Textual Challenges: A Brief Guide to Choosing Shakespearean Editions

Abstract

How should educators go about selecting appropriate editions of Shakespeare's plays for use in political science courses? Shakespeare is turning up on many politics syllabi, but, at times, the editions chosen seem to reflect primarily a concern for price or publisher reputation over pedagogical and scholarly considerations. This article offers an overview of the sometimes great difference editions can make for the study of politics in and through Shakespeare's plays. Three particular cases illustrate some of the issues: Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear.

Keywords:

• political science texts
• politics and literature
• Shakespeare

Notes

Cited in Ben Jonson's poem (1975, 263–265), “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: And What He Hath Left Us,” lines 22–24.

For a good example of this approach to the use of literature to teach ideas, see the recent article in PS by Kimberly Cowell-Meyers (2006, 347–349). An excellent discussion and survey of the “Literature and Politics” approach can be found in the “Symposium” (Zuckert 1995, 189–190) on the subject.

A preliminary list would include such works as Alulis and Sullivan (1996), Alvis and West (2000), Blits (1981), Bloom (1964), Cantor (1976, 1995, 1996), Coby (1983), Craig (2001), Lowenthal (1997), Murley and Sutton (2006), Ciliotta-Rubery (2008), Weinberger (2003) and Wudel (2002). For a somewhat different approach than the one taken by these authors, see Cox (2002) and McGinn (2006). In his recent study of Shakespeare, which apparently does not take into consideration any of the aforementioned scholarship, Colin McGinn concludes in agreement with Hazlett's famous judgment: “Shakespeare was at least as good a philosopher as he was a poet” (McGinn 2006, 200). Whitebrook (1993) discusses these various approaches in the larger context of the subfield of literature and politics.

Although in this article we are primarily concerned with the pedagogical issues associated with Shakespearean text selection, care is also required in scholarly endeavors. Occasionally articles have been published without any particular text being indicated, as is the case with Hiram Caton's fine article (1972, 52–58). Although Caton mentions the occasional production including an invented denouement, he makes no reference to the other “bad” quarto scenes or to the play they are from (which may be a bad quarto of Shrew). Given his interest in defending the induction, Caton's apparent lack of attention in these related scenes is surprising. For scholars of Shakespeare, a good edition is not enough. Checking for textual variants and considering their import for any argument is also necessary.

David Bevington is a renowned scholar and editor of medieval and early modern drama and is the editor of the highly regarded Longman edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, now in its sixth edition.

This does not mean that one ought not to exercise some caution when assuming authorial intention. A good case in point is brought forward by Lily B. Campbell. In her discussion of the influence of the Mirror for Magistrates on Shakespeare's history plays, Campbell points out in the case of one alteration of historical detail that “the author of the second part of Henry VI … followed the Mirror and has received credit by critics ignorant of the Mirror for having altered history with dramatic effectiveness.” Before crediting Shakespeare with anything intentional here, one would first need to know whether he had access to differing accounts. See Campbell (1947, 110).

New critical readings emphasize the autonomy of the text, asserting the text's priority over the author's intentions and his or her social and historical context. Although new criticism is no longer a dominant critical approach, its influence continues to be felt particularly with regard to this foundational assumption.

New historicism, a more recent critical theory and one quite influential in early modern studies, regards all texts (literary or otherwise) as historical and cultural products expressing both the conventional and marginalized voices of their context. Since no author (or other human) can be regarded as autonomous, neither can any text. Even if texts could contain some stable meaning, they could only be understood by readers who shared the same context. Similarly, our ability to agree to a meaning a text might have for our own time will be severely limited by our differences in class, culture, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and ability.

Music provides a useful analogy. A skillful reader of music might appreciate a piece of music, Beethoven's Fifth for example, without ever hearing it performed. However, many would argue that the music is only fully realized in performance, at which point the music is only partly the creation of the writer or composer.

See Christine Cornell and Patrick Malcolmson (2007).

The view expressed by Maguire is not atypical: “Although today's editors are professional scholars, not poets, they share one thing with eighteenth-century literati: their names are as prominent as Shakespeare's on the title page. There is no such thing as Shakespeare's text; there is only the editor's text (or what the editor says is Shakespeare's text, or one of Shakespeare's texts)” (Maguire 2003, 592, italics in original). It is the eighteenth-century editors who began the systematic division of the plays into acts and scenes.

Maguire explains, “[b]ibliographical terms like ‘quarto’ or ‘folio’ simply denote the folding process. When a large sheet of paper is folded to make two leaves (four sides or pages), the result is a folio; when it is folded twice to make four leaves (eight sides or pages) we have a quarto; eight leaves (sixteen sides or pages) is an octavo” (Maguire 2003, 585).

The 18 plays unique to the Folio are The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, King John, I Henry VI, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. (Some editors would object to the inclusion of The Taming of the Shrew on the grounds that a play entitled A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The Taming of a Shrew (1594) is actually a version of Shakespeare's play.).

Ioppolo (1991) provides an excellent analysis of the problem of memorial reconstruction.

Heminges was an actor in the same company with Shakespeare at least as early as 1594. Heminges was one of the original members, along with Shakespeare and the Burbages, of the syndicate that began building the Globe theater in 1598. A new syndicate to operate the Globe and the Blackfriars theater was formed in 1608 and included Shakespeare, Heminges, and Condell (also an actor). Heminges and Condell, along with Burbage, are mentioned in Shakespeare's will, where he leaves money for them to buy mourning rings. See Smith (1956).

An excellent short treatment of these kinds of problems and how they might best be analyzed can be found in Bowers (1966), particularly in the essay “Today's Shakespeare's Texts, and Tomorrow's.”

The problem is not with the words, but with how they appear as lines, so that what one edition may present as a line of verse may not start and finish on the same words in another edition.

Parker (1994) edition.

A prompt-book was the copy of the play used in performance of the play. None of Shakespeare's prompt-books are extant.

See the original Folio text of the play (Freeman 2001). Also see Q. Taylor (2005).

Counter to accepted wisdom, we believe the lines are consistent with the political themes of the play and should be taken seriously. See Note 9 above.

The only answer proposed by current editors seems to be that the collation for the Folio was so incomplete no one caught the error.

R. A. Foakes (1997, 115) nicely summarizes the debate: “In the case of a play like King Lear, for which two widely differing printed texts survive, the differences could be explained by corruption of various kinds, by errors in the printing-house, or by cutting and contamination in the playhouse. Some scholars held that Q1 was a reported text, taken down in shorthand during a performance, or reconstructed from inadequate memory by one or more of the actors performing it. Others proposed that the verbal errors, mislineation, punctuation and other confusions in the Quarto could be traced to Shakespeare's ‘foul papers'” (“foul papers” being the author's working drafts of a text).

A surprise some would argue that is created by the fact most of us were introduced to Lear through editions that conflated Q1 and F1.

All quotations of King Lear are from Foakes' 1997 edition.

See, for example, G. Taylor and Warren (1983).

Maguire (2003, 592) argues that a choice between versions is necessary, “because there is no definitive text of a play, just snapshots of it at different evolutionary stages. What is clearly wrong is to conflate different versions with separate theatrical and thematic values (e.g., Q1 merged with F King Lear, Q2 with F Hamlet) and produce an eclectic text, as was done for centuries with King Lear and Hamlet.” (italics in original)