The Copy for the Folio Richard III

Abstract

N SQ, X (ig5g), 91-96, I had occasion to review in some detail J. K. Walton's monograph, The Copy for the Folio Text of Richard III 0955), which argued that Q3 (i602), and not Q6 (i622) as usually believed, was the exclusive copy for the Folio throughout. This review was not undertaken lightly; and I did not feel competent to write it until I had made what I thought was considerable progress in approaching the problem by a different method, which appeared to provide evidence to confirm Mr. Walton's views. Further experience, however, has tempered the positiveness with which, in this review, I approved Mr. Walton's upsetting of the traditional textual position of Q6. It is very probable that the new research necessary to approach this problem with any real authority will take a long time, since compositorial evidence must be sought far afield from Richard III alone. In these circumstances I am concerned that in what now seems to be a premature manner I presumed to write on the subject, and that, having done so, I may mislead other critics if I do not indicate that I can no longer feel the certainty, as stated in the review, that the problem has been solved. Indeed, further consideration leads me to believe that the case for Q6 cannot be dismissed so readily as I thought at first. The matter is too complex for me to attempt just now to give more than one or two reasons, but some account, I feel, is due. In determining the genetic relationship of texts, criticism has relied exclusively on the study of variant readings according to the principle that identity of reading implies identity of origin. Under most conditions found in a series of reprints, the normal progress of corruption in successive typesettings offers quite enough evidence from which to determine the derivation and order of editions, even in moderately complex cases of mixed copy. On the contrary, when some correcting agent interferes with the text-like a collator charged with bringing a print into conformity with a manuscript of different textual tradition-substantive readings may prove to be either almost non-existent or else untrustworthy evidence. The normal reprint transmission of variants is disrupted at its source by the correction of error and by the alteration or revision of satisfactory readings. This smoothing-out of the evidence on which textual criticism normally operates is particularly acute in a case like Richard III when the choice of copy for the Folio can be narrowed to only two editions: one the last in the series of quarto reprints before F, but the other a non-touching earlier edition. It is in. evitable that any terminal edition is likely to agree uniquely with its chronological predecessor more often than with an earlier edition, even though the earlier