30 Great Myths about Shakespeare by Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith
Authors: Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith
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look at those playtexts which exist in variant versions, how can we tell the difference between cause and effect? The effect of a revision (the reduction of compassion in the world of King Lear , for example, by cutting the two servants) and the reason for the revision (the servants' eight lines rendered superfluous by new theater conditions) may not be one and the same. Theater is a flexible form, continually adjusting itself to new topical/practical/political circumstances.
So far we have discussed revision in a way that implies two relatively stable texts: one version rejected and replaced by another version. But Shakespeare's plays may have accommodated regular ad hoc alteration: that is, they may have been flexibly variant at many stages. In Act 5 of Hamlet Osric tells Hamlet about Laertes' arrival at court. Lois Potter notes that Hamlet does not need this information “since Laertes had been trying to throttle him in the previous scene.” 3 She concludes that the graveyard scene was not included in every performance. She lists a host of other moments, across the canon, which bear signs of adjustment, large and small, for a variety of purposes (political, regional, topical, practical). It is too easy for us to think of Shakespeare texts as sacrosanct because for us Shakespeare is “Shakespeare.” But to his company he was not yet England's National Poet; he was a working playwright (see Myth 4).
Let us return to the quotation from W.W. Greg with which we began. Greg was part of a generation of critics who were implacably, ideologically opposed to revision. This was in part because their textual training conditioned them to think in binary terms of right and wrong, good and bad texts. They were able to tolerate the idea of local revision where one reading is immediately rejected for another (as in the example from Romeo and Juliet , above). But when presented with the idea of play-length revision or two readings of potentially equal validity, they ran into trouble: “faced with two sheep, it is all too easy to insist that one must be a goat.” 4
Faced with the taxing problem of variants between two texts of Troilus and Cressida Greg contemplated the possibility of revision in the Folio text but hesitated: “besides the more general objections there is the difficulty of deciding in which text revision is to be supposed. It is an assumption that I think the critic should avoid if possible.” 5 From this, it seems, we are to understand that because the critic cannot make a value judgment, cannot decide which text is “better,” she or he must put aside all thoughts of revision. Greg here faces the dilemma articulated by the poet, classical scholar, and acerbic textual critic A.E. Housman, in 1922:
If Providence permitted two manuscripts to be equal, the editor would have to choose between their readings by considerations of intrinsic merit, and in order to do that he would need to acquire intelligence and impartiality and willingness to take pains, and all sorts of things which he neither has nor wishes for; and he feels sure that God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, can never have meant to lay upon his shoulders such a burden as this. 6
Housman's dig at his colleagues satirically anticipates the wind of textual and theoretical change that blew in at the end of the century. This change of attitude showed that we do not need to choose between texts. Instead we can treat each on its own merits and investigate the circumstances that produced it. Whereas earlier editions of King Lear , for example, produced a single text from a combination of elements of the two distinct versions (the editorial practice known as “conflation”), there are now a number of Complete Works (the Oxford, for instance) which include the quarto and Folio texts as separate plays; the Arden Hamlet , edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor in 2006, has two volumes with three versions of the play (the quartos of 1603 and 1604–5, and
So far we have discussed revision in a way that implies two relatively stable texts: one version rejected and replaced by another version. But Shakespeare's plays may have accommodated regular ad hoc alteration: that is, they may have been flexibly variant at many stages. In Act 5 of Hamlet Osric tells Hamlet about Laertes' arrival at court. Lois Potter notes that Hamlet does not need this information “since Laertes had been trying to throttle him in the previous scene.” 3 She concludes that the graveyard scene was not included in every performance. She lists a host of other moments, across the canon, which bear signs of adjustment, large and small, for a variety of purposes (political, regional, topical, practical). It is too easy for us to think of Shakespeare texts as sacrosanct because for us Shakespeare is “Shakespeare.” But to his company he was not yet England's National Poet; he was a working playwright (see Myth 4).
Let us return to the quotation from W.W. Greg with which we began. Greg was part of a generation of critics who were implacably, ideologically opposed to revision. This was in part because their textual training conditioned them to think in binary terms of right and wrong, good and bad texts. They were able to tolerate the idea of local revision where one reading is immediately rejected for another (as in the example from Romeo and Juliet , above). But when presented with the idea of play-length revision or two readings of potentially equal validity, they ran into trouble: “faced with two sheep, it is all too easy to insist that one must be a goat.” 4
Faced with the taxing problem of variants between two texts of Troilus and Cressida Greg contemplated the possibility of revision in the Folio text but hesitated: “besides the more general objections there is the difficulty of deciding in which text revision is to be supposed. It is an assumption that I think the critic should avoid if possible.” 5 From this, it seems, we are to understand that because the critic cannot make a value judgment, cannot decide which text is “better,” she or he must put aside all thoughts of revision. Greg here faces the dilemma articulated by the poet, classical scholar, and acerbic textual critic A.E. Housman, in 1922:
If Providence permitted two manuscripts to be equal, the editor would have to choose between their readings by considerations of intrinsic merit, and in order to do that he would need to acquire intelligence and impartiality and willingness to take pains, and all sorts of things which he neither has nor wishes for; and he feels sure that God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, can never have meant to lay upon his shoulders such a burden as this. 6
Housman's dig at his colleagues satirically anticipates the wind of textual and theoretical change that blew in at the end of the century. This change of attitude showed that we do not need to choose between texts. Instead we can treat each on its own merits and investigate the circumstances that produced it. Whereas earlier editions of King Lear , for example, produced a single text from a combination of elements of the two distinct versions (the editorial practice known as “conflation”), there are now a number of Complete Works (the Oxford, for instance) which include the quarto and Folio texts as separate plays; the Arden Hamlet , edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor in 2006, has two volumes with three versions of the play (the quartos of 1603 and 1604–5, and
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