LETTER FROM PATRICIA PARKER TO ARDEN 3 GENERAL EDITORS (August 2, 2008):
To: ann.thompson@kcl.ac.uk, david.kastan@yale.edu, dsk1@columbia.edu, uclehrw@ucl.ac.uk,richard.proudfoot@ukgateway.net
From: Patricia Parker <parker@stanford.edu>
Subject: termination of my Arden edition by Margaret Bartley
Dear Arden 3 General Editors:
Because of the time-sensitivity of this issue in light of the impending Stratford conference and the swiftness of the publisher's recent termination of the Arden edition of *A Midsummer Night's Dream* on which I have expended so much labor and time (though its due date for completion was not until late 2009 at the earliest), I have no choice but to write you now to ask that you reverse this termination before any irreparable damage is done.
I must admit that I have been in a state of shock and disbelief since I received the termination notice -- and my attempts to deal with this alone by writing to Arden (now Cengage) publisher Margaret Bartley (from whom the termination came) over the past several weeks, to request that this matter be handled in a more reasonable and productive way, have failed to get anything from Margaret other than iterated termination notices delivered to my home.
I also entreated Margaret to let us settle everything reasonably -- so that my edition could move forward (rather than being terminated so abruptly) and so that there would be no stressful situation for anyone in view of the upcoming international gathering of Shakespeareans at Stratford.
However, these were all ignored. And there was no telephone conversation option provided (much better, in my experience, than legal-sounding letters sent with such abrupt demands, which, as it happened, were not even delivered to their destination until after Margaret's written demand deadline had already passed, a sad sign that the "preposterous" in both senses has been driving the entire process from the publisher's end).
Not until the termination was made (I must assume) even more final than the original final termination notice sent to my office -- by being sent to my home as well -- was I informed that Margaret had also expressly forbidden General Editor David Kastan from contacting me or responding in any way to my emails (sent to and cc'd to him after the July 2 termination letter was received).
Since none of the other General Editors made any attempt to contact me -- including to see whether or not the assumptions behind Margaret's termination were correct or to discuss a way out of the impasse created by her abrupt termination-- I can only conclude that all of the General Editors were similarly forbidden by Margaret. Was that the case?
As Margaret is aware, of the four emergency hospitalizations I have gone through over the past three years -- starting at the end of my sabbatical year at the Folger in 2004-5, when I had waited through that entire year (the only one I had to work on my edition free from fulltime teaching) for answers (that never came) from the Arden to crucial questions I had been asking for many years (including an essential decision needed from the Arden on a major proposal affecting my text, a proposal I had originally made almost a decade earlier and then repeatedly both orally and in writing, with no response -- two of those hospitalizations are now known (by the outside specialists my doctors / cardiologist had to consult) to have resulted from extreme stress (though they were assumed, throughout the hospitalizations and the long periods of subsequent cardiac and other monitoring, to have come from a tiny defect or problem they could not detect in my heart or cardiovascular system).
No other project in which I have been involved has caused me any stress: in fact there is a recent as well as a long past history of harmonious and highly productive relations between publishers and my role as an editor, collaborator, or author.
I could have been finished my entire Arden 3 edition of *A Midsummer Night's Dream* many years ago -- and not just the text and textual notes on which Margaret based this termination (citing a due date at the end of June that was never in any signed contract).
It is well known to others who saw me working so hard on my text and the collation of historical editions (for the textual notes) at the Folger in the summers of 2002 and 2003 that if not for the delays and non-responses from the Arden that impeded any further progress forward, that stage of my edition could have been finished by 2004 at the latest.
It is therefore extraordinary -- and one of the reasons why I am still in a state of disbelief as well as shock -- that Margaret's termination of my edition (received in July) was based on a supposed deadline for the delivery to her of my completed text and textual notes, since not even by July had those promised clarifications and answers been provided to me from the Arden end.
All of this -- over the past years since 2003 and especially since I had another wasted entire year in 2004-5 where all of those crucial responses and clarifications did not come -- has been extremely stressful; and absolutely sui generis in my experience as a scholar with any other project, or publisher.
During the periods when progress toward completion of my text and textual notes was so extraordinarily impeded by this baffling non-response (or even more baffling contradictory responses to my text), I worked very hard (again, as others at the Folger and elsewhere who saw me and students I hired at Stanford to assist me could confirm) on other parts of my edition (including introduction / stage history, commentary note materials etc.) so that the edition could move forward on those other aspects (not due for completion until late 2009) while the text was being held in limbo.
