"Leaden Contemplation": Ambiguous Evidence of Revision in Q1 Love's Labour's Lost Abstract Shakespeare Association of America 1991 Annual Meeting (Vancouver) Seminar 1: "Shakespeare's Quartos: Text, Performance, Memory." Kenneth B. Steele University of Toronto Less controversial than intertextual evidence for Shakespearean revision in the major tragedies is intratextual evidence in his early plays, particularly the quartos apparently based on authorial holograph. In particular, four "foul paper" plays (Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream) contain the majority of "fossilized" revision: inconsistencies, repetitions, and redundancies. This intratextual revision is more poetic and less theatrical than the later, intertextual variety, although equally hypothetical and ambiguous: consecutive "drafts" may represent deliberate repetition, compositorial or editorial error, or alternative options which Shakespeare left to be decided in rehearsal. Furthermore, much of the evidence in the "good" quartos looks dangerously like that in the "bad" ones: an examination of variant speech prefixes, or "polynomials," in Q1 Love's Labour's Lost suggests that Shakespeare, like a supposed "reporter," could often appear unaware of character names unless they were prominent in dialogue. Foul-paper "drafts" and confusions also resemble some confusions in early "bad" quartos like Q1 2 Henry VI. The "polynomials" in Q1 Love's Labour's Lost also seem to suggest some discontinuities in the underlying copy, and may help identify passages which were written out of their published sequence, or at some chronological remove from their contexts, particularly when they occur simultaneously with consistent changes in the content of the dialogue. Close readings of the two best-known textual fossils, "O we haue made a Vow to studie Lordes" (LLL Q1 F2v-3v; 4.3.293-340) and "And what to me my Loue?" (LLL Q1 K1r-v; 5.2.805-53), reveal deliberate and consistent revisions in rhetoric, content, and poetic effects. Shakespeare, it would seem, has deliberately heightened the poetic artifice and self-consciousness of his lines, increasing Berowne's centrality to the play and further developing his character. Yet this solid evidence for authorial revision appears in a text in which inconsistency, repetition and redundancy are part of Shakespeare's comic strategy, and hence in which apparent "revisions" are rendered unusually ambiguous. My paper is exploratory rather than conclusive, offering suggestions, pointing out theoretical difficulties, and raising questions for which I genuinely hope others can supply answers. Because the paper arises from my dissertation research, comments and suggestions are particularly welcome. Non-participants in the seminar may contact me at: 222 The Esplanade, Suite 720, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5A 4M8 (416) 369-1474, or via electronic mail (Bitnet/Internet/EARN) at .