Valuing the Material Text: A Plea for a Change in Policy
Concerning Selection of Reference Texts for Future New Variorum
Shakespeare Editions, with Examples from the 1609 Quarto of
SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS
Hardy M. Cook
In 1871, Horace Howard Furness initiated one of the greatest scholarly
undertakings of modern times: The New Variorum Shakespeare -- an
undertaking so vast in scope that it has not been completed to this day -- an
undertaking so vast that it can never truly be completed -- an undertaking
that of its very nature must like the Phoenix repeatedly consume itself in
flames and be reborn of its own ashes. In the first of these editions, A
New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: ROMEO AND JULIET, Furness explains
his purpose and plan: faced with having the valuable notes of editors like
"Knight, Singer, Collier, Ulrici, Delius, Dyce, Hudson, Staunton, White,
Clarke, Keightley, and Halliwell" only available in different volumes, he
proposed to save time and effort by "collecting these comments after the
manner of a Variorum and presenting them, on the same page, in a condensed
form, in connection with the difficulties which they explain" (vi). After
originally deciding "to adopt the text of some one edition from which all the
variations of the Quartos and Folios and other editions should be noted," he,
"in consequence of unforeseen obstacles," chose instead to adopt "the reading
of a majority of the ablest editors," producing a composite text to be used as
the reference text for his edition (vii-viii). Composite texts were also used
as reference texts for next three volumes: Macbeth (1873),
Hamlet (1877), and King Lear (1880).
In 1886, The New Variorum Shakespeare underwent the first of its
many transformations. Evidently preparing the first four volumes caused
Furness to reflect more deeply on the nature of Shakespearean texts:
But when we study Shakespeare [as opposed to simply reading him],
then our mood changes; no longer are we "sitting at a play," the
passive recipients of impressions through the eye and ear, but we
weigh every word, analyse every expression, shift every phrase,
that no grain of art or beauty which we can assimilate shall
escape. To do this to our best advantage we must have
Shakespeare's own words before us. No other words will avail,
even though they be those of the wisest and most inspired of our
day and generation. We must have Shakespeare's own text; or,
failing this, the nearest possible approach to it. We shall be
duly grateful to the wise and learned, who, where phrases are
obscure, give us the words which they believe to have been
Shakespeare's; but, as students, we must have under our eyes the
original text, which, however stubborn it may seem at times, may
yet open its treasures to our importunity, and reveal charms
before undreamed of. (Variorum Othello v)
The "original text" Furness found in the 1623 First Folio. In a plea worthy
of Michael Warren1, Furness eloquently offers his reasons for adopting the F1
text of Othello as his reference text:
Can any good reason be urged why, in this present play at least,
we should not, in hours devoted to study, be it remembered, have
the text of the First Folio as our guide? Is there not every
reason why we should? If misspellings occur here and there,
surely our common-school education is not so uncommon that we
cannot silently correct them. If the punctuation be deficient,
surely it can be supplied without an exorbitant demand upon our
intelligence. And in lines incurably maimed by the printers, of
what avail is the voice of a solitary editor amid the Babel that
vociferates around, each voice proclaiming the virtues of its own
specific? Who am I that should thrust myself in between the
student and the text, as though in me resided the power to restore
Shakespeare's own words? Even if a remedy be proposed which is by
all acknowledged to be efficacious, it is not enough for the
student that he should know the remedy; he must see the ailment.
Let the ailment, therefore, appear in all its severity in the
text, and let the remedies be exhibited in the notes; by this
means we may make a text for ourselves, and thus made, it will
become a part of ourselves, and speak to us with more power than
were it made for us by the wisest editor of them all -- it may be
"an ill-favoured thing, sir" but -- it will be "our own."
