New Variorum Shakespeares in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

We are supposedly witnessing the end of the meaningful editing of Shakespeare's plays. That is the claim made in a recent essay by Marvin Spevack, the editor of the lately published New Variorum Antony and Cleopatra.[1] Noting that seventeen columns are now devoted to Shakespeare editions in Books in Print, he argues nevertheless that editors in the first seventy-five years of this century have added very little to our understanding of non-accidental details of Shakespeare's texts. His proof mainly consists of the calculated number of new substantive verbal changes proposed during this period. Using evidence collected during his collation of editions of Antony and Cleopatra, he figures the percentage of change in the minuscule range of 0.0008156-0.0009039 of the total estimated number of word-tokens or graphic entries (885,000) in texts (pp. 79-80). Moreover, he points out that the changes, as a rule, amount to alternative readings, none (or few) of which has found general acceptance. According to Spevack, the textual notes of the Arden 3 edition of Antony and Cleopatra (1995) reveal 'that all the substantive changes not found in the First Folio originate no later than in Dr. Johnson's edition of 1765, the largest number already found in the Second Folio of 1632'. 'Reluctantly, but inescapably', he concludes 'that as far as substantive verbal changes are concerned the text of Shakespeare is for all intents and purposes fixed' (pp. 79-80). As a result of this state of affairs, the work of Shakespeare editors more so than ever before consists of editing earlier editors' commentaries on single words and phrases, lines of poetry and prose, and whole passages. Gloomily, Spevack pronounces however that 'the commentary situation is, surprisingly or not, much the same' as that involving verbal substantives. Thus he predicts that electronic hypertexts will take the place of Shakespeare editions in the twenty-first century, mainly because with supposedly so little new to offer, the process of editing Shakespeare 'has become rampantly encyclopedic with commentary expanding to include not merely the traditional diversions of sources and parallels but interpretations and possible interpretations, with notes being complemented by longer notes, longer notes by appendices' (p. 82).[2] Today's editions point toward digitalized hypertext, whose phenomenal mass of information may encourage and allow readers to become their own editors; and hypertext resembles the Old (Furness) and New Shakespeare Variorums, in the sense that all three contain a super-abundance (overpowering for many users) of sifted and unsifted material on a given play. Spevack suggests in this respect that we may be completing a historical circle. He concludes his article, paradoxically granted the acclaim that his own variorum edition has received, by implying that a charge once made against the second volume of Furness's variorum Hamlet may one day be made against Shakespeare hypertexts: 'There is much no doubt that is exceedingly clever, but, taken as a whole, [the work amounts to] an almost impenetrable mass of conflicting opinions, wild conjectures and leaden contemplations, a huge collection of antagonistic materials which, if not repulsive, is certainly appalling' (p. 85). If Shakespeare editors are reduced to editing other editors' materials, one would think that Shakespeare variorums would become valued texts, if for no other reason than that they represent huge repositories of centuries of editorial opinion. But by comparing variorums to hypertexts, which he criticizes as disjointed (and so perhaps unusable) amalgams, Spevack leaves us with no rationale for appreciating or defending his own magisterial New Variorum Antony and Cleopatra. What follows represents a defence of the importance and usefulness of the New Variorum Shakespeares for the twenty-first century, whose early years at least I assume will reflect the postmodernist ideas and practices of the 1990s. …