When first quartos aren't necessarily bad quartos

Part of our guiding philosophy here at Bad Quarto Productions is that there's no such thing as a "bad quarto." While Laurie E. Maguire, in Shakespearean Suspect Texts, makes a case that certain of the printed playbooks do bear markers of what the New Bibliographers referred to as "memorial construction," that is not the same as saying that memorial reconstruction is a sure sign of literary piracy as Alfred W. Pollard, W. W. Greg, and John Dover Wilson understood it. To the contrary, Peter W. M. Blayney, in "The Publication of Playbooks," demonstrates that Pollard, Greg, and Wilson did not sufficiently understand the economics of printed playbooks in early modern London to know what basic literary commerce would have looked like, let alone literary piracy. That all said, the case of the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost is instructive, as G. Hjort's argument for it as a "bad quarto" demonstrates the sort of fallacious thinking that colored the logic of the New Bibliographers, and can help us avoid similar mistakes in modern approaches.

Title page from the 1598 quarto of Love's Labour's Lost. 

Hjort published  “The Good and Bad Quartos of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Love's Labour's Lost.’” in 1926, in the heyday of the New Bibliographers' theory of literary piracy (Pollard having published Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of The Transmission of his Text roughly ten years earlier). In his essay, Hjort finds evidence that the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost "reads like a typical instance of a pirates work, made up from incomplete notes, eked out by a not too good remembrance of a performance" (Hjort 145). This evidence lies chiefly in Berowne's speech arguing for Ferdinand and his men to break their vows and pursue their loves...

Ber. O tis more then neede.
Haue at you then affections men at armes,
Consider what you first did sweare vnto:
To fast, to study, and to see no woman:
Flat treason gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, Can you fast? your stomacks are too young:
And abstinence ingenders maladies.
And where that you haue vowd to studie (Lordes)
In that each of you haue forsworne his Booke.
Can you still dreame and poare and thereon looke.
For when would you my Lord, or you, or you,
Haue found the ground of Studies excellence,
Without the beautie of a womans face?
From womens eyes this doctrine I deriue,
They are the Ground, the Bookes, the Achadems,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why vniuersall plodding poysons vp
The nimble spirites in the arteries,
As motion and long during action tyres
The sinnowy vigour of the trauayler.
Now for not looking on a womans face,
You haue in that forsworne the vse of eyes:
And studie too, the causer of your vow.
For where is any Authour in the worlde,
Teaches such beautie as a womas eye:
Learning is but an adiunct to our selfe,
And where we are, our Learning likewise is.
Then when our selues we see in Ladies eyes,
With our selues.
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O we haue made a Vow to studie, Lordes,
And in that Vow we haue forsworne our Bookes:
For when would you (my Leedge) or you, or you?
In leaden contemplation haue found out
Such fierie Numbers as the prompting eyes,
Of beautis tutors haue inritcht you with:
Other slow Artes intirely keepe the braine:
And therefore finding barraine practizers,
Scarce shew a haruest of their heauie toyle.
But Loue first learned in a Ladies eyes,
Liues not alone emured in the braine:
But with the motion of all elamentes,
Courses as swift as thought in euery power,
And giues to euery power a double power,
Aboue their functions and their offices.
It addes a precious seeing to the eye:
A Louers eyes will gaze an Eagle blinde.
A Louers eare will heare the lowest sound.
When the suspitious head of theft is stopt.
Loues feeling is more soft and sensible,
Then are the tender hornes of Cockled Snayles.
Loues tongue proues daintie, Bachus grosse in taste,
For Valoure, is not Loue a Hercules?
Still clyming trees in the Hesperides.
Subtit as Sphinx, as sweete and musicall,
As bright Appolos Lute, strung with his haire.
And when Loue speakes, the voyce of all the Goddes,
Make heauen drowsie with the harmonie.
Neuer durst Poet touch a pen to write,
Vntill his Incke were tempred with Loues sighes:
O then his lines would rauish sauageeares,
And plant in Tyrants milde humilitie.
From womens eyes this doctrine I deriue.
They sparcle still the right promethean fier,
They are the Bookes, the Artes, the Achademes,
That shew, containe, and nourish all the worlde.
Els none at all in ought proues excellent.
Then fooles you were, these women to forsweare:
Or keeping what is sworne, you will proue fooles,
For Wisedomes sake, a worde that all men loue:
Or for Loues sake, a worde that loues all men.
Or for Mens sake, the authour of these Women:
Or Womens sake, by whom we Men are Men.
Lets vs once loose our othes to finde our selues,
Or els we loose our selues, to keepe our othes:
It is Religion to be thus forsworne.
For Charitie it selfe fulfilles the Law:
And who can seuer Loue from Charitie.
        (TLN 1639 - 1716, highlights mine) 

