From performance to text

Marsden again: “The rise and fall of the adaptations . . . represents a pivotal moment in literary and cultural history, testifying to the new focus on language which would soon infiltrate all aspects of eighteenth-century thought. When concern for Shakespeare as text replaces emphasis on Shakespeare as performance, even the words once deemed ‘barbaric’ become precious. For the later eighteenth century, Shakespeare becomes an author to read, a change of status indicated by the increasingly numerous editions of his works. Not simply the canonization of a single author, this growing fascination with specific words heralds the adoration of the text and, ultimately, when carried to its logical extreme, the ‘death’ of the author in the twentieth century. Put in this context, the redefinition of Shakespeare’s genius in terms of his words represents a general down-grading of the element of performance in literature. Shakespeare’s works, and English literature in general, were to be defined by their words rather than by the plots and morality on which the older aesthetic theory focused.”