3 - Textual Studies

Summary

The New Penguin Shakespeare, which is under the general editorship of T. J. B. Spencer, gives us new texts, edited in the light of recent research. The ‘Old’ Penguin, under the editorship of G. B. Harrison, was based largely on the First Folio, even in the case of those plays for which quarto editions exist. Each of the new Penguin volumes contains ‘An Account of the Text’, where the main textual problems are discussed in a manner comprehensible to the general reader. There follow collations of the more important and interesting variants, while the choice of variant is, in the more difficult cases, usually discussed in the commentary. More than this, a popular edition can hardly be expected to provide. Taken as a whole, the six volumes which have appeared, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice, give a text which is of interest not only to the general reader but to the scholar.