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收藏的杰出的古典戏剧和早期现代戏剧材料进行大量研究。这项研究将由首席研究员与国家图书馆善本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月在国家图书馆举行的一次大型展览提供内容和主题结构。这次展览暂名为“莎士比亚的创作：苏格兰的探索”，将向学术界和一般观众开放，并将附有教育材料，供学校学生和教师使用。这项研究亦会配合一项同时推出的网页功能，该功能将无限期地存放在国家图书馆的开放取用网站上，让浏览者可浏览某些项目的数码副本。我们的目标是发展和加深我们对图书馆馆藏中特定项目的重要性以及构成这些馆藏的各种个人馆藏的历史的理解。我们也在寻求了解收藏家的活动和态度。第三，我们将利用这些调查的成果来阐明文艺复兴时期剧作家的作品成为文化宝藏的过程，以及这种地位被表达和承认的实际方式;这样做，我们将有助于研究莎士比亚作为自17世纪以来英语文化的中心和象征性人物。我们的第四个原则来自于此：我们将探索这一事实的重要性，即这些由英格兰民族诗人收集的材料，在某种程度上源于这种地位，部分由苏格兰人收集并保存在苏格兰机构中。我们将探讨早期印刷书籍的书目特征的重要性，这些书籍是馆藏中最突出的部分，并询问这些书籍的收集、组织和装订的证据可以告诉我们自17世纪以来收集这些材料的模式和目的。与此同时，我们将探索与这些收藏相关的背景材料，详细查看负责建立这些收藏的人的工作笔记，信件和其他文件。我们已经确定了17至19世纪的两个人和一个家庭，他们对这些收藏的发展至关重要，他们的论文和信件在一定程度上足以为我们提供有力的证据。我们还将研究1935年至1945年在爱丁堡担任英国文学教授的约翰·多佛-威尔逊（John Dover-Wilson）的论文和贡献，他是NLS的受托人，他帮助确保了这两个机构持有的相当一部分。这项研究将涉及对这些档案资源的新的检查，以及对与英国其他地方以及美国其他地方的书籍及其收藏家相关的材料的研究。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的认识，我们也将确定最引人注目和最吸引人的物品，围绕这些物品来构建我们的展览。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，旨在为我们将照亮的更广泛的文化历史进程提供一系列面孔和声音。通过这种方式，我们的目标是让广大观众参与这段历史，并激发对阿格里尔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.