3 - Textual Studies

Summary

How dependable is the First Folio? For the text of seventeen plays it is the only source. Until recently, editors and commentators have acted on the tacit assumption that all copies of F are alike and that not only in these seventeen plays but frequently in others the reading in a particular copy of F is authoritative and, for practical purposes, impeccable. In Shakespeare’s 'King Lear', for example, as was pointed out in this space (Shakespeare Survey, 3, p. 148), the editor of this critical text made full use of W. W. Greg’s collation of all twelve copies of the First Quarto but contented himself with the readings from one unidentified original or facsimile of the First Folio. Forewarned, the New Arden editor, whose “text . . . is based on F . . . consulted [he does not say collated] facsimiles of two different copies of the Folio as well as the two originals accessible in Leeds” without discovering any variants. And perhaps emboldened by these negative results, he states that “as no evidence has yet been produced that the Folio is made up of corrected and uncorrected sheets, [he is] sceptical of this theory”. Just one year later Hinman announced the discovery of a page of proof of Lear and published a photographic reproduction of it.