(Variorum Othello v-vi)
For this and the next eleven volumes under his editorship, which included a
second edition of Macbeth, Dr. Furness, instead of using a modernized
text, employed a type facsimile of the plays reprinted from his own copy of
the First Folio as the reference text2 -- a practice he probably would have
continued with the remainder of the plays and second editions of the first
versions he had already produced, as this comment from the second edition of
Macbeth suggests: "the Text of the first four plays is composite; the
Text of the remaining eight is that of the First Folio. Although each play is
a volume apart and independent of the rest, yet a uniformity of Text is, to
some extent, desirable" (xiii). Furness evidently took great care in
reproducing each of these facsimiles: "reprinting it from [his] own copy with
all the exactitude in [his] power, scanning it letter by letter" (Variorum
Othello vi). As a result, many bibliographical features are reproduced:
block letters, approximate fonts, italics, spacing, ligatures, and even italic
question marks; however, because of the layout, having textual and critical
notes on the same page as the text they refer to, there is no attempt to
indicate pagination or columns, and thus there are no signatures or
catchwords.
After his father's death, Horace Furness, Jr., edited two more editions,
both of which use F1 as the reference text, The Life and Death of King
John (1919) and The Tragedy of Coriolanus (1928). After Horace
Furness, Jr.'s death, the series came in 1933 under the sponsorship of the
Modern Language Association. The first volume to be published under the MLA's
auspices, Henry the Fourth, Part I, was edited by Samuel Burdett
Hemingway, who had been selected by Furness, Jr. This volume marks yet
another departure for The New Variorum Shakespeare: it is the first
edition to use a quarto as the reference text. In all previous volumes in
which a quarto text is an earlier text than that of F1, Furness, Sr., had two
arguments. In cases like those of Ado and LLL, Furness argues
that even though the quarto text was earlier that "there is in reality but one
text, inasmuch as it is from this Quarto that the Folio itself was printed"
(Variorum Ado v). In the case of MND in which the quarto has
claim to being the better text, Furness argues that "To enter into any minute
examination of the three texts is needless in an edition like the present"
(Variorum Dream x) -- all variants would be recorded in the textual
notes anyway. Hemingway changed all that by selecting Q1 and by making "a
more thorough collation of the various copies of each quarto than has been
deemed necessary in the earlier volumes in the series" (v). Of the volumes
that followed in this -- what I call -- the first cycle under MLA sponsorship,
the 1938 Poems and the 1944 Sonnets were obviously based on
quarto texts, while the plays -- Henry the Fourth, Part II (1940),
Troilus and Cressida (1953), and Richard II (1955) -- all
use the F1 text as the reference text. However, these type facsimiles to my
eyes appear to be less scrupulous about spacing than the volumes prepared
under the Furnesses, conveying less bibliographical information (graphic
codes),3 yet these seeming changes are nothing compared to those resulting
from the policy of the second cycle of Variorum editions under the MLA's
auspices.
Richard Knowles announced the next major transformation of the
principles governing The New Variorum Shakespeare in his "Plan of the
Work" for the 1977 A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: AS YOU LIKE
IT:
This edition differs somewhat from earlier volumes of the New
Variorum Shakespeare. The text is not a type facsimile, but a
modified diplomatic reprint of the First Folio text which
ignores its significant typographical irregularities, corrects
its obvious typographical errors, but retains its lineation.
All significant departures from F1 are duly recorded. [Emphasis
added] (ix)
Under this editorial policy, which was followed by Mark Eccles in his 1980
MM and Marvin Spevack in his 1990 Ant., many typographical
features of the original text are ignored or silently regularized:
The reprint does not reproduce typographical features such as the
long s, ligatures, display and swash letters, and ornaments;
abbreviations printed as one letter above another are reproduced
as two consecutive letters, the second one superscript. Minor
typographical blemishes such as irregular spacing, printing space-
types, and wrong font, damaged, turned transposed, misprinted, or
clearly erroneous or missing letters or punctuation marks have
been corrected, usually silently. If, however, the anomaly is
likely to have any bibliographical significance, its correction is
recorded in the appendix. Where the error is not clearly
typographical, or where the correction is not an obvious one, the
text has been left unaltered and various emendations have been
recorded in the textual notes. . . . In general, the attempt has
been made to omit and ignore all insignificant typographical
peculiarities, but to retain or at least record any accidental
details of possible textual significance. (Knowles, Variorum
AYL xi-xii)
My work in preparing the first volume of The Public-Domain, Old-Spelling,
Electronic Shakespeare, SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS and A LOVER'S
COMPLAINT (forthcoming from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities,
University of Toronto), and my reading of the work of Jerome J. McGann and
Randall McLeod have convinced me that the Variorum Shakespeare's new policy
concerning the old-spelling reference texts for Variorum editions is a
mistake.