Hjort argues that the passage, when read without the highlighted lines, "becomes perfectly clear and sensible, free from any repetitions" (Hjort 145). Hjort then offers the completed passage as a self evident example of the opposite; "the [completed] passage reminds one suspiciously strongly of corresponding passages in bad quartos" (Hjort 145). This argument is an exemplar of inductive reasoning: Hjort (and the other New Bibliographers) find evidence of piracy because that is what they wanted to find, and that evidence itself tends to be, as it is here, purely a matter of personal taste.

Hjort is correct in saying that removing the lines in the passage highlighted above reduce repetition, but it would be a mistake to presume that evidence of repetition should be equated with any sort of piracy, or even that it is undesirable. If we accept Michael Hirrel's argument that Shakespeare's plays were longer than many of his contemporaries' plays because audiences wanted to consume more of Shakespeare's words, it's not hard to imagine that one of Shakespeare's methods for delivering longer plays was om repeating and expanding on certain words and themes more than another dramatist might, as Shakespeare does in the complete passage above (Hirrel 171). It might also be useful to remember that the 1598 quarto of Love's Labour's Lost advertises that it has been expanded by Shakespeare since a recent court performance, and so the repetition might have been for the benefit of readers, and not performances.

Berowne (Courtney M. McClellan) can't believe he's fallen in love,
in a scene from Bad Quarto Productions' Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto.
Directed by Alex Dabertin. Photo by James M. Smith. 

And yet there's no reason to think the lines Hjort finds repetitive weren't originally written by Shakespeare for the purpose of repetition in performance. The lines "O we haue made a Vow to studie, Lordes, / And in that Vow we haue forsworne our Bookes," for example, repeat the word "Vow" and the metaphoric use of "Bookes" (i.e. women's faces) from above as a form of exergasia, or amplification through repetition. As Berowne has specifically been charged with making the case that the gentlemen should break their vows by the king, his use of rhetorical art is appropriate to the given circumstances of the play, and for a character known for his wit and wordplay. Excising this repetition from the text means removing a piece of Berowne's character.

I have found no other references to Q1 Love's Labour's Lost as a "bad quarto" apart from Hjort. Alfred Harbage, in 1962, posits that a "bad quarto" may have existed, citing the advertisement that the 1598 quarto is "newly corrected and augmented," but he is referring to a comparatively shorter and incomplete conceptual version of the play, rather than to a printed text (196) It is also noteworthy that Harbage considers the the 1598 quarto to be printed from an authorial manuscript as a matter of fact (196). Even for those looking for literary piracy, the assertion that the 1598 quarto of Love's Labour's Lost is such a text seems to have been a bridge too far.

But for the modern performance-minded editor. there are some very good reasons to remove those pieces of Berowne's speech mentioned above that have nothing to do with fantasies of literary piracy. A running time of ninety minutes has become so ubiquitous in the modern theatre that "NMNI" has developed into a convenient shorthand for plays with that approximate running time, and without an intermission (MacDonald). Over the past decade, this structure of plays has shaped audiences expectations (MacDonald). Giving audience members a play-going experience that more or less conforms to their cultural play-going expectations is something any theatre company with aspirations to any sort of longevity has to consider, at the very least.

Moth (Olivia Vessel) leads a post-show dance party in Bad Quarto Productions'
Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto. directed by Alex Dabertin.
Photo by James M. Smith. 

It's worth noting here that we have cut our current production of Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto to about 100 minutes. Through our experience producing plays in New York, we have learned that a running time of two hours is about as long as an audience is willing to sit without an intermission of some kind. As Bad Quarto Productions is devoted to re-creating the early modern play-going experience, we strive to present our plays without an intermission, and a ninety-minute running time is not without precedent, based on certain surviving texts from the period.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Cronicle History of Henry the Fift, and The Life and Death of Jack Straw all have an approximate ninety-minute running time when performed at a speed of about twenty lines per minute, and when performed using Shakespearean staging conditions. Whatever the provenance of those other plays, the advertised expansion on the title page of Q1 Love's Labour's Lost invites the possibility that the original performance text was shorter than the one that was printed.

