1. Text
Shakespeare's text is of vast extent and complexity. The editorial problems that confront any editor preparing for the correct text are so much complex and diverse that the already published editions are numberless in its both kinds and quali...
1. Text
Shakespeare's text is of vast extent and complexity. The editorial problems that confront any editor preparing for the correct text are so much complex and diverse that the already published editions are numberless in its both kinds and qualities. As I mentioned in this chapter the differerences among the texts of Oxford Shakespeare, Peter Alexander's edition, The Cambridge edition, and of The Yale Shakespeare, the same parts of Act Ⅲ. Scene ⅲ from Romeo and Juliet are not only unequal in meaning but also the number of the lines have a great disparity among the texts, each of which has its high authority in its good point. It is possible that the people lack of special instructions on Shakespeare's contemporary editing can not help neglecting how large the disparities between usual modern textbooks and the original manuscripts are.
2. Folio
E.K. Chambers said that the Folio was a rather pretentious volume. This chapter includes the discriptions of the First Folio, Second, Third and Fourth, and their editing and precious characters. To take and example, each reprint can be proved to have been printed from its immediate last one, and to have corrected some obvious errors in it while adding so much new errors of its own that the last editions of 1685 became too varied and complicated to discern the correct text. It can be also side that little work has been done on them, and their significant results are only related with the historical accounts of the text, not for any contribution to its further improvements. It is noticeable that the Third Foilo added the new play Pericles, which had been printed in quarto in 1609, and six other apocryphal plays.
3. Quarto
Eighteen of Shakespeare's plays, perhaps one should say sixteen of these, were published in quarto form during his lifetime and one more, Othtello 1622, six years after his death just before the appearance of the First Folio. These eighteen are now divided into two classes, the good quartos and the bad one's. The latter are those which were, in a few words, published without the consent of actors, copy of which had been obtained by one of the illegitimate methods, Henry V. Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, 2Henry Ⅵ and 3Henry Ⅵ(the last two plays, 2 & 3 Henry Ⅵ are sometimes excepted from them) are included into bad quartos. Each of these is separately examined to make clear its foul manuscripts and illegitimate methods in editing process, while adding some general explanations to the good quartos which are more correct than the plays in Folios.
4. Edition
In 1709 Nicholas Rowe's complete edition is published, which is partial and unsatisfactory, basing his text upon the Fourth Folio, the worst of the four. Alexander Pope's edition is poetical in rhythm and spontaneous in omitting offending lines, but his follower, Lewis Theoblad, whose work is to be proud of, is to be admired as the Restorer. Edmund Malone's restoring pericles to Shakespeare's plays as well as the poems and sonnets is a great work not to be neglected. The Cambridge Shakespeare of 1863―6 is the great edition of the nineteenth century, and its authentic text is attributed to their marvellous efforts and great learning of the contemporary eminent editors, including Edward Capell. Even though since the First Folio of 1623 full many of editions acquired their prestiages in various scholarly fields, but Dover Wilson's New Cambridge Shakespeare is still in process of publication.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, as Mr. Greg said in his great work The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, I also feel that it is an act of temerity, not to say presumption, to offer to discuss the editing of Shakespeare n the country where his plays began to be introduced not a century ago. It is my great privilege to express some part or other about the editorial problems to which during the period of about two centuries many great scholars dedicated their immense contribution, Frankly speaking, it may be true that we cannot hope to have a perfectly correct text, not so much on account of the uncertainties of transmission as because the author may never have produced a definitive text for us to recover.
This is the reason why Shakespeare never read the proofs of any edition of his own plays or peoms except the first of Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. These two works were so much personal dedications to his handsome patron the Earl of Southampton that we can become aware of the fact that he did his best to publish them without any wrong point. It is, therefore, beyond doubt that the problems the bad quartos give to an editor are naturally so complex and various that his getting high authority to the readers will remain for ever as a tentative goal. At his life time plays were hardly regarded as literature in the true sense of the word, and they were mainly for preformance on the stage, not for publication. "Comedies," said marston, Shakespeare's contemporary playwright, "are writ to be spoken, not read." With these above mentioned conditions, the difficulties in editing text arise mostly from two major causes; firstly the diversity of the channels through which Shakespeare's plays appear to have been transmitted, and secondly the conditions under which they were originally compared.