to make use of the characters in other dramatic settings than those presented
in the text: for example, to depict Hamlet as a foil for the doubts of Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern, as Tom Stoppard does, rather than the other way
around. Or one might write aHamletsuite for viola and string orchestra.
6.Hamletcan be seen as an historical artifact–a set of words on particular
pages–with rough and disputable boundaries. Historical text editors work
very hard to specify the artifact as fully as possible, by looking at variant
editions (First Folio [F1, 1623] vs. Bad Quarto [Q1, 1603]) vs. Second Quarto
[Q2, 1604–05]). Which version of the text is closest to Shakespeare’s fullest
intention? The latest and presumably deliberately revised? Or the earliest one
as used in first performances, prior to later corruptions? Which version is
most coherent semantically, thematically, and imagistically? Should we even
settle as best we can on an authoritative version, or should we rather publish
all versions as themselves independent historical artifacts?
These strategies forunderstanding are available aswell formedia ofart other
than dramatic literature.Beethoven can beseen asa figureof the late Enlighten-
ment, as a tortured soul, as one who covertly furthers masculinist values
already in cultural circulation, or as a master of formal relations and through-
composition. Themes and motives from his work can be quoted, revised, and
refigured by subsequent composers, and music text editors can argue about
authoritative texts in relation to shifting performance practices. In a series of
anthologies entitledMasterpieces ofWesternPainting,^1 several criticsinvestigate in
each volume various ways of understanding a single painting–for example,
Titian’sVenus of Urbino^2 by considering it formally, sociopolitically, biographi-
cally, in relation to gender issues, with attention to issues of physical restor-
ation, and so on.
Each of these strategies for understanding has its own virtues and vices.
Interpretinga workbysituating it inrelationtocontemporaryissuesin religion,
politics, and the other arts, as those issues were explicitly articulated, can reveal
broad patterns of shared thought, feeling, and interest, but it threatens to
devalue individual artists and works by casting them as merely typical. Bio-
graphical understanding locates the work as a distinctive personal product, but
it can sometimes focus on accidents of personal circumstance more than on the
work and either its art or history. To see a work in terms of unconscious or only(^1) Published by Cambridge University Press, beginning in 1997.
(^2) SeeTitian’s“Venus of Urbino,”ed. Rona Goffen (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
144 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art