Fredson Bowers, in his "President's Address: Unfinished Business"
presented before the Society for Textual Scholarship, represents to views of
many when he contends that "The aim of textual criticism is to make the fewest
mistakes possible in presenting the authentic words of an author" (1). A
textual critic, according to Bowers, achieves this end by "the reconstruction,
usually from imperfect or partial evidence, of authorial intention" (2). With
Elizabethan editing (as with much of current textual methodology), the key to
this reconstruction is "Greg's theory of the copy-text with its
differentiation of two authorities, each of which in some circumstances should
be differently treated" (5). On the literary side, however, the issue of the
recoverability of an author's intentions has been questioned at least since
the New Critics. In addition, recently, several literary critics4 have
interrogated the term "authentic" when applied to Shakespeare. On the textual
side, no one in the past dozen years has advocated more persistently a
reexamination of current textual practices than Jerome McGann, calling for "a
socialized concept of authorship and textual authority" (Critique 8).
In 1981, in response to the establishment of TEXT: The Transactions
for Society for Textual Scholarship, McGann tried to overcome the
polarization in literary studies between the interests of textual scholars5
and literary critics by claiming that "Because criticism must articulate a
system of differentials, then, a special demand is placed upon it to elucidate
literary works at their point of origin, where the initial and determining
sets of differentials are permanently established" ("Shall" 36-37). He
explores this interest in the "point of origin" of literary works in his A
Critique of Modern Textual Criticism, offering his early thoughts on what
has become known as his Social Theory of Editing.
McGann opens A Critique by summarizing the aims of modern
textual criticism:
All current textual critics . . . agree that to produce a critical
edition entails an assessment of the history of the text's
transmission with the purpose of exposing and eliminating errors.
Ultimately, the object in view is the same in each case: to
establish a text which, in the now universally accepted
formulation, most nearly represents the author's original (or
final) intentions. (15)
This current understanding proceeds from two hundred years of scholarship.
Methodologies applied to classical and biblical texts were eventually adapted
to Shakespearean and other early modern and modern texts, giving rise to 1)
the theory of the critical edition, 2) the theory of the copy-text, 3) the
problem (or theory) of final authorial intentions, and 4) the theory of the
nonspecialist or modernized edition (23). A large part of the problem with
textual criticism that followed, according to McGann, arises because Bowers
appropriated Greg's theory of the copy-text to formulate a theory of authorial
intentions, a theory underpinned by "the concept of the autonomy of the
creative artist" (40). McGann, on the other hand, contends that "an
autonomous author, and an ideal ('finally intended') text" are "two related
phenomena which do not and cannot exit" (56). He sees the production of texts
as more dynamic and socialized:
The rule of final authorial intentions, as well as the guideline
determining choice of copy-text, all rest on an assumption about
the location (and the locatability) of literary authority. As the
very term "authority" suggests, the author is taken to be -- for
editorial and critical purposes -- the ultimate locus of a text's
authority, and literary works are consequently viewed in the most
personal and individual way. . . . The result is that the dynamic
social relations which always exist in literary production -- the
dialectic between the historically located individual author and
the historically developing institutions of literary production --
tends to become obscured in criticism. (81)
McGann concedes that "The author's wishes and intentions are obviously matters
of importance, but they must be adverted to and assessed by the textual critic
in a more generous social context" (90). By insisting "that literary
interpretation is grounded in the historical study of material texts (whether
or not the scholars are aware of this grounding, and whether or not their
criticism makes self-conscious use of it)" (xxi), McGann is insisting on the
importance of not only the linguistic codes of a text but also its
bibliographical ones. This connection constitutes the principal focus of his
essay "What Is Critical Editing?": "My study of texts . . . has made me aware
how literary works are coded bibliographically as well as linguistically, and
that in the case of the bibliographical codes 'author's intentions' rarely
govern the state or the transmission of the text. In this sense literary
texts, and their meanings, are collaborative events" (23). From McGann's
perspective, textual criticism has located meaning in the linguistic text at
the expense of the bibliographical one. Although the linguistic text may be
the chief, it is not the sole authority, for "'meaning' in a literary work
results from the interactive agency of these two semiotic mechanisms operating
together" ("What" 28).
