John Jowett

Editing Shakespeare’s Plays in the Twentieth Century

Shakespeare editing in the twentieth century involves a history of practice, and a history of ideas about the text. The present article will deal with each in turn, recognizing the problematic relation between them. Both were grounded in the work of the New Bibliography, a movement that would determine the direction of Shakespeare textual studies and editing for most of the century. As will become evident, the New Bibliography had lost much of its erstwhile prestige and authority by the end of the century, though the editorial methods it advocated had been subject to development rather than outright rejection. Its inheritance to the twenty-first century currently remains subject to negotiation. A. W. Pollard’s close intellectual companionship with W. W. Greg and R. B. McKerrow formed the first keystone to the movement.1 Pollard’s follower John Dover Wilson soon joined the three. The New Bibliography may be characterized by its mix of commitment to scientific rigour in investigating every aspect of a text’s transmission and a sometimes credulous optimism in its project of finding the techniques to identify and eliminate the errors accrued through that process. From its beginnings as a small clique centred on Trinity College, Cambridge it expanded to establish an editorial orthodoxy and to place textual issues firmly on the curriculum for the study of Shakespeare. By the mid-century it had developed beyond its original concern with Shakespeare and early modern literature to offer a set of editorial principles that it aimed to apply to all canonical works. Especially in the early years, the achievements of the New Bibliography were monumental. McKerrow’s edition of Thomas Nashe, Pollard and G. R. Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue, Greg’s Bibliography of the English Printed Drama, his studies of the Stationers’ Company and of dramatic manuscripts, his general editorship of the Malone Society Reprints series, and later Charlton Hinman’s exhaustive study of the printing and proof-correcting of the 1623 First Folio, the Norton facsimile of the first Folio, Marvin Spevack’s Concordance, and Peter Blayney’s ground-breaking investigation of the printing of the First Quarto (q1) of King Lear are only some of the more conspicuous examples.2 All of these supplied material that provided

Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606-1623

Gary Taylor and John Jowett explore the ways in which Shakespeares texts were reshaped in his lifetime and up till the publication of the First Folio, and the kinds of outside interference to which they were subjected. As well as the powers of censorship of the Master of the Revels, in this period these included moves to expurgate profanity; major changes in theatrical conventions, notably the imposition of act divisions; and the late introduction of material by other hands. Political censorship of individual plays has already been studied in some depth: Shakespeare Reshaped concentrates on the forms of interference - expurgation, Act division, interpolation - which can usefully be examined across the whole canon, and which resulted in late reshaping. These influences were at work between May 1606 and November 1623, and - unlike the political censorship, which would have come into effect immediately the plays were submitted for a licence - affected the texts years after they were first written. There is a major central study of Measure for Measure, which underwent posthumous interpolation: the book makes a strong claim for this being at the hands of Thomas Middleton. Shakespeare Reshaped will be important to all future textual scholars and editors of the plays.