JOURNAL OF BACTERIOLOGY
A publication of the American Society for Microbiology
May 22, 1686
Mr. William Shakespeare
The Globe Theatre
London, United Kingdom
Dear Mr. Shakespeare:
Thank you for sending us your manuscript entitled: "The Plays, Sonnets and Other Poems of William Shakespeare. XXXI. ..beth". This manuscript has been reviewed by a member of our Editorial Board with the added advice of a referee with much experience in this area. We are happy to tell you that, in general, the manuscript is acceptable for publication, but certain changes will have to be made. In particular the reviewers noted a tendency toward repetitiousness, particularly in those portions in which the three witches were involved. The more pertinent and printable comments supplied by the referee and the editor are noted below:
Act I, Scene 1: "Fair is foul and foul is fair." This theme recurs in several places, and appears to be self-contradictory.
Act I, Scene 3: ÔThrice to thin and thrice to mine and thrice again to make up nine." The fact that 3+3+3=9 has been well established by many authors, and could be omitted entirely; at most it could be mentioned briefly with an appropriate citation. in the same scene, each witch in turn says: "Hail". This is one of many examples of such repetitiousness. It should be enough to have one of them, as spokeswitch for the group, say "Hail". Conceivably, if union rules permit each to speak, they could do so in unison (thus avoiding any inference of seniority of one over the others. The same comments were made relative to Act IV, Scene 1, where each, in turn, says "Show".
Act III, Scene 2: At one point ..beth states: "Me thought I heard a voice cry sleep no moreÕ." Clearly, there is no evidence for this statement; indeed, this whole section seems to be based upon speculation rather than fact arid should be eliminated.
Act IV, Scene 1; Twice in the sane paragraph the three witches repeat: ÔDouble, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. One of these could be eliminated with little loss of effect, and "double, double" could, perhaps, be written as "4". On the other hand, if it is really necessary to emphasize the issue of doubling, this, clearly, seems to be a power series, and should be expressed as ~ (n=l, 2, 3, 4 ..
In addition to these specific comments, there is some question in my mind about certain other matters. The apparent madness of Mrs. ..beth, and the repeated and lengthy conversations among Malcolm, Ma..uff, Ross, Siward and others in the native dialect are undoubtedly important to specialists in the field, but make the manuscript unnecessarily long. If you believe that it is essential to retain these parts of the work, the Editors request that you remove them from the body of the text and prepare them in a form suitable for direct reproduction as a miniprint supplement. We enclose a list of references to publications in which miniprint has been used, as a guide for your rewriting those portions of your play. Please note that the numbering of figures, tables, acts and scenes in the miniprint are independent of the numbering of those items in the main work.
Apart from the text, there are certain other aspects of the manuscript that need attention. The proposed title is of a form that is no longer acceptable. We have agreed to follow the standards set. by the NAS--NRC Committee on Nomenclature. Consequently we suggest that the play be entitled simply "..beth". If you wish to indicate that this is one of a series of publications on closely related topics, you should use a footnote of the form. "*This is play No. 31 in this authorÕs series entitled ÔPlaysÕ." We feel that references to the Sonnets and Other Poems is inappropriate, since there is no question that each of those represents another, unrelated series.
Finally, the acknowledgement will have to be rewritten in more orthodox form. You have written: "The author begs to express his most horrible grati-tude for the patronage of Her Virginal and Most Gracious Majesty, Elisabeth, Jewel of EnglandÕs Crown" The redactory office will undoubtedly, want to change this into the more usual form: "Supported in part by a grant from the Elisabeth Tudor Endowment Fund". If you would be good enough to make these changes when you return your correct manuscript, you will save a great deal of time and correspondence for everyone concerned.
Sincerely,
Francis Bacon, for
The Editorial Board