McGann's Theory of Social Editing has not gained wide acceptance among
textual scholars. Bowers, labeling it "an editorial attitude" because it is
"it is not specific enough as yet to be called a theory" (6), is "suspicious
of any overall theory that denigrates an author's intentions by sharing them
with social milieu as a central fact" (10). He continues to "place authorial
intention above any other consideration, while recognizing that an initial
intention can be modified from early to late, for better or worse, by the
criticism of friends or of publishers' editors" (10-11). T. H. Howard-Hill is
similarly critical:
. . . it may be said that the inability of A Critique's
arguments to convince many editors (to whom in some measure it was
directed) is an almost unavoidable function of the book's position
within a program directed to extra-bibliographical (in the
broadest sense) ends. (31)
Despite these criticisms from highly respected textual scholars, I cannot
dismiss as casually the issues McGann raises, especially regarding early
modern Shakespearean texts, texts produced in the printing house with no
ostensible assistance by the author himself (the two narrative poems
apparently being the only exceptions). I believe McGann is correct in
asserting that textual criticism has focused too narrowly on the linguistic
text at the expense of the bibliographical one. I believe the early quartos
and First Folios that are the principal repositories of the texts we call
Shakespeare's plays and poems are material objects and must be engaged on
those terms. I also believe there is a middle ground between the attitude
toward texts that McGann criticizes and the extreme relativist position that
De Grazia and Stallybrass set forth in their "The Materiality of the
Shakespearean Text."6
I am concerned in this paper with the New Variorum Shakespeare
Committee's decision regarding the nature of the reference text for volumes
since 1977, the decision to use modified diplomatic reprints that do not
reproduce the very bibliographical features that McGann maintains are
important. No one has done more in the past fifteen years to call attention
to the significance of these bibliographical features than Randall McLeod.
McGann, commenting on orthographic variations in the 1609 quarto of SHAKE-
SPEARES SONNETS, points out that "As our scholarly knowledge increases,
however, we often discover that texts which had previously seemed corrupt are
not so at all; that it is we (or our ignorance) who are at fault" (99).
McLeod, who has argued that some previously thought to be corrupt readings are
probably not so, has actively been dispelling that ignorance and educating
many of us to appreciate the wealth of information inherent in bibliographical
detail.
McLeod is interested in "the iconicity of the text" ("Unediting" 38).
He maintains that "the old typographic medium was simultaneously communicating
various messages -- as text and about text. To consider the
literary context alone is to turn a blind eye to this interconnectedness of
medium and message" (Clod, "Information" 256-257). Gleaning from McLeod's
stunning work, I intend to make a case for the New Variorum Shakespeare
Committee's changing its policy regarding reference texts.
In 1979, in his "A Technique for Headline Analysis, with Application to
Shakespeares Sonnets, 1609," McLeod provides concrete examples of the
information that can be determined from the title page and running titles of
the 1609 quarto of the Sonnets. Using evidence gathered from
transparent photocopies of the title pages of Aspley and Wright imprints,
McLeod speculates that the Wright was the later imprint:
The order of these changes [the transposing of a reglet and
the interchanging of the first and third E's in the name], which
coincide with the unlocking and adjustment of the page to alter
the imprint, is not to be determined by strict bibliographical
evidence. It is possible that in the unlocking of the page the
first and perhaps the second line of type "SHAKE-SPEARES |
SONNETS." pied and was reassembled, in the process the two E's
being interchanged and the reglet rearranged. However, since the
position of the narrower-bodied E in "SHAKE-" in the Wright state
of the title produces a more pleasing typographical effect than
when it is the penultimate letter in "SPEARES" in the Aspley
state, it is also possible that the change was deliberate, in
which case the Wright was the later imprint. (202-203)
From a similar analysis of the running titles, he conjectures about the
imposition of the formes and offers a probable reconstruction of the events,
which calls into doubt MacD. P. Jackson's assertion that a new skeleton was
constructed for Sheet K.7 The point of both examples is that valuable
information is contained in what otherwise might be thought irrelevant
bibliographical details. Without getting into my proposal at this point, I
will nevertheless contend that the changes in the running titles in Q1609 from
"A LOVERS" (K3v, K4v, L1v) to "THE LOVERS" (L2v) and the various "SHAKE-
SPEARES," (B1r, C2v), "SHAKE-SPEARES." (D1v, D2v, D3v, D4v, G1v, G2v, G3v,
G4v), and "SHAKE-SPEARES" (B1v, B2r, B3v, B4v, C1v, C3v, C4v, E1v, E2v, E3v,
E4v, F1v, F2v, F3v, F4v, H1v, H2v, H3v, H4v, I1v, I2v, I3v, I4v), all convey
information that could be the staring point for further investigation.
