Shakespeare's comedy first appeared in print in 1623 as "Twelfe Night, Or what you will," so why do we usually truncate it to "Twelfth Night?" Using digital methods, this colloquium calls attention to the overlooked "or" here and in 100 other pre-Restoration plays in an attempt to better understand these double-titles' functions and stakes. Which playwrights wrote double-titled plays? What genres did they tend to be? Viewing them as "documents of performance" that should not be sheared away from our understanding of these works, Andrew proposes some initial questions about double-titles and their prominent role in early modern English drama.
Event—Public Programming
Double-Titled Dramatic Works in Early Modern England: Some Thoughts and Experiments
