What do a Parisian wigmaker, a dance called "The Galloping Nag," and 17th century London taverns have in common? "More than you'd think," says Lew Gleich '01. "Knowing about all three subjects is essential to understanding this play." Lew, an English major from Madison, CT, received funding from the Emerson Foundation to collaborate with John O'Neill, professor of English, on an editorial project. The pair set out to edit George Etherege's 1675 comedy The Man of Mode: or, Sir Fopling Flutter for publication in an anthology to be used by college and graduate students.
"I spent a lot of time in the library researching the meanings of the references and allusions in the play," says Lew, "because we wanted to give the reader explanatory notes to everything."
"Our primary goal as editors," says Professor O'Neill, "was to recover the text that the author had intended for the final version of the play, because, as is often the case in literature, a text may undergo significant changes during the publication process." "For example," says Lew, "scribes may have made errors in the text during the production process, and Etherege's original intent would have been lost. His original manuscripts have never been found, so we had to work backwards to decide what was originally published, what was originally acted, and what was originally written."
Lew and Professor O'Neill used the first quarto--or Q1--version of the play as Etherege's original text and compared that version to more than a dozen different versions of the play. Lew spent half of his time in the library researching topics as varied as "maps of 17th Century London, obscure English country dances, fashionable French merchants, or taverns of London."
"I liked working on this particular play because of its humor and wit," says Lew, "and editing can be both challenging and fun. The hardest part of the project was trying to decide what Etherege intended. Sometimes, Professor O'Neill and I would have to act out sections of the play together, changing the intonation to determine what the author's meaning was. It was a great time, and the work we produced is really significant."
"This project really meant a lot to me," says Lew. "I've been considering graduate school in English literature, and this project provided the necessary experience to understand what it's like to be a scholar of literature. At Hamilton, the professors are here to help us--and they want to help. It's up to you, as the student, to take the extra step to forge a relationship with them in order to get the most out of your education."
The edition of The Man of Mode that Lew Gleich and Professor O'Neill worked on was published in June, 2001, as part of The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama. Lew will spend 2001-2002 teaching English in Grenoble, France.