I also lectured widely on this work from my Introduction (including the part of the introduction on Pyramus and Thisbe, on the "mechanicals," on gender / race issues, and on other important aspects of the play) -- including at the invitation of Shakespeare scholars in Europe as well as in the U.S. and elsewhere.
For my stage history -- again in ways that are easily confirmed -- I travelled to productions and archives, obtained photographs and prompt book materials, and did huge amounts of work on that and other aspects of my edition that (once again) were not even close to due, while waiting for my text and textual notes to get out of this limbo they had been kept in by the baffling way in which that aspect of my edition was being handled at the Arden end and by the inexplicable losses of materials by Arden (not just my draft texts and detailed notes but also of both of my signed contracts, each of which I only recently learned were lost internally within the Arden offices for many years at a time, but in alternating fashion, so that there were two different contracts with different provisions. (None of my doctors, therefore, is surprised that I have been experiencing extreme stress with regard to the Arden.)
Though Margaret has been kept informed of all this work on later parts of my edition, over the past many years while I have been waiting for the crucial clarifications and answers affecting progress forward with my text and textual notes -- and although there is voluminous documentation of my work and correspondence with the Arden at my end (in literally dozens of file boxes containing the relevant letters and emails with still-unanswered questions and requests for clarification, carefully organized Introduction and stage history materials, color-coded files of commentary notes, textual note materials, photographs, woodcuts, and other images, etc) -- the final termination notice sent to me by Margaret (on July 14) to my Stanford office and only much later to my home, where I work exclusively during the summer months, says: "I am writing to confirm that, as no materials were received from you in connection with the Work by the due date of 30 June 2008, we are hereby terminating the Agreement."
In addition to the fact that there was never any signed contract with a due date of 30 June 2008, the claim that "no materials were received" from me in connection with my edition is contradicted by the truly voluminous email and other tracking records of transmission by email attachments and other means.
And other Shakespeareans who *have* been graciously giving me feedback on my text could confirm the draft texts they have seen, whose notes clearly bear the traces of having been sent to the Arden, starting as early as 2003 and then re-sent by me in 2006-7, after I learned that those 2003 materials had been inexplicably lost at the Arden end.
As Margaret has also been kept aware, I have been very careful to make sure that my text not only meticulously considers the earliest texts (as an Arden edition is supposed to do), rather than quickly recycling standard emendations; but is a text that takes into consideration the various audiences and readerships for such an edition, ranging from scholars to theatre practioners to students.
For this reason-- while waiting for the clarifications from the Arden regarding my draft texts sent in years ago -- I have also lectured and given invited seminars on my edition and text-in-progress at universities in the countries that would be its more extended "market" and have carefully considered those responses in relation to what an Arden 3 *Midsummer Night's Dream* might most usefully provide.
I have been getting enthusiastic responses to my text and edition not only from Shakespeareans across a wide spectrum of expertise (including other editors) but also from experienced theatre practitioners.
When I flew from California to Stratford in the spring of 2007, between weeks of teaching, in order to see Tim Supple's production of *A Midsummer Night's Dream* for my stage history, and I showed him the stage directions in the early texts, he actually changed his Stratford production in mid-stream as a result; and then emailed me to say how well a major early stage direction I had showed him (from my edition) was working on stage with his actors at Stratford. I also shared that email with Margaret so that she would have a sense of the reception of the work I was doing on the text. And I informed her of the continuing email conversations that transpired between Tim Supple and myself -- including after his production had gone on tour (still incorporating that change brought about by our conversation).
In addition -- as Margaret is also aware -- Cicely Berry of the RSC (who has been reading my texts from various scenes from the beginning of the play to the end, while I was waiting for the overdue clarifications from the Arden) not only initiated several transatlantic telephone conversations with me about my texts but also enthusiastically emailed me after our most recent conversation, to say how important she feels what I am doing with the edition is, and how important it is to carry on. Her email also expressed the hope that our conversations about my Arden edition would continue. She does not know about my recent termination by Margaret; and I have been entirely discreet with her, as with Tim Supple and others in the theatre world who have been reading and responding to my texts, who know nothing about any of the delays and problems with moving forward I have experienced from the Arden.
Ironically, Cicely Berry's enthusiastic email arrived on the same day as the definitive July 14 termination notice from Margaret was finally delivered to my door (July 21).
