3 - Textual Studies

Summary

Working full time, Dr Henry Howard Furness, the founder of the New Variorum Shakespeare, could at the top of his powers edit a play in three years. His current successors must not only fit their editorial labours into full-time professional schedules but must grapple with a much more formidable volume of commentary and with textual problems of a complexity undreamed of in the leisurely days of Furness. In consequence, they live for many years with their plays and, as in the case of Matthew W. Black with Richard II, achieve an admirable mastery of material and ripeness of scholarship. These qualities are the more desirable because of the editorial necessity to exclude all that is doubtful and to present the rest with severe compression. The only serious loss in the present volume is the skimping of textual and bibliographical material.