Or that may not have been the case. The 1598 quarto may contain lines excised from performance, and that Shakespeare merely added lines from his rough draft to the manuscript her gave Cuthebert Burby, the stationer. Perhaps more likely, Shakespeare may have provided Burby with his rough draft, and then Burby decided to include lines that Shakespeare had struck through. We must also consider the possibility that the advertisement itself is merely a marketing ploy, and there was no change between the performance text at court and the printed text in 1598. It is unlikely we will ever know the provenance of any text for certain, but given the available evidence from the early modern era, all of these scenarios are more likely than literary piracy.

The New Bibliographer's myth of literary piracy is dependent on the belief that Shakespeare was above his theatrical circumstances. The endurance of great works of art lies in their ability to be constantly re-read as culture changes. Hjort was part of a cohort of scholars looking to liberate "our Author" from the baseness of the playhouse and bestow on Shakespeare the gentlemanly status that Shakespeare himself coveted in life. Their author was for the scholar to study in his private library, and the process of alterations to a written script that most modern practitioners would recognize as "new play development" were received as corruptions to a text that was otherwise perfect and holy. Their task was to reveal the perfection of the manuscript beneath the text.

To Hjort, that the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost is a pirated text sullied by performers or editors seems certain, but our knowledge of early modern playing conditions and printing conditions should accept no such certainty. What we know is what the available evidence allows for: that surviving play books vary widely in length is an easily observable fact, and it is likely that early modern companies sometimes performed shorter plays, and sometimes longer ones (Hirrel 169). Performed uncut, Q1 Love's Labour's Lost would likely run about 150 minutes; roughly 30 minutes longer than the running time of uncut Q1 Hamlet. 

King Ferdinand (Kitty Mortland, left) asks the newly crowned Queen
of France (Melody Lam) to delay her departure in a profession of earnest love
in Bad Quarto Productions' Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto.
Directed by Alex Dabertin. Photo by James M. Smith.

As MacDonald indicates, the perception of an evening of Shakespeare as a "serious commitment" is not entirely consistent with the way in which we at Bad Quarto Productions wanted to present Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto. While Love's Labour's Lost does treat seriously on the nature of promises, as Alex Dabertin astutely observed in his director's notes, that moment comes at the end of a light-hearted comedy of wit, wordplay, masquerades, and pageantry ("Bad Quarto Productions To Stage Earliest Version of LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST"). The heaviness comes only at the conclusion, where love manifests itself through the pain of denial, but that moment will inevitably lose some of it's potency if an audience accustomed to an 'NMNI' is focusing their thoughts on using the restroom or not missing their train.

Happily, scholarship has changed much in the past century, and the Author of the New Bibliographers is not ours -- our Shakespeare belongs to the theatre, and we can honor his writing and best explore his playsby performing them in the intersection between Shakespeare's theatre and our own. This means that we must proceed without making any special claims to truth that we know we can't possess, and learn to rejoice in the possibilities necessitated by the uncertainty that we've inherited. And yes, sometimes that means we need to make allowances for an audience most comfortable committing to a NMNI evening. For us at Bad Quarto Productions, the Shakespeare most worth sharing is the one that our audiences are willing to come to see.

Citations

"Bad Quarto Productions To Stage Earliest Version of LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST." BroadwayWorld.com. 4 July 2017. Web. 21 Aug. 2017. https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-off-broadway/article/Bad-Quarto-Productions-To-Stage-Earliest-Version-of-LOVES-LABOURS-LOST-20170704

Billings, Timothy Ed. Love's Labour's Lost (Quarto I, 1598). By William Shakespeare. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. 21 Aug. 2017. Accessed 21 Aug. 2017. <http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/LLL_Q1/complete/>

Blayney, Peter W. M. "The Publication of Playbooks." A New History of Early English Drama. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan Ed. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. Print. p 383 - 422.

Burton, Gideon O. "Exergasia." Silva Rhetoricae. Provo: Brigham Young University. Web. Accessed 20 Aug. 2017. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/E/exergasia.htm

The Cronicle Historie of Henry the Fift. By William Shakespeare Dir. Tony Tambasco. Bad Quarto Productions. 353 W. 48th St. Studios, New York. 12 Sept. 2010. Performance.

Hamlet: The First Quarto. By William Shakespeare. Dir. Tony Tambasco. Bad Quarto Productions. 353 W. 48th St. Studios, New York. 27 Apr. 2014. Performance.

