Textual Indeterminacy in Renaissance Text

If we look at the texts of the Renaissance period, we find the postmodern features of indeterminacy and instability. Most of the Renaissance texts were in the forms of drama and the dramatists were forced to change the scenes many times or wished by the directors.

Printing machine had just been discovered so, print culture had not got established. In the manuscript culture, when the writers write they show it to many people and everyone makes some kind of changes. Even though the writers got their texts printed, the old habit of showing the text still continued. This is why instability of text in Renaissance period was a much greater factor than it is today. For the theoretical support, Marcus brings Roland Barthes’ essay “From Work” where he has theorized that a text is always unstable. So, instability of text is all the more applicable to Renaissance text. Barthian instability emerges mainly because of its supposition that a text is always a “field” of force, that is, whenever we interpret a text we interpret it in terms of interplay with the consciousness of reader. The consciousness of reader itself is emotional; it is a changing thing and open-ended process. So, there is no stability in literary text, according to Barthes.
Postmodern idea of indeterminacy nails the lie of standard text. The concept of “Clarendon” (standard authoritative texts) is challenged by of postmodernists. With regard to Renaissance text, there is not a single text but so many variants of the text. For example, King Lear has more than twenty five versions. In these days, there is no any standard edition of Shakespeare. There are different editions of Shakespeare and his text.
Like drama, we find instability even in a lyric, which is short and highly individual poem. Because of its being short and highly individual, we think that it/a lyric cannot be in different versions but it is not so. There are many versions of Renaissance lyrics. (Hypertext is a Poststructuralist concept-variant of text leads to hypertext).