The Relevance of the Major Scottish Collections of Printed Renaissance Drama to the Cultural History and Contemporary Reception of Shakespeare

该项目将对苏格兰国家图书馆和爱丁堡大学图书馆拥有的莎士比亚和早期现代戏剧材料的特殊收藏进行大量研究。这项研究将由首席调查员与国家图书馆珍稀图书部的一名高级馆长密切合作进行，并将为2011年11月至2012年2月在国家图书馆举办的一个大型展览提供内容和主题结构。这次展览暂时名为《制作莎士比亚：苏格兰维度》，学术和普通观众都可以参观，并将附带供学校学生和教师使用的教育材料。这项研究还将支持同时推出的一项网络功能，该功能将无限期地托管在NLS的开放获取网站上，允许访问者浏览一些物品的电子版。这项研究将以四个相关原则为指导。我们的目标是发展和加深我们对图书馆藏品中特定项目的重要性的理解，以及组成这些藏品的各种个人藏品的历史。我们也在努力了解收藏家的活动和态度。第三，我们将利用这些研究的成果来阐明文艺复兴时期剧作家的作品成为文化瑰宝的过程，以及这种地位被表达和承认的实际方式；通过这样做，我们将有助于研究莎士比亚作为17世纪以来英语国家文化的中心和象征人物。我们的第四个原则是这样的：我们将探索这样一个事实的意义：这些由英国民族诗人和关于英国民族诗人的材料收集的材料在某种程度上是由苏格兰人收集的，并由苏格兰机构持有，在某种程度上，这些材料的重要性来自于苏格兰人。为了将这些原则结合起来，研究将朝着两个互补的方向发展。我们将探索早期印刷书籍的书目特征的意义，这些书籍是藏品中最突出的部分，询问这些书籍收集、组织和装订的证据能告诉我们自17世纪以来收集这些材料的模式和目的。同时，我们将探索与这些收藏品相关的背景材料，详细查看负责建立这些收藏品的人的工作说明、信件和其他文件。我们已经确认了从17世纪到19世纪的两个人和一个家庭，他们是这些藏品发展的核心，他们的文件和信件保存下来，足以为我们提供强有力的证据。我们还将研究约翰·多佛-威尔逊的论文和贡献，他在1935年至1945年期间担任爱丁堡英国文学区域教授，也是NLS的受托人，他帮助两家机构获得了相当大比例的资产。这项研究将涉及对这些档案资源的重新审查，以及对英国其他地方以及美国(程度较小)的其他储存库中与书籍及其收藏者相关的材料的研究。然后，我们将对这些藏品的历史以及它们在莎士比亚文化史上的地位有更深刻的认识，我们还将确定最引人注目和最吸引人的展品，以建立我们的展览。我们还将把对收藏家个性的关注纳入展览的规划和设计中，目的是为我们将照亮的更广泛的文化历史过程提供一系列的面孔和声音。通过这种方式，我们的目标是让广大观众了解那段历史，并引发人们对莎士比亚在当代英语文化中的地位的反思，特别是在今天的苏格兰。

This project will involve substantial research on the exceptional collections of Shakespearean and early modern drama material held by the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh Library. The research will be undertaken by the Principal Investigator in close collaboration with a Senior Curator in the Rare Books department at the National Library, and will provide the content and thematic structure for a major exhibition to be held at the National Library between November 2011 and February 2012. This exhibition, provisionally entitled 'Making Shakespeare: the Scottish Dimension', will be accessible to both academic and general audiences, and will be accompanied by educational materials for use by school students and their teachers. The research will also underpin a web feature to be launched at the same time, hosted indefinitely on NLS's open access website, which will allow visitors to browse digital copies of some items.The research will be guided by four related principles. We aim to develop and deepen our understanding of the significance of particular items in the libraries' holdings and the histories of the various individual collections that make up those holdings. We are also seeking to understand the activities and attitudes of the collectors. Thirdly, we will use the fruits of these investigations to illuminate the processes by which the works of a Renaissance playwright became cultural treasures, and the practical ways in which that status was expressed and acknowledged; in so doing we will be contributing to the study of Shakespeare as a central and symbolic figure for Anglophone culture since the seventeenth century. Our fourth principle follows from this: we will be exploring the significance of the fact that these collections of materials by and about the English national poet, which to some extent derive their importance from that status, were partly gathered by Scots and are held in Scottish institutions.In order to draw these principles together, the research will develop in two complementary directions. We will explore the significance of the bibliographical features of the early printed books that are the most prominent part of the holdings, asking what the evidence of the gathering, organizing and binding of these books can tell us about the patterns and purposes of collecting this material since the seventeenth century. At the same time, we will explore the contextual material relevant to these collections, looking in detail at the working notes, correspondence and other papers of those responsible for building them up. We have identified two individuals and a family from the 17th to 19th centuries who are central to the development of these collections, and whose papers and correspondence survive to an extent sufficient to furnish us with robust evidence. We will also look at the papers and contribution of John Dover-Wilson, Regius Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh from 1935 to 1945 and trustee of NLS, who helped to secure a significant proportion of both institutions' holdings. The research will involve the fresh examination of these archival resources, and the study of materials relevant to the books and their collectors in other repositories elsewhere in Britain and, to a lesser extent, the USA. We will then have a deeper sense of the history of these collections, and of their place in the cultural history of Shakespeare, and we will also have identified the most striking and engaging items around which to build our exhibition. We will also carry the focus on the personalities of the collectors into the planning and design of the exhibition, with the aim of giving a series of faces and voices to the broader processes of cultural history we will be illuminating. In this way we aim to engage a wide audience with that history, and to provoke reflection on Shakespear's place in contemporary Anglophone culture in general, and in today's Scotland in particular.