Harbage, Alfred. "Love's Labour's Lost and the Early Shakespeare." Love's Labour's Lost: Critical Essays. Felicia Hardison Londre Ed. New York: Garland Publishing. 1997. p 193 - 211. Print.

Hirrel, Michael J. "Duration of Performances and Lengths of Plays: How Shall We Beguile the Lazy Time?" Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol 61. No 2. Summer 2010. p 159 - 182. Print.

Hjort, G. “The Good and Bad Quartos of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Love's Labour's Lost.’” The Modern Language Review, vol. 21, no. 2, 1926, pp. 140–146. JSTOR. Accessed 20 Aug. 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/3714706.

The Life and Death of Jack Straw. Dir. Tony Tambasco. Bad Quarto Productions. 353 W. 48th St. Studios, New York. 13 Nov. 2016. Performance.

Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto. Dir. Alex Dabertin. Bad Quarto Productions. 353 W. 48th St. Studios, New York. 13 Aug. 2017. Performance.

MacDonald, Sandy. "The Secret of 'NMNI.'" TDF Stages. New York: Theatre Development Fund. 24 July 2017. Web. Accessed 20 Aug. 2017. https://www.tdf.org/stages/article/1712/the-secret-of-nmni

Maguire, Laurie E. Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The 'Bad' Quartos and their Contexts. Cambridge: University Press. 1996. Print.

The Merry Devil of Edmonton. Dir. Tony Tambasco. Bad Quarto Productions. Studios 1831, Philadelphia. 12 Sept. 2010. Performance.

Pollard, Alfred W. Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates and the Problems of The Transmission of his Text. Cambridge: University Press. 2nd Ed. 1920. Web. The Internet Archive. Accessed 21 Aug 2017. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.51936.

How Lost is Love's Labour?

As Bad Quarto Productions stands ready to preview its production of Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto, our second production of the 2017 season, I keep coming back to something that's always nagged me about this comedy: how lost is love's labour really? Ferdinand and his men don't get to marry the Princess and her ladies at the end of the play as they had hoped, but they've all extracted a promise to marry when the gentlemen have made certain proofs of their characters to those ladies.

In early modern London, a promise to marry was legally binding in a way that modern marriage proposals are not. The abundance of pregnant brides in the period (including Anne Hathaway) is partially explained by the religious allowance that, for a marriage to be legitimate before God, all the couples needed to do was to make a solemn promise to each other before God: neither the church nor state were necessarily involved in what could be considered a private matter (Dolan 622). These promises were legally enforceable in church courts, however, and it seems unlikely that the sober-minded Princess of France and her equally pragmatic ladies would make such promises in vain, even if state marriages were of a different order than common ones (Dolan 622). The labours of love that Ferdinand and his men are enjoined to have not even begun by the play's conclusion, but the rewards for their successful completions seems certain.

As for the labours that Ferdinand and his men have already undertaken? The Princess (by then Queen) and her ladies interpret them:

At courtshyp pleasant iest and courtecie,
As bombast and as lyning to the time:
But more deuout then this our respectes,
Haue we not been, and therefore met your Loues,
In their owne fashyon like a merriment.
        (TLN 2738 - 2742)

Ferdinand and his men have presented their love as trifles (literally), not as something sacred, and the ladies have replied in kind. As is typical in Shakespeare's comedies, as we see see in virtually all of them, women are masters of the art of love, and serve as tutors to their undergraduate gentlemen.

What makes this lesson particularly poignant is that, in director Alex Dabertin's analysis, the King of France sends his daughter on this embassy to Ferdinand with the idea of a political marriage in mind. This reading is in keeping with Boyet's lines:

Now Maddame summon vp your dearest spirrits,
Cosider who the King your father sendes:
To whom he sendes, and whats his Embassie.
Your selfe, helde precious in the worldes esteeme,
To parlee with the sole inheritoure
Of all perfections that a man may owe,
Matchles Nauar, the plea of no lesse weight,
Then Aquitaine a Dowrie for a Queene.
        (TLN 492 - 499).

And it is certainly within the realpolitik of the period. But at the end of the play, she is Queen of France, and not merely princess, and knowing the professed truth of Ferdinand's love, is able to force him to Biblical terms: if Ferdinand truly loves her, following the example of Genesis 29:20, his year of labour will only seem a few days, and they will enjoy more than a political match.