Just as running headlines "function on high to unify the text beneath
them" (McLeod, "Information" 241), so do catchwords function on low to unify
text between pages. In "Information on Information," McLeod explains how the
mismatched catchword, "Ladies" for "Faire," in a copy of Harington's second
edition of Orlando Furioso "is one example of a large body of evidence
which shows that copy for the second edition must have been an annotated
exemplar of the first" (268). This information characterizes the materiality
of this text. Yet the significance of the information does not stop
here: "A collation of copies of the second edition reveals that some of them
do in fact have the normally-to-be-expected concord, 'Faire' for 'Faire'.
These copies offer a later state, brought about by stop-press alteration"
(270). If catchwords were included in the Variorum editions and if such a
catchword crux were to appear, it would most likely, under current guidelines,
be "corrected silently" as a clear error. However, McLeod forces us to
reconsider such a decision:
I grant that the earlier state of the second-edition catchword,
"Ladies", is wrong -- wrong functionally: but more
importantly, it is also true -- true to copy, true as a
witness. It opens to view a larger, transformissional,8
identity than does the smooth, reductive redundancy of the merely
correct text. (But not to dismiss this merely correct text; for
in the company of the variant state, it points to an even more
expansive textual identity: the correct text is not simply correct
-- it is corrected.) (270)
In "UNEditing Shak-speare," McLeod offers a similar argument for retaining the
punctuation of an original text:
Editors argue that the printer's punctuation was a compositorial
discretion (or indiscretion), and does not necessarily or
accurately represent Shakespeare's pointing to the degree, for
example, that the printer's diction represents the author's. This
is likely an accurate assessment; but it does not follow that the
punctuation is not part of the evidence, that it may not be partly
Shakespearean, or that it lacks interest as intelligent
contemporary reading in itself. (42-43)
In both these cases, McLeod forces us to consider the materiality of the text
and the significance that the system of graphic codes in the material text can
convey.
McLeod's work evinces a concern with the early modern typographical
medium -- its "subtle texture of accidentals" ("Spellbound" 81) and its
"complex, ambiguous, contradictory, unhomogeneous" face (Clod, "Information"
246). The starting point for any bibliographical conjecture must be the
material text itself because; as McLeod notes, "The relationship of printed
image to typeface and to type is concrete, and our inferences about
composition are necessarily tied to an actual historic event" ("Spellbound"
81). There are often explicit reasons for the "Minor typographical blemishes
such as irregular spacing, printing space-types, and wrong font, damaged,
turned, transposed, misprinted, or clearly erroneous or missing letters"
(Knowles, Variorum AYL xi) that the present Variorum Shakespeare
guidelines deny us. For example, McLeod offers an explanation for the
presence of the variety of mixed font "w's" and the use of "vv" or "VV" in a
text like the 1609 quarto of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS: "English printers
often acquired their types from more advanced publishing cultures, among whom
the Italians and French had little use for the letter w. As a consequence,
the w's in English Renaissance books often mix founts" (Clod, "Information"
246). Under the current guidelines, "vv" and "VV" would be reproduced
("Spellbound" 90) but mixed font "w's" apparently would be silently corrected
or regularized and with this change information would be lost.
In addition, under the current guidelines, the u (round-u) and v (sharp-
u) allotypes would be distinguished in the Variorum's old-spelling reference
texts, but the |s (long-s) and s (round-s) would not. This to me is a
significant loss. In early modern typesetting, theses two allotypes were used
in these ways: v (sharp-u) was used initially, while u (round-u) was used
medially or finally; |s (long-s) was used initially and medially, while s
(round-s) was used finally and as a capital (Clod, "Information" 249, 254).
