to "Phillip Sparrow," is that in each case you seemed to have concern that the meaning was vague or unclear, but then you removed information that tended toward clarity. I could see changing the one to something like "...a lampoon ridiculing William Shakespeare, written when he was just beginning his literary career," and the other to, "Phillip Sparrow Character as a Lampoon of William Shakespeare." I think both passages are fine as they are, but wouldn't object to these changes.

With respect to Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway, I'm summarizing what Harbage argued were similarities between Shakespeare and Sparrow. The article clearly identifies Harbage as a source and note 10 clearly shows that a couple of pages of Harbage are sourced. I don't think it's necessary to cite every point Harbage made in separate notes, but can see how others would disagree.

Regarding expansion of the article, as I mentioned above I would like to have some literary citicism that doesn't involve the Shakespeare lampoon angle. Among that could be humor - the humorous parts of the play are pretty funny. The next article I would like to incorporate here is Helen Cooper's "Guy of Warwick, upstart crows and mounting sparrows," which seems to be a review that is broader in scope than just the Shakespeare connection.

With respect to formatting, yes, that's something that eventually has to be addressed. My main concern was to get as much information as possible into the cites, so that if I or someone else later went back to re-format them then they would be taking out redundancy, rather than scrambling to find material that had been left out.Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 03:33, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Arnold Rothstein1921: Great work on the article! Regarding the references, if you like I could have a go at standardising them using a system that has been successful in other articles. --Xover (talk) 10:47, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for taking a while to respond - feel free if you're still interested! Thanks. Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 13:44, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

No worries about the response time. I'm frequently absent from the project for long stretches myself: real life does tend to interfere in periods. I'll add a swing through the references here to my todo list. Please feel free to ping me if you don't see anything happening; I'll either have forgotten about it or will have been busy elsewhere, and in either case I will most likely appreciate (i.e. need) a reminder. --Xover (talk) 15:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

 Done

Alrighty then. Refs have been standardised and duplicates collapsed. I've tried to avoid changing incidental things, but have made some smaller changes (adding ISBN and OCLC numbers, for instance; fixing an incorrect title, adding missing bibliographic information, etc.). The system I've used is short author/date/page references inline in the text, pointing at full details in a separate Sources section. I've also split explanatory notes from literature references for clarity. To do this I've used a combination of the following templates:

• {{sfn}} for inline citations (e.g. {{sfn|Peachman|2009|pp=570–1}})
• {{efn}} for explanatory notes (e.g. {{efn|This is an explanatory note providing further information on a point.}})
• {{cite book}} / {{cite journal}} with a |ref=harv parameter for full citations.

While the use of these templates does introduce some complexity when editing, especially if you're not used to them, they do bring quite a few benefits too. For instance, by using the templates the formatting of a reference is automatically standardised, and by keeping the full details one place and just using short refs in the text, you don't risk two versions of the same cite getting out of sync. The {{sfn}} template also automatically takes care of collapsing duplicate citations, so if you cite the same page in the same source multiple times, it will only appear in the list once (but with different little backlink anchors). And finally, this combination of templates creates automatic hyperlinks from the short citation to the full citation, so you can just click a link instead of trying to manually locate the right source from a long list. As an incidental benefit this also enables some automated tools to do basic sanity checking: for instance, Helen Cooper's "Did Shakespeare play the Clown?" was flagged as not actually being cited in the article, despite being listed among the References, and so I moved it to the Further reading section instead.

Notes

References

Sources

• Cooper, Helen (20 April 2001). "Did Shakespeare play the Clown?". Times Literary Supplement. No. 5116. pp. 26–7. {{cite magazine}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

In any case, take a look and see how you like it, and if you could, some quick quality control to make sure I haven't messed anything up. Don't worry about response time (mine isn't much to brag about, so you have a pretty darn low bar to clear there); and if you use {{ping|Xover}} in your response I will get a notification the next time I visit that there's a response waiting here. (by way of demonstration, if I put in {{ping|Arnold Rothstein1921}} it will display here as "@Arnold Rothstein1921:" and you should get a notification in the little bell icon up at the top of the page). --Xover (talk) 08:14, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Just a quick note on my first impression: that looks 100% better. Thank you! I'll try to give it a full read this weekend to see if anything fell through the cracks. I'll also try to digest what you've said above for future reference. Thanks again! Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 01:00, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Colbron and The King's Men

Material I'm adding related to Helen Moore's introduction to the Malone Society edition isn't completely consistent with the current wikipedia articles regarding the giant Colbron (Colbrand) and the playing company The King's Men. I've left requests on those pages to see if those inconsistencies can be resolved.Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 23:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

It looks like Moore's source for Brandimart being another name for Colbron is: British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue: Volume III: 1590-1597 By Martin Wiggins, Catherine Richardson, page 114. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk • contribs) 03:23, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Looks like The King's Men performed 1661-1682, but unclear if they're a revival of the original King's Men, or a different group. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk • contribs) 17:20, 19 March 2016 (UTC)