That said, one could plausibly read the title as a promise that Ferdinand and his gentlemen will fail in their yet-to-be-performed labours. How you view the loss of love's labour in the play is, in this way, a measure of your own feelings as to the truth of Ferdinand, Longaville, Dumain, and Berowne's love.

Citations

Billings, Timothy Ed. Love's Labour's Lost (Quarto I, 1598). By William Shakespeare. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. 5 Aug. 2017. Accessed 5 Aug. 2017. <http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/LLL_Q1/complete/>

Dolan, Frances. "Shakespeare and Marriage: An Open Question." Literature Compass. 9 Aug. 2011. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing. 620 - 634. Web. Accessed 4 Aug. 2017. <http://english.ucdavis.edu/sites/english.ucdavis.edu/files/users/fdolan/Dolan%2C%20Shakespeare%26Marriage.pdf>

Geneva Bible, 1599 Edition. Tolle Lege Press, 2006. Biblegateway.com. Web. Accessed 5 Aug. 2017. <https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/1599-Geneva-Bible-GNV/>  

Meet the company of Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto

We're excited to open Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto on August 12th, and we think it's about time you met our company for the show....

Amy Hayes, Audrey Brown, Courtney M. McClellan, Kevin Dang, Kitty Mortland,
Marcella Pereda, Martin Goldberg, Max Stein, Melody Lam, Natasha Cole,
Olivia Vessel, Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti, Rebekah Carrow, Samantha Burkland, and Alex Dabertin;
The company of Bad Quarto Productions' upcoming Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto

Amy Hayes (Holfernes) America Is Hard to See, Life Jacket Theatre, NYC.  Regional: Hesther, Equus (Oldcastle Theatre); Mistress Ford, Merry Wives of Windsor (IndyShakes); Gertrude, Hamlet (Indianapolis); Tour Guide/Doctor, No Exit’s Middletown (Indy), Hermione, The Winter’s Tale (Indy Shakes), Mama,Distracted, Wisdom Tooth Theatre (Indy), Jasmine, Chris White’s Thawat Indyfringe.  Film and TV: Mrs. Samuelson in The Celebrant with Rae Dawn Chong and Reparation with Jon Huertas. Artistic Director, Wisdom Tooth Theatre Project.  Recording Projects: Some Things Never Change, Hidden Graces (Spring House); Books: A Collection of Wednesdays (Zondervan/Harper Collins).

Audrey Brown (Longaville) Going three years strong as a New York based actor, Audrey is elated to be cast in her first Bad Quarto Production play. Audrey moved from Nevada to attend the Lee Strasberg Institute after graduating with a BA in Theatre and International Affairs. Before making her move east, she discovered her love for Shakespeare and classical theatre after working with Shakespearean Actor, Author and producer, Ben Crystal in a production of Hamlet. This experience ignited a love for the language and ensemble work that couldn’t have been found anywhere else. Audrey was most recently on set of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as well as in a production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Special shout out and all the love to my family who have taught me the true meaning and importance of perseverance and support.

Courtney M. McClellan (Berowne) is an actor/voiceover artist, graphic designer, teaching artist, and Artistic Associate at Bad Quarto Productions. Courtney is also a proud Equity Member Candidate. Recent credits include What Lamb, What Ladybird! and The Life and Death of Jack Straw with Bad Quarto Productions, Garbage Person Karaoke with the Capital Fringe Festival (Washington D.C.), As You Like It (La Belle/Phoebe) with Shakespeare Off-Broadway, Whatchamacallit and, "Luck Bar Scene," and "No Plan B" with the Skeleton Rep, and Ripper at Times Scare. BA Communications/Theatre, Hampton University; McCaskill Studios, NYC. www.courtneymmcclellan.com. 

Kevin Dang (Katherine) is a native of Dallas, TX. He has recently worked on the TV show Gotham and was in The Madness of Hercules at the New York Euripides Summer Festival as the Messenger. He is a proud member of the Asian-American activist community and is striving for equality and representation on stage and screen. Kevindang.space

Kitty Mortland (Ferdinand) is excited to be working with Bad Quarto for a second time, having previously played the Queen in Hamlet: The First Quarto. She recently played the title character in King Lear (What Dreams May Co), appeared in Measure for Measure (Hudson Warehouse), As You Like It (Folding Chair Classical Theatre), and repertory productions of Richard II and Romeo and Juliet (Hamlet Isn't Dead). Kitty also played the title character in Hamlet: The Series, available on YouTube. Originally from Chicago, she appeared there in Down & Derby (The New Colony), Devour (20% Theatre Chicago), and the Jeff Nominated The Bad Seed: The Musical (Corn Productions).  When not on stage, Kitty is also a singer/songwriter who played venues across the Chicagoland area including the Elbo Room, the Underground Lounge, and Reggie's Rock Club. DFTBA.

