4:06 p.m., July 23, 2008--The University of Delaware Press has awarded its 2008 Jay L. Halio Prize in Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies to Adele Davidson of Kenyon College for her manuscript “Shakespeare in Shorthand: The Textual Mystery of King Lear.”

The prize carries a cash award of $1,500. It was established in 2004 to honor Jay L. Halio, UD professor emeritus, who was chairperson of the UD Press editorial board from 1984-96. Davidson's manuscript is in production.

Members of the prize committee described the work as a “brilliant” study of the play and a work that will be “a major contribution to textual studies of Shakespeare.” They added that, when published, it will be “required reading for scholars working on Shakespeare's texts, as well as other playwrights in the period and essential for anyone teaching King Lear.”

A 1997 article in the Kenyon Alumni Bulletin describes Davidson as a “walking advertisement for a continuing love affair with Shakespeare” whose fascination with the Bard was piqued by two of her undergraduate teachers at Kenyon. Her University of Virginia dissertation focused on the textual history of Shakespeare's Pericles. That led to a strong interest in “mysterious passages” in other Shakespeare plays, so called because they either have “no clear meaning or appear to be clumsily written.”

While doing postgraduate study, Davidson discovered a 1932 book, Title Page Borders Used in England and Scotland, 1486-1640. There she noticed that the picture on the title page of the 1609 Pericles was identical to the first page of an earlier book, John Willis's The Art of Stenographie, published in 1602. Davidson said she was stunned. “She recalled a past theory, often discredited, that stolen plays of Shakespeare had been surreptitiously copied, while they were being performed, in modern shorthand, which had just been invented. And Willis's stenographic system was one of the most popular.” Today, almost no one talks about shorthand, but four centuries ago it was high tech, allowing unknown persons to copy and publish Shakespeare's plays without authorization.

Davidson's discovery encouraged her to widen her focus to include King Lear, variously referred to as “the Mount Everest of plays.” Her diligence resulted in a 1993 summer research grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, a series of articles, and now the Halio Prize.

Article by Karen G. Druliner