Textual Problems

14F1's All's Wellis notoriously troubled by a number of cruxes and textual confusions that necessitate editorial intervention. Generally, our interventions have followed standard modern conventions: we have attempted to produce a text that is accessible to modern readers while editing with a light hand and remaining true to F1's textual idiosyncrasies wherever possible. Because this is a digital edition, the ideal of editorial minimalism is easier to approximate. Thanks to the affordances of web browsers in which our editions are presented, for instance, our edition presents the reader with a variety of editorial choices whenever it negotiates a crux that might be resolved in two or more equally plausible ways. Such a strategy for representing textual possibility is liberating for editors, who are often compelled to make decisions that rely on potentially dubious or decidedly ambiguous ground. Also contributing to these editorial ends, this edition is linked to the Internet Shakespeare Editions' digital transcription of F1's All's Well. By providing readers with a ready-to-hand transcription of the copytext, this edition enables them to evaluate – on the fly – the editorial choices made in the modern edition. Such tools ultimately make editing a less invasive project because they help to open up rather than foreclose textual possibilities. Because some editorial decisions were, however, too involved to be resolved easily and transparently in the text itself, we spell out below some of the more fraught editorial decisions that this edition has taken.

15Among the textual problems in F1, the problem of the brothers Dumaine is the most vexing. Even if one agrees with Wells and Taylor that the "extent" of this problem "has been exaggerated" (492), the resolution of the problems requires, at bottom, a more or less capricious editorial intervention. The brothers Dumaine cause editorial consternation primarily because of the contradictory speech prefixes and ambiguous, "literary" stage directions that are common in the F1version of All's Well. When the brothers are first introduced, for instance, they are distinguished doubly in their speech prefixes: first, they are "1 Lord" and "2 Lord," and they are also "Lord G" and "Lord E." The tradition generally assumes – though Hunter, Snyder, and Fredson Bowers dissent from this opinion – that the original foul papers included "1 Lord" and "2 Lord," and that the "G" and the "E" were subsequently added, perhaps by a book holder, to indicate the actors who played these roles (Gough and Ecclestone have been widely accepted proposals). The primary problem with these speech prefixes, however, is that "E" and "G" are not consistently attached to "1 Lord" or "2 Lord." In their first appearances in 1.2 and 2.1, for instance, we find "1.Lo.G." and "2.Lo.E." thus associating "1 Lord" with "E" and "2 Lord" with "G." Later, however, these roles are reversed so "1.Lo." is allied with "E" and "2.Lo." with "G." The speech prefixes for the brothers Dumaine also cause problems for editors because they might indicate characters who are not Dumaines. It is unclear, for instance, if "I. Lo. G." and "2.Lo.E." from 1.2 are identical with "Fren. E.," "1.G." and "Fren.G" in 3.2 when the stage direction identifies them as "two Gentlemen." Similarly, in 3.1, the stage direction referring to the "two Frenchmen" might not refer to the same "two Gentlemen." And one might similarly wonder whether 3.1's "French.G." (also identified as "1.Lord") and "French.E." are identical with "Cap.E." and "Cap.G.," also identified as "the Frenchmen" in a stage direction. Finally, "the two French Lords" in a stage direction in 5.3 might be with the "two Gentlemen" in 2.3 might not be the same characters as those identified with a "Lord" in their speech prefix because the gap between "Lords" and "Gentlemen" is considerable, producing three very different sets of characters.

16Such inconsistencies have predictably led to various critical interpretations of the brothers Dumaine, as when William T. Hastings identified three groups of characters where modern editors tend to see only the brothers Dumaine. Unlike most modern editions, this edition takes Hastings – in part – seriously, specifically refusing to identify the brothers Dumaine with the two gentlemen who visit Helen with Bertram's letter in 3.2. We have chosen to distinguish these two gentlemen from the brothers Dumaine because to conflate these two groups engenders a variety of dramatic complexities and logical inconsistencies. In terms of dramatic action and characterization, it seems easy to assume a distinction between the two gentlemen and the brothers Dumaine because there is no reason to believe that they, like the brothers Dumaine, are intimates of Bertram. Second, and more substantially, the two gentlemen of 3.2 claim to have been returning from Florence, even though the two brothers have just left for Florence – in the previous scene – with Bertram: "Madam," the two gentlemen of 3.2 say to Helen, "[Bertram's] gone to serve the Duke of Florence. / We met him thitherward, for thence we came, / And, after some dispatch in hand at court, / Thither we bend again (TLN 1455-1458). If we want to read these two gentlemen as the friends of Bertram who have just convinced him to trek to Florence, we have to imagine a strange bit of action: the two lords Dumaine have left for war with Bertram, have ridden to Florence, have been engaged in battle, and have returned to court on business; on their way home to Roussillon, they ran into Bertram on his way to Florence (even though they left with him?) and they have done all of this before Helen has noticed that her new husband has left.

