Teena Rochfort-Smith (22 September 1861 – 4 September 1883) was a

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literature ...

Shakespearean William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

scholar and

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

most notable for her contributions to the form of the scholarly edition.

Early life

She was born Mary Lilian Rochfort-Smith in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

in 1861 to Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Smith. As a child, she was small and frail, earning her the nickname "teeny," which she continued to use throughout her life. She attended

Cheltenham Ladies' College Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls' schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to pr ...

, where she became interested in the study of Shakespeare. On 14 October 1881, she joined textual scholar Frederick J. Furnivall's

New Shakspere Society The New Shakspere Society was founded in autumn 1873 by Frederick James Furnivall in order "to do honor to Shakspere, to make out the succession of his plays, and thereby the growth of his mind and art; to promote the intelligent study of him, and ...

. She had a romantic relationship with Furnivall.Shakespeare in Rewrite
''The New Yorker'', The Stacks Reader The Society published a number of editions created by attendees of its monthly meetings at

University College, London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

; by 1882, Rochfort-Smith had become the editor of an innovative

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

edition.

The Four-Text Hamlet

Her 1883 three-scene prototype of

William Shakespeare's William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

play ''

'' created a prescient solution for offering parallel views of multiple textual versions; textual scholar Ann Thompson writes of this prototype that "the sample demonstrates that, once completed, Teena Rochfort Smith's edition would have been the most complex presentation of the texts of Hamlet ever attempted". This ''Four-Text 'Hamlet' in Parallel Columns'' prototype was intended to provide diplomatic transcriptions of ''Hamlets first and second quartos (Q1, Q2), first folio (F1), plus Rochfort-Smith's own old-spelling edition based on Q2 but also pulling from F1. The texts are printed in four columns across each pair of the book's landscape-oriented open pages, two columns per page. The edition employed six varieties of typeface, four inks, three kinds of underlining, and daggers, asterisks, and other symbols call out variants and the extent of variance. The prototype would have been nearly impossible to set and print given contemporary technology, and in fact Rochfort-Smith had agreed after her prototype's initial circulation among Society members to work toward a simpler final version of the edition.

Death

On 28 August 1883, Rochfort-Smith's dress and petticoats caught on fire due to a faulty match as she was burning some correspondence. She suffered severe burns, and died a week later on 4 September 1883, just shy of her 22nd birthday. Her early death prevented her ambitious editorial project from becoming fully realized.

References

Sources

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External links

Digital images of the Folger Shakespeare Library's copy of "A four-text edition of Shakspere’s Hamlet"

The Internet Archive's copy of "Teena Rochfort-Smith. A memoir with three Woodbury-types of her (1883)"

The Folger Shakespeare Library's catalog record for Frederick James Furnivall's ''Teena Rochfort-Smith. A memoir with three Woodbury-types of her, one each of Robert Browning and F. J. Furnivall and memorial lines by Mary Grace Walker''.

The Folger Shakespeare Library's catalog record for Teena Rochfort-Smith's ''A four-text edition of Shakspere’s Hamlet : 1. quarto 1, 1603 -- 2. quarto 2, 1604 -- 3. folio 1, 1623 -- 4. a revized text : in parallel columns / edited by Teena Rochfort Smith.''

The Folger Shakespeare Library's catalog record for Teena Rochfort-Smith's ''The number of lines in Shakspere’s works / tables compiled by Miss Teena Rochfort Smith and F.J. Furnivall, from the "Globe" edition, corrected.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rochfort-Smith, Teena Early editions of Shakespeare Women bibliographers Women philologists 1861 births 1883 deaths English philologists Shakespearean scholars 19th-century women writers