Thus, both allotypes function "to differentiate the ends of words from the
middle" and their leveling "obscures the kind of information we see in the
originals themselves" ("Spellbound" 87). Further, McLeod explains that "the
old medium did not distinguish as many sounds, but it was more self-
referential, and enhanced the detection of transmissional error" (Clod,
"Information" 251). Besides enabling us to determine more easily
transmissional errors, the presence of the |s (long-s) and s (round-s)
distinction helps us to see predictable exceptions, such as in this rhyme from
Sonnet 16:
To giue away your |selfe,keeps your |selfe {|st}ill,
And you mu{|st} liue drawne by your owne |sweet skill,
( Sonnet 16.13-14)9
McLeod explains the presence in the last line of the exception, the five-type
"skill" rather than the expected ligatured, four-type "{sk}ill": "If a long-s
type had been used instead, the kerning right edge of its typeface,
which corresponds to a vulnerable projection of metal off the edge of the
typebody, would have broken against the ascender of the k, which is
rooted on its typebody" (Clod, "Information" 254). Concerning this crux,
McLeod writes, "The leveling of the distinctions of s in modern typesetting
decreases redundancy, making our setting of this crux less dense a
communication than that of the seventeenth century" (Clod, "Information" 254-
255).
In "Spellbound," McLeod examines issues surrounding typefaces that
involve the difficulties of distinguishing an etymological spelling, a
phonetic spelling, and a type-exigent setting/spelling in that typesetting
problems often "undermine the validity of the spelling concept" (83). For
example, as we saw above, a kerned piece of type is a vulnerable piece of
type. That italic type has "more kerned sorts than black-letter or roman
founts" (83) make more problematic the determination of why a particular word
in italic type is spelled the way it is. There are, of course, practical
lessons with applications, for example, to studies of compositor's stints:
McLeod maintains that each of the compositors who set type for Troilus and
Cressida10 "sets type in peculiar ways not accounted for by the concept of
spelling" (85), yet another reason for having the bibliographical features the
current Variorum policy denies us.
The current policy also does not reproduce ligatures. McLeod has argued
on grounds that begin with bibliographical ones that the emendation of "with"
for "wi{|sh}" [{|sh} equals a long-s ligatured with h] in the first line of
Sonnet 111 ("Unemending") and of "skill" for "{|st}ill" [{|st} equals a long-s
ligatured with t] in line twelve of Sonnet 106 (Clod "Information") are not
justified. Concerning the former, McLeod writes,
We have been wrong to talk of the reading of Q1 as "wish," for it
is
wi{|sh}
-- to give it back its ligatured face and to countenance it for
the first time. It is a three-sort word, with two of its letters,
|s and h, tied, printed as a single type, {|sh}. The "with,"
however, is a four-sort word with no ligatures. The letters t + h
never form a ligature in this fount (any that I have seen),
whereas the letters |s + h are never set without ligation in this
text, though they can be occasionally found untied in contemporary
English texts. It is strange but true that this simplest of
physical facts, ligation, completely undercuts the only rationale
editors have ever used to justify their emendations in Sonnet 111,
that "wish" -- as they put it -- is an obvious typo. The editors
have committed a blunder equivalent to saying "4 = 3."
("Unemending" 82-83)
From these examples, it is evident to me that the MLA's New Variorum
Shakespeare Committee made a serious mistake when it began using "modified
diplomatic reprints" instead of type facsimiles. The decision, I am sure, was
in large part economic,11 and I agree completely with Randall McLeod's
observation that "Cutting corners on typesetting costs in such scholarly
collations greatly increases their ambiguity, and decreases their scholarly
value" ("Spellbound" 91).
I would like to see the Variorum Shakespeare use the latest in printing
technologies, those advocated by Michael Warren in his essay "Textual
Problems, Editorial Assertions in Editions of Shakespeare,"12 to reproduce in
photographic facsimile the text of a judiciously chosen quarto or First Folio
to be the reference text for future volumes in the series. I would like to
see this text reproduced with all of its bibliographical details intact,
duplicating each page exactly as it appears in the chosen original text. This
suggestion would, of course, have many far-reaching implications beyond simply
economic ones. Because each page would be reproduced exactly as it appears in
the original, the entire layout of the Variorum editions would need to be
rethought. No longer would notes appear on the same page as the text to which
they refer. Instead a layout resembling that chosen by Stephen Booth for his
1977 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets probably would be more
appropriate with textual and critical notes appearing on pages facing the
photo-facsimile. Such a reference text as I advocate would be immensely more
useful to scholar than the current diplomatic reprint.
