In Conclusion

Abstract

Shakespeare had his comedies plotted in his mind and had formed more or less definite ideas of themes and characters, settings and scenes, openings, unfoldings, and catastrophes, before much ink was spent. This hardly needs saying. Sometimes his ideas would be initially determined by the sources he drew upon. This, too, can be stated confidently. In a few cases, which are more doubtful, he may have had earlier plays to quarry or refashion, his own or others’. Whether he always began at the beginning of a projected comedy and worked his way regularly from the first scene to the last we cannot really tell, but it is a fair assumption, supported by sporadic evidence of patterning, that his writing often progressed impulsively rather than systematically. In any case, as this study of the early comedies should have amply demonstrated, he never adhered rigidly to a consistent preconceived design or to the details or even outlines of borrowed stories. He amplified and omitted, changed and revised, as the spirit moved him, his momentum impelled him, and his memory served him. And he often left signs and remains of abandoned or modified apparent intentions. It is also clear that other agents besides the author had some part in the transformations which the plays underwent in their passage from foul papers to printed texts.