Performance Editions, Editing and Editors

Summary

The most interventionist, inventive, outrageous, radical and immediately accountable editors of early modern texts are those preparing a play text for a specific performance event, usually directors and dramaturgs. Away from the constraints of a publishing series house style, although often limited by the requirements of a theatre house style, directors can treat early modern texts with a daring that can sometimes seem by traditional scholarly editing standards to border on the reckless: what modern editor would actually dare leave out the first two scenes of The Taming of the Shrew (although continuing to label what the Folio text calls ‘Actus Primus. Scaena Prima’ an ‘Induction’ does invite the reader to discount these scenes)? But how many theatre directors, including Jonathan Miller in the so-called complete works broadcast by the BBC, have discarded The Taming of the Shrew’s first two scenes? How many of those editors who are convinced of the significance of the full Sly framework have actually had the nerve to plough straight on from 5.2 into Sly’s final scenes from the Quarto Taming of A Shrew? Robert Atkins does, in his 1925 edition for Samuel French, but this is a specialist edition aimed at performers, and Atkins was only guesting as an editor: most of his working life was spent as a theatre director. Atkins was also the first director bold enough to bring the full Shrew epilogue back on to the stage, in 1922 at the Old Vic, but while in relation to the theatrical restoration of Sly, Atkins the director has many followers, Atkins the editor has few disciples.