Examining the transformative processes dramatic texts undergo when modified to suit performance, this chapter argues for a socialized understanding of playtexts. Perceiving texts as socialized, following the ideas made popular by the textual scholar Jerome McGann in the 1990s and extended into the world of theater by the textual scholar Ronald Broude in the 2010s, means we highlight the multi-agential nature of text creation. Theater presents a specifically rich area for this line of inquiry, as the artistic work of an often singular playwright is moulded in the hands of several theater professionals. In order to trace the ways translators, directors, actors, copyists, and other personnel related to the practical world of the theater affect the source text, the chapter presents the archived promptbook as a viable resource that can help illuminate the metamorphosis from page to stage text. Using as examples two promptbooks from the late nineteenth century – the Finnish-language premieres of Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Winter’s Tale at the Finnish National Theater – the chapter demonstrates some of the frequent and key types of modification, and in the process contends that promptbooks can reveal altogether new information for literary, translation, and theater history.

Non peer reviewed