17The modern editorial tradition – identifying the two gentlemen with the brothers Dumaine – disagrees with the logic of this edition's decision. Snyder, for instance, looks to the narrative mess of this moment and claims that it is one glitch in a play full of such glitches: the play's "time-logic," according to Snyder, "will not bear close scrutiny" (61). Hunter agrees in part with Snyder by suggesting that the confusion results from the foulness of the foul papers from which All's Wellwas printed: he speculates that Shakespeare initially established a "distinction" between two different groups of men – the gentlemen and the Dumaines – though this distinction "later vanished and the two groups coalesced in the author's mind" (xvii). Snyder concurs here, arguing that "at some point as the writing proceeded, Shakespeare reviewed the text with an eye to dramatic economy and found that these pairs of lesser characters could be amalgamated with the French lords" (61). Unlike Snyder and Hunter, however, we have maintained a distinction between the brothers Dumaine and these gentlemen for two reasons: first, we are uncertain that the two groups coalesced in the author's mind (How would we know?), and second, we disagree with the theatrical rationale for the identification of these two groups as a single group. According to this theatrical rationale, the two gentlemen are likely the brothers Dumaine because the King's men would have been unable to use "the same actors . . . to play different but easily confused roles" (Hunter xvii). We assume that such a switch could, in fact, be undertaken easily. A change of beard or a change of jerkin could easily mark two distinct groups of men, and such a switch could be undertaken rather quickly with a fairly sophisticated audience recognizing exactly what was going on, even if the two actors played all four roles. Certainly, it is one of the Dumaines that delivers to Bertram the message that his mother sent by way of the gentleman, but that seems to be a less egregious and more readily explicable dramatic issue than the problem that emerges when we identify the brothers Dumaine with the two Gentlemen.

18The other textual problems inspired by the brothers Dumaine are more easily resolved. The characters identified in speech prefixes as "Fren.G." and "Fren.E." – "the two Frenchmen" from a stage direction in 3.1 – are clearly the brothers Dumaine: "Fren.G." is switched for "1.Lord" in 3.1, thus establishing the identity. Similarly, the two speech prefixes which distinguish between "Cap.1" and "Cap.2." are preceded by a stage direction that identifies them as "the two Frenchmen," thus conflating these various characters into a single, multifaceted duo.

19The speech prefix inconsistencies – whereby "1 Lord" is variously associated with "E" and "G" – are also readily explained, though the explanation for these inconsistencies is less certain and less felicitous. The problem seems ultimately to bespeak a relative indistinguishability between the two brothers Dumaine, meaning that either of them can deliver the other's lines while remain characterologically coherent. Shakespeare's disinterest in their relative distinction poses considerable problems, however, when their actions and locations make them seem like decidedly different characters, as in the notorious problems between 3.6 and 4.3. In 3.6, E and G both discuss with Bertram the ambush of Paroles; E speaks as if to exit, but then G exits to lay the ambush, while E stays with Bertram as the two plan to visit Diana together; in 4.1, however, it seems that E is directing the ambush of Paroles – an ambush that G was supposed to direct. Further confusing the issue, E tells G in 4.3 about Bertram's meeting with Diana, and he subsequently tells Bertram about what is going on with Paroles after the ambush. In this scenario, E is at both at the meeting of Diana and at the ambush of Paroles, though G takes the lead of Paroles' interrogation subsequently in 4.3 as if it was G, rather than E, who had led the ambush originally.

20While such confusion indicates the relative similarity of the two brothers Dumaine, it also necessitates editorial intervention. As is the case with the gentlemen of 3.2, the action described here is fundamentally problematic rather than simply awkward, leading Wells and Taylor to point out that the "awkwardness of this arrangement can hardly be overlooked" (493). By emending 3.6, however, so that E (Lord 2 here) rather than G (Lord 1 here) leaves to lead the ambush of Paroles, the problems are quickly and readily resolved. Certainly, it seems strange that E rather than G would know more about Bertram's dalliances with Diana, but it is not impossible at all that he would have this knowledge second-hand from Bertram because neither of the brothers appears when Bertram meets Diana. Indeed, it remains unclear what role a Dumaine is expected to play at a moment of seduction. The confusion here makes for dramatically awkward action, but the awkwardness it engenders is not a dramatic impossibility. To effect this change, we need also to attribute G's exit line at TLN 1844 to E or 2 Lord. In this scenario, E speaks two exit lines, one ambiguous ("I must go look my twigs . . .") and one conclusive ("I'll leave you"). Subsequent lines in the scene are then attributed to the remaining Dumaine (G/1) who becomes the Dumaine who – though never appearing – escorts Bertram to see Diana.

21Ghost and silent characters that appear throughout F1 All's Wellpose complicated editorial problems. Notoriously, the play may or may not stage a character named Violenta, who may or may not appear in a stage direction. Violenta's ambiguous status in the play is the result of a confusing stage direction as 3.5 opens: Enter old Widdow of Florence, her daughter Violenta / and Mariana, with other / Citizens" (TLN 1603-1605). The ambiguity surrounds the relationship imagined by this syntax between the "old widow of Florence" and "Violenta." Throughout the rest of the play, the daughter of the old widow of Florence is named "Diana," so it seems unlikely that "Violenta" is the name of "her daughter" unless Shakespeare subsequently made a change to Violenta/Diana's name and left this shadow of an original name for Diana. But if Violenta is not an ur-Diana, then she is mostly invisible to an audience because never speaks a line in the rest of the scene, because her name is never mentioned, and because her silent, unnamed body is likely to dissolve into the collective identified as "other Citizens." While a silent woman named "Violenta" might seem particularly evocative in this play – a play partly about varieties of female exploitation – such evocation is available only to a reading audience for which Shakespeare presumably was not writing when he wrote All's Well. Despite Violenta's apparent invisibility vis-à-vis the audience, we have retained her name here rather than letting her disappear in to the group of "other citizens." Such a decision seems best because, though invisible to the audience, Violenta would remain visible to the stage audience, producing ambiguous but nonetheless meaningful effect. The name, that is, is something with which a director might conjure, whether or not this director imagines her as a silent presence on stage or as the (subsequently superseded) identity of Diana (see Snyder, "Naming Names"). According to the same logic, we have maintained the silent presence of other characters on the stage, as in the case of Paroles, who enters and remains uncharacteristically silent in 3.3. Such silent characters may indicate early possibilities that Shakespeare subsequently ignored, but they might be just as reasonably understood as warm bodies remaining meaningfully, and perhaps pointedly, silent.