New Conservatism and the Theatrical Text: Editing Shakespeare for the third millennium

In the United Kingdom today the editing of Shakespeare shows no sense of sharp decline. Oxford, Cambridge, New Penguin, Shakespeare Originals and the third series of the Arden Shakespeare compete for a largely academic and university readership, not to mention other series directed at schools. No modernized text of Shakespeare published in the late twentieth century received more care in preparation than that of the Oxford Complete Works published in 1986. Its prolegomena included two small books and its textual discussion and annotation form the major contents of the 671 pages of A Textual Companion. Even if the documentary basis of an edition of Shakespeare were to comprise manuscripts of undoubted theatrical origins, there would still be no way of reconstructing the details or effect of early performances. The essence of the suggestion is that such an edition, however realized, would have the advantage of measuring the editorial process, however undertaken, against the standard of the immutable original.