Marcella Pereda (Don Armado) is excited to be back at Bad Quarto after appearing as Ismenus in this season's Cupid's Revenge. Some of her recent credits include the world premier of Remington and Weasle (Kim Luna) at PYGmalion Productions, Peter Pan (Tiger Lily) at Utah Children's Theatre, The Skin of Our Teeth (Gladys) at the Grand Theatre, and A Few Good Men(Joanne Galloway u/s) at Pioneer Memorial Theatre. www.marcellapereda.com

Martin Goldberg (Nathaniel)  is a NYC native and graduate of Brooklyn College. He has attended classes at HB Studio, Penny Templeton Studios, and the Upright Citizens Brigade. Marty’s credits include the Love Creek Productions of Classy Shorts, An Evening with Le Wilhelm, Rubicon Crossed, and Masqurade Asylum, The Manhattan Repertory’s productions of Some Squeaking Cleopatra Boy, A Thousand Words, Exhume Yourself, and Tales of Terror (The Hand),  the AlphaNYC Production of Ceiling Art and And Then There Were None, and the Firebird Youth Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet.

Max Stein (Rosaline) Max has enjoyed living and acting in New York City for the last ten years. Before that he trained with the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, and attained a B.A. in Theatre at Wittenberg University. He has enjoyed working with companies including The Actor's Project and The Michael Chekov Theatre Company, and is currently a member of The Complete Theatre Company. Thanks for coming to see him do what he loves!

Melody Lam (Princess of France) is classically trained with a focus on Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov. She has studied at various studios across NYC including Stella Adler and Michael Howard. Credits include Lady Macbeth in Macbeth with Theater2020, Ariel in The Tempest and Dorine in Tartuffe. Film credits include Red Plastic Bag. Melody is a trained vocalist and contemporary dancer, and speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and French. 

Natasha Cole (Costard) is thrilled to make her Bad Quarto debut! She is proud ensemble member of Providence-based Out Loud Theatre and is a current cast member of the international tour of Kultar's Mime. She recently graduated Hofstra University with a BFA in Acting. 

Olivia Vessel (Moth) is excited to be performing with Bad Quarto Productions! Recent credits include Jeanie in Hair (Heights Players), Miss White in Clue: The Musical (West End Lounge), and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Salt Lake Shakespeare). You may have also seen her performing her original one woman show, Olivia's Corner, a satire about a children's show host teaching kids about adult themes, performed at various comedy clubs in NYC. www.youtube.com/c/oliviavessel

Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti (Dumain) is a strategic, multidisciplinary performer and programming developer invested in honoring communities in the city with effective, creative policy and programming.  A New York City native, she values the intersection of education and history as foundation for building institutions. Elizabeth received a BA in Religion, with a concentration in Human Rights from Columbia University and graduated with a MA in Arts Politics from NYU-Tisch. She is the grant writer for The Public Theater. Many thanks and endless love to my partner, Alex Dabertin.

Rebekah Carrow (Boyet/Dull) is an actor and playwright in New York City. Her first play, Mary V, just finished its first run at Theater for the New City. She is an alumni of Atlantic Studio's Evening Conservatory program. She has performed throughout New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Virginia.   

Samantha Renèe Burkard (Maria/Jacquenetta) is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and has lived in New York for the past year, pursuing her passions for music, acting, and Shakespeare. Recently, she has been working with Titan Theatre Company as a Young Company member, which has expanded her love and knowledge of Shakespeare sevenfold. She is thrilled to be appearing for the first time with Bad Quarto Productions, and hopes you enjoy the show! 

Alex Dabertin (Director) is an artistic associate at Bad Quarto Productions. Alex was recently seen in Bad Quarto's productions of Cupid's Revenge as Leucippus, Hamlet: The First Quarto as Hamlet, and The Taming of a Shrew as Polidor. Alex directed Bad Quarto's Summer 2016 production of What, Lamb! What, Ladybird!, and assisted with direction of Bad Quarto’s Fall 2016 production of The Life and Death of Jack Straw.