THE COPY FOR CORIOLANUS, 1623

Summary

The following is taken, with slight modifications and the addition of a few sentences at the end, from my introduction to a facsimile of the Folio text published in 1928 by Messrs Faber and Faber, and is here reprinted with the kind permission of Mr Richard de la Mare. Textual research since 1928 does not seem seriously to have called its conclusions in question, as may be seen by comparison with the section on Coriolanus in Sir Walter Greg's The Shakespeare First Folio (1955), which, however, readers will do well to consult and details from which will be found quoted in the Notes below.

Coriolanus has an indifferent reputation with most editors. “The text”, declared Clark and Wright, “abounds with errors, due probably to the carelessness or the illegibility of the transcript from which it was printed.’ It certainly contains some fifty or sixty words which have been condemned as corrupt and corrected in most modern editions—at first sight a large number for one play. It also suffers, as we shall presently see, from a strange malady in the arrangement of the verse.