Vincent Kennedy

Project title:  

Editing Lost Copy-Texts: Christopher Marlowe’s Plays and Poems

Project Summary:  

Determining the content of lost Early Modern copy-texts of Christopher Marlowe’s plays and poems through the collation of related contemporary manuscript documents and digital network analysis is the focal point of my project. I aim to further knowledge about Marlowe, his works and the transmission of said works while contributing to the swell of academic interest centred on a major contemporary of Shakespeare in the editorial project The Oxford Marlowe: Collected Works.

The core of my research consists of archival work, including codicological and palaeographical analysis into surviving early modern playhouse manuscripts, scribal habits and adjustments to text and tracing relationships between dramatists, scribes, publishers and players. This is supported by a depth of knowledge of Christopher Marlowe, including my previous work on the Mapping Marlowe project. To widen the search for evidence, I have identified Early Modern print culture as vital: dramatist Ben Jonson is particularly relevant due to his transparent approach to the development and publication of his work, which may assist in revealing further contemporary habits of textual transmission.

This research is furthered by my keen interest and training in the Digital Humanities. By creating and analysing a network of surviving archival evidence of copy-texts, I will centre my focus on locating patterns within the network to determine the likely purposes, forms, chronology and content of Marlowe’s lost copy-texts, piecing together the textual history of Marlowe’s poems and plays. The influential work of Tiffany Stern and Paul Werstine is invaluable to this project.

Through my digital approach, I also aim to create a resource that both informs and develops my topic as well as making palaeographical and manuscript research more accessible to current and future historians.