Page Contents
The Modern Edition (3)
3.5. Textual Introduction
This will be a separate essay, linked as needed to your other materials and the text.
3.5.1. The copy text
You must indicate prominently the copy-text you have chosen and your reasons for doing so. You should discuss the attempts of earlier editors to construct a presumed history of the copy-text from Shakespeare's autograph to the latest substantive edition, adding your own conclusions where you deem this possible. You should also discuss what is known of printing-shop work on the text. State clearly the editorial principles of the present edition, based on these findings, and give a list of the editions you have consulted. See Margreta de Grazia, "The Essential Shakespeare and the Material Book" Textual Practices 2 (Spring 1988): 69-86.
3.5.2. Date
Discuss the probable date of composition of the play, and any questions about the text that may be influenced by your conclusions. 3.5.3. Sources Undertake some discussion of the play's sources, where these are known or have been discovered. Emphasize the influence an understanding of the sources may have on your editorial choices in determining the text.
3.5.4. The theater
Where the theater of first performance is known, it may be valuable to discuss briefly the audience and/or stage conditions at that theater; alternatively you may wish to discuss this issue in the Performance History, cross-referencing where appropriate.
3.6. Collation
The collation will be contained in a separate file. You should endeavor to make the collation less runic and more accessible as an independent document than the cramped notations made necessary by the printed page. The format of the Textual Companion to the new Oxford Complete Works can serve as a partial guide; where necessary you will be able to add a discussion of an individual reading as well as the basic collation. Because the Collation will be a separate, self-contained document, each lemma will be identified by act, scene, and line, keyed to the modern edition; thus the reader will be able readily to locate a specific reference. In the HTML version of the text, the lemma will be linked to the whole passage in the modern edition.
3.6.1. Departures from the copy-text
The collation should record all editorial departures from the copy-text, as far as substantive readings are concerned. This applies to stage directions, as well as text (see "stage Directions" above). Minor stylistic corrections to the stage directions in square brackets, such as "Draw[s] his sword," "Enter [the] Doctor," etc., need not be collated; the editorially added matter will be clearly marked by the brackets.
3.6.2. Where there are two early texts of independent authority
The collation must record all cases in which the text not chosen as copy-text departs, in substantive matters, from the copy-text.
3.6.3. Changes in punctuation
Collate changes in punctuation only when they bear on a textual argument; when modernization entails a choice between two senses possible in the original; or when punctuation is altered to correct the sense of the copy-text.
3.6.4. Changes in spelling
Collate changes in spelling only when modernization entails a choice between two meanings possible in the original, or when the spelling bears on a textual choice or argument.
3.6.5. Collation of subsequent editions
Collate subsequent editions of importance, particularly twentieth-century editions, whenever, but only when, a reading is offered which you deem worthy of serious consideration along with the one you yourself have chosen. This is of course mandatory when a previous editor's reading or conjecture is discussed in the commentary. In addition to those early editors whose readings you accept, the list of editions all of whose emendations you should include (but not necessarily discuss) begins with the Globe or the Cambridge (1863-66), which were long hugely influential and form the basis of most on-line texts today, and continues with Dover Wilson's New Cambridge, Kittredge, Alexander, the New Arden, New Penguin, Pelican, Riverside, the still New(er) Cambridge (of the 80s and 90s), the Oxford Complete Works (1986), the single-volume Oxfords, David Bevington's HarperCollins, the New Folger, the Third Arden, the revised Riverside, and the New(er) Penguins which Stephen Orgel and Albert Braunmuller are supervising as general editors. 3.6.6. Historical collation It is not desirable to give the full textual history of a reading; only the earliest source of a reading should be cited (e.g. where a text went into several quartos, and the later quartos are not of independent authority, do not record these later readings, nor of course the readings of subsequent editors when these readings are mistaken or misconceived). 3.6.7. When in doubt When in doubt whether to include a collation, include it with a query to the Coordinating Editor.