There is, however, one final issue I would like to address -- The
New Variorum Shakespeare of the future. In the Winter 1992 issue of
The Shakespeare Newsletter, Richard Knowles wrote, "The MLA has also,
as recently as three months ago, explored the possibility of publication in
both book and electronic form, but discovered that the program has not yet
been invented that can provide access to information as well as the printed
volume" ("Cum" 59). In this age of rapidly advancing technologies, that
program, or medium, will be coming; there is no doubt that future
Variorum Shakespeares will appear in both print and electronic form. I
suspect that the electronic form in which the Variorum will be available will
be the CD-ROM medium or its successor. In a medium like this, I imagine that
the text will appear in facsimile on the screen or split-screen with a
hypertext engine that will enable users to explore its "compendium of
knowledge" (Knowles, "Cum" 59), the editorial, textual, critical, and
historical scholarship that it contains. I also predict that included in each
multimedia edition will be a text analysis program like TACT and a text like
the one I have prepared for the Centre for Computing in the Humanities that
will further allow users to explore electronically both the linguistic and the
bibliographical text -- an act that would further acknowledge the value of the
material text.
Works Cited
Bowers, Fredson. "President's Address: Unfinished Business." In TEXT:
Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship. Eds. Greetham,
D. C. and W. Speed Hill. Vol. 4. New York: AMS Press, 1988. 1-11.
Clod, Random [Randall McLeod]. "Information of Information." TEXT 5
(1991): 241-81.
De Grazia, Margrata, and Peter Stallybrass. "The Materiality of the
Shakespearean Text." SQ 44.3 (Fall 1993): 255-283.
Furness, Horace Howard, ed. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: A
Midsommer Nights Dreame. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company,
1895.
---. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Much adoo about
Nothing. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1899.
---. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: MACBETH. Second Edition.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1903.
---. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: OTHELLO. Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Company, 1886.
---. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: ROMEO AND JULIET.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1871.
Greetham, D. C. "Forward." A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism.
By Jerome J. McGann. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1992.
(Originally publish in 1983)
Hemingway, Samuel Burdett, ed. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare:
Henry the Fourth, Part I. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company,
1936.
Jackson, MacD. P. "Punctuation and the Compositors of Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 1609." The Library, 5th series, 30 (1975): 1-
24.
Knowles, Richard. "Cum Notis Variorum," SLN 42 (1992): 59, 61.
---, ed. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: As You Like It, New
York: MLA, 1977.
McGann, Jerome J. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism.
Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1992. (Originally publish in 1983)
---. "Shall These Bones Live?" In TEXT: Transactions of the Society for
Textual Scholarship. Eds. D. C. Greetham and W. Speed Hill.
Vol. 1. New York: AMS Press, 1984. 21-37.
---. "What Is Critical Editing?" TEXT: Transactions of the Society for
Textual Scholarship. Eds. D. C. Greetham and W. Speed Hill.
Vol. 5. New York: AMS Press, 1991. 15-29.
McLeod, Randall. "Spellbound." In Play-Texts in Old-Spelling: Papers
from the Glendon Conference. Eds. G. B. Shand and Raymond C.
Shady. New York: AMS Press, 1984.
---. "A Technique for Headline Analysis, with Application to Shakespeares
Sonnets, 1609." Studies in Bibliography (1979): 197-210.
---. "Unemending Shakespeare's Sonnet 111." Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1600. 21 (1981): 75-96.
Orgel, Stephen. "The Authentic Shakespeare." Representations 21
(1988): 1-25.
Warren, Michael J. "Textual Problems, Editorial Assertions in Editions of
Shakespeare." In Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation.
Ed. Jerome McGann. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. 23
Notes
1 See Michael J. Warren, "Textual Problems, Editorial Assertions in
Editions of Shakespeare," in Textual Criticism and Literary
Interpretation, ed. Jerome McGann, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. 23-37.
