Restoring Shakespeare: The Modern Editor’s Task

Summary

Abuse of the commentators and of the editors is a form of recreation with which many readers of Shakespeare have from time to time diverted themselves. Familiar, perhaps from their early years, with his plays in some well-known and standard text, they come in their maturer days upon remarks that disturb their repose in their long-cherished knowledge or on suggestions that offend their sense of propriety. Such reactions may be wise or unwise according to circumstances and the capacity of the reader; they are at least natural, but only some familiarity with the commentator’s problem will enable even the judicious reader to pass a fair judgement on new suggestions and to reject them, if necessary, with the charitable allowance that the case usually deserves. For the commentator is doing his best to help in what is both a difficult and a delicate task, and only an arrogant assumption of omniscience on his part should call forth the reader’s objurgation.