Although I have been under so much stress since the termination that I did not fully comprehend the blinding speed with which Margaret had acted to initiate this termination in early July -- after she received my email sent in the last week of June asking her what was happening, since everything was *still* in limbo for my text and textual notes, despite my reiterated requests in writing for the essential clarifications and responses in writing last fall-- here is what DHL informed me (yesterday) she had done to put the termination so quickly into whirlwind motion.
DHL confirmed that Margaret's letter (dated WEDNESDAY JULY 2, or only 2 days after Monday June 30, when she returned to the office and got my email sent the week before) was sent on that day from London to the Stanford University English department. This letter said (typos reproduced here):
"To date you have failed to deliver any of the material required under the terms of the head agreement of 20th March 1995, barring the sample scene.
[WITH NO MENTION OF THE DRAFT TEXTS OF ALL OF THE OTHER SCENES I HAD SENT IN TO THE ARDEN FROM THE REST OF THE PLAY (ACCOMPANIED BY DETAILED COLLATIONS, NOTES AND QUESTIONS FOR MY TWO GENERAL EDITORS) FROM 2003 ON, OR MY REPEATED WRITTEN REQUESTS FOR CLARIFICATION REGARDING SUCH CRUCIAL MATTERS AS HOW TO MOVE MY TEXT AND TEXTUAL NOTES FORWARD TO FINALIZATION, IN THE FACE OF VERY DIFFERENT RESPONSES FROM EACH OF MY GENERAL EDITORS, OR YEARS OF RESPONSE FROM ONLY ONE OF THEM, THOUGH THE PUBLISHER NOTIFIED ME IN WRITING THAT I HAD TO SATISFY ONE PARTICULAR GENERAL EDITOR, AND THE HIERARCHY OF FINAL ADJUDICATION WAS ENTIRELY UNCLEAR, IN LITERALLY THE MOST UNTRANSPARENT AND CONFUSING PROCEDURE I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED IN ANY PUBLISHING PROJECT.]
This July 2 termination notice then went on to say:
"If you do not deliver the manuscript material due to us by 30th June 2008 immediately (by 5 pm UK time July, 4th July), we will have no expectation of receiving any such materials from you. We will therefore have no option but to terminate our agreement with you under the terms of Clause entitled 'Delivery of the Work'."
This is what the DHL courier told me on the telephone regarding the above termination notice:
(1) since July 4 is American Independence day (official holiday: all offices closed), DHL in U.K.
would never have promised delivery of something sent July 2 until the following Monday July 7.
(2) even if Friday July 4 had not been a holiday, the earliest a DHL sent from the UK on
Wednesday July 2 could have arrived anywhere in the U.S. would be "around noon" on Friday
(ie 3 hours later than the 5 pm U.K. / 9 am California time deadline in Ms Bartley's letter;
(3) DHL in U.K. would never have promised overnight delivery (ie even their normal time between the
U.K. and U.S. is 2 business days)
(4) DHL tracking (Airway Bill # 9697462493) indicates that in fact the letter was
not delivered to the Stanford English department until MONDAY JULY 7 (12:55 pm).
Were you as the Arden General Editors aware of this quite extraordinary lack of knowledge of international courier schedules between the U.K. and the U.S. that meant that Margaret's termination notice with deadline had no hope of being received until three days after the deadline itself?
Did you know that a termination notice with a deadline beyond which "we will have no expectation of receiving any such materials from you" would not have had any hope of arriving in time even if July 4 weren't such a major annual American holiday, when no DHL deliveries can be made in the U.S. since offices are closed?
Even the DHL representative who provided this tracking information said that it was impossible that a publisher in the U.K. would not know that July 4 was an American holiday and that everything would be closed -- or that even normal-period deliveries take two full business days to arrive in the U.S.
Is this the kind of professional proceeding you endorse and are willing to put your names and reputations and the Arden name behind -- with regard to the dismissal of an editor who is widely known to have given the most important years of her professional life to this project?
Did Margaret and the publisher make this dismissal decision or was it made by the Arden General Editors as a group, or in a process in which the General Editors were consulted?
Did all of the General Editors know (when consulted by Margaret or making the dismissal decision) all of the pertinent details -- including the documented record of the loss of materials I have sent in (and then had to resend later, when I learned after considerable delays from the Arden end that they had been inexplicably lost after they were received)?
