What Happened to Demetrius' Far-Off Mountains?

A mystery!

For reasons that I'll be able to go into at a later date, I'm eyeballs deep in some Shakespearean word origin research.  Currently looking into "far-off," and while my initial sources pointed to Henry VI Part 2, I double checked OED and found them pointing to Midsummer Night's Dream. So I always go back and see why I might have missed a reference.  I'm not counting the fact that OED Second Edition seems to date MSND at 1590, by the way, which is apparently odd - everybody else has it 1595-96.

Anyway, OED cites this line from Demetrius (IV.i):

"These things seem small and undistinguishable,
like far-off mountains turned into clouds."

Here's the thing.  That line is not in Open Source Shakespeare, which is where I've been checking all my references.

So I go back to my old source, the MIT version, which is really just the public domain Moby version.  Nope, not there either!

Ok, fine.  To the First Folio!

And there it is!

 So, what the heck?

Both Open Source and MIT have the same version where Demetrius' line just drops off at "undistinguishable," complete with the comma.

I did not realize that Open Source is, in fact, based on Moby as well. It's certainly better than the MIT version with the markup, search and structure it provides, but it looks like all the errors have been carried over as well. That's a shame.

I also guess this means I can't use Open Source Shakespeare as my primary research source. That's a bit of a bummer.



 

Attention to Detail in "Shakespeare in Love"

I have in my hand the published screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.  My mom finds these things for me at her weekend yard sales - if it says Shakespeare on it she grabs it first and asks questions later :).

So I'm reading random pages and I notice in one particular scene that James Hemmings has a line.  "Hmmm," I think, "Hemmings of Hemmings  (Heminges) and Condell? The First Folio guys? I thought that was John.."

<goooooogle>

It was John. And I can't find any references to him having a brother James.  But!  That got me thinking, isn't there a list of the names of principal actors in the First Folio?  Yes, yes there is.

Check out the cast for Shakespeare in Love.  I'm pretty sure that most of these guys didn't get any lines, but I love that they still got to play actual historic figures.  (Richard Burbage and Henry Condell actually appear as well, I couldn't get them all on the page!)

Now check out the names of the principal actors, right from the FF.  How many can you spot?

http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=firstfolio&PagePosition=15

Ironically for him, Ned Alleyn is not on that list :)

Would You Call Demetrius A Villain?

Just something I was thinking about.  At the end of Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius is the only one still under the effects of Oberon's love potion, and everybody seems ok with it. I'm thinking, is that because we're supposed to think of him as the villain?  That he somehow got what was coming to him and that everything worked out for the good guys, so screw him?  Got a little bit of a Shylock feel to it, really.  The light version.