2 The Merchant of Venice (1888), The Tempest (1892), A
Midsommer Nights Dreame (1895), The Winters Tale (1898), Much
adoo about Nothing (1899), Twelfe-Night, or what you will (1901),
The Tragedy of Macbeth (1903), Loues Labour lost (1904),
The Life & Death of Richard the Third (1908), The Life and death
of Julius Caesar (1913), and Cymbeline King of Britaine (1913).
3 In "Information on Information," McLeod makes a distinction between
lexical items and the system of graphic codes (250). This
distinction corresponds to McGann's linguistic codes (the words) and
bibliographical codes (the typography, layout, paper, order, etc.) as
they are defined by D. C. Greetham in his Forward to McGann's A Critique
of Modern Textual Criticism.
4 In particular see Stephen Orgel, "The Authentic Shakespeare,"
Representations 21 (1988): 1-25, and Margreta de Grazia and Peter
Stallybrass, "The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text," SQ 44.3
(Fall 1993): 255-283.
5 The title of the eventually printed essay in which these remarks appear
is "Shall These Bones Live?", a reference to McGann's description of textual
criticism: "Textual criticism, in the traditional sense, is an analytic
discipline separated into two provinces, the so-called Lower and Higher
Criticism. Its practitioners are those guardians of our dry bones, the
editors, bibliographers, and philologists of various sorts who are best known
to the ordinary student of literature for the work they do not do:
that is, interpretation and literary criticism" (21-22).
6 De Grazia and Stallybrass appear to claim a materiality of uniqueness
for every Shakespeare text, whether it be printed in the sixteenth-,
seventeenth-, eighteenth-, nineteenth-, or twentieth-century: "The materiality
of this essay, for instance, when it quotes from Shakespeare, at no
point reproduces the materiality of the early Shakespearean texts, even when
quoting from the 1623 Folio. . . . We do this because, despite our insistence
on the specificity of early modern texts, we have no desire to perpetuate the
illusion that we had an 'original' or 'unedited' text, in either its worn
archival or fresh simulacral form. Even if we could convince ourselves that
we had an 'original' or 'unedited' text, we would have established not its
existence but rather the persistence of the epistemological categories that
make us believe in its existence" (257). To an extent this assertion seems
true enough; however, even though there are material differences between, for
example, all thirteen extant copies of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, there
are also significant similarities between the Aspley and the Wright imprints.
7 Jackson's "Punctuation and the Compositors of Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 1609" The Library, 5th series, 30 (1975): 1-24 is
the standard work on the compositors' stints in the 1609 quarto of SHAKE-
SPEARES SONNETS.
8 McLeod defines "transformission" in the following: ". . . when a
Renaissance text talks about itself, it is often not quite what it
claims to be. Its structural redundancies are, crucially, both of its
text and about it. Any lapse in them opens up contradiction at the
heart of transmission. . . . By attending to such examples of texts mis-self-
representation, we can gauge something of what I call its 'transformission' --
how it was transformed as it was transmitted" (Clod,
"Information" 246).
9 This quotation is from my forthcoming edition, to be published by the
Centre for Computing in the Humanities at the University of Toronto in both
electronic and print forms. The text is a diplomatic transcription of the
Folger Shakespeare Library's Aspley imprint with variant readings from the
Folger's Wright imprint. The text is unnormalized, encoded conservatively
both in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) exchange format and in COCOA tags (for
use with TACT or OCP -- The Oxford Concordance Program). It includes all
significant bibliographic and linguistic features of the text and declines to
introduce emendations, even of probable errors. In it long-s is indicated by
"|s" and ligatures by {curly brackets}. I employ these notations throughout
this paper.
10 Incidentially, according to Jackson, these are the same two compositors
who later that same year set SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS for Eld (2-5).
11 See McLeod's "Spellbound": "The strongest reason for abandoning the
allotypes of s, a feature of our written and typeset language we share in
common with German, ancient Greek and Hebrew, in which printing traditions
they are still in active use, is economic: the Variorum Handbook says
the differentiation of these allotypes costs too much" (90).
12 In this essay, Warren notes that "in a period where the common reader
and the student are well provided for, the needs of the scholars are not being
met -- needs of which, I suggest, many scholars are unaware" (24).