And were of the General Editors fully aware of the other problems (from the Arden end) that were for so long impediing movement forward to the completion of my text and textual notes (whose non-delivery by the non-contractual date of June 30, 2008, is cited by Margaret in the termination notice as the basis for the termination itself)?
Can you explain why it took almost a decade for me to get a decision from the General Editors regarding my original proposal for the whole of Act 5 of my Arden text? And why -- even after I met with Margaret and David Kastan (at the March 2005 SAA) to reiterate my multiple requests for a decision on that crucial matter -- it still took until the later fall of 200[5] (after my sabbatical leave was over and I was back fulltime teaching) to get any answer back whatsoever? (Margaret told me that there could be no answer to my proposal, even in 2005, despite its having been reiterated so often in writing in the years before, because the General Editors had to arrange their schedules so that they could all meet in London -- though in other major projects in which I have been involved, and certainly in every other organization I know of, major decisions are made every day through conference calls and other means.)
And can you explain why an edition that has been getting the wonderful support of so many scholars, teachers, and students outside the Arden -- and in the theatre world -- has received so little support and so many impediments to its progress inside the Arden?
Within the past 48 hours, as the Stratford conference approaches, it has also come to the attention of others that Margaret is making representations about this termination that are not only misleading but include statements about the importance of respecting contracts and contractual deadlines in a way that might impact the General Editors as well as others in the Arden 3 series.
Can all of you as scholars and editors honestly say that you have met all of your contractual deadlines in the past, or even over the past few years, and never kept (to cite just one example) another publisher or Editor of another project waiting long after a contractual deadline had come and gone, even for something much shorter and involving so much less research and work than an Arden (or even a small part of an Arden)?
Have all of you met all of your original deadlines for your own editions? Or ever kept an Arden editor waiting for a very long time for any response to materials sent in, even when that delay in responding might have put that editor in danger of being correspondingly late in meeting his or her contractual deadline for completion?
To have such an official communication go out to Shakespeareans as Margaret is now sending in writing to people who will be at the Stratford conference (regarding my termination) -- citing, among other things, a principle with regard to deadlines that many might see as hypocritical from so many points of view (not only in relation to contracts between eg. a General Editor and another publisher but also in relation to delays within the Arden 3 series, independent of anything to do with me or my edition) -- is something that may not only raise disturbing questions about double standards but potential embarrassment for the General Editors as well as the publisher of the series to which your names are so publicly attached.
Again, since it is so crucial to avoid the purveying of inaccurate or misleadingly partial information as well as direct slander (in the name of a canon in which slander plots figure so largely), I must ask you not to participate in any such transmission or purveying, as it has become sadly evident to me that the General Editors as a group are not aware of so much of what has made it impossible for me to proceed with my text and textual notes, though I am known to be far ahead of schedule with other parts of my Arden edition.
If this were a situation where all other editions were already finished and in print, or where no other Arden 3 editor or General Editor had ever gone beyond any contractual deadline with the publisher without being punished by termination, then the written communication that Margaret is now sending out to others regarding my termination (including beyond the Arden, while insisting the matter is entirely "private") might not be so misleading in its partiality (in the multiple punning senses of that term), in relation to contractual matters as well to the supposed necessity of terminating my edition, when in fact it would take any new editor longer to finish *A Midsummer Night's Dream* than it would take my edition to be printed. Many have stressed that for an editor to begin from scratch now and go from start to finish in only a few years would either be impossible or seriously undermine the reputation for which the Arden name is meant to stand.
And for the publisher to profit from the sales of this popular play, with no advance or compensation for all of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the Arden 3 editor who has already put so much labor, time, and financial investment into an Arden 3 edition of this play, is, I am told, something that is being viewed (as a way of treating any scholar or editor) as not only cynical but "unconscionable."
I have known all of you as scholars and fellow-Shakespeareans. I write this letter to you in the hope that you will not do or ratify anything that will do serious damage to your own reputations as General Editors within the Shakespeare community or to the Arden series, since it is not at all clear that the publisher is acting in the best interest of the series with which you are identified; and I know (from their communications to me) how deeply disturbed so many other Shakespeareans are by this termination, including those who have seen the texts and collation notes and (still unanswered) questions and requests for clarification about them that I have been sending to the Arden since 2003 (far beyond my earlier "sample scene").
Once again, I am going to ask you as the General Editors, to reverse this termination.
Sincerely,
Patricia Parker
Margery Bailey Professor in English and Dramatic Literature
and Professor of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
