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Notes
It should be added that Sisson proposes to publish as a separate work two volumes of more detailed commentary and justification of the readings adopted in his text. (This has now appeared as New Readings in Shakespeare in the Cambridge Shakespeare Problem Series. Ed.)
The case for the retention of much of the original punctuation even in a semipopular edition has been recently stated by M. R. Ridley in the Arden edition of Antony and Cleopatra: 'In the early texts we have, pretty certainly, at least "playhouse" punctuation, and very possibly a great deal of Shakespeare's own. . . . No editor can desert it without very careful consideration. . . . An alteration in the original punctuation should be regarded as no less an emendation than a change in a word, and should be felt to need the same kind of justification.' Earlier in this Introduction, however, Mr. Ridley seems to suggest that there are differences between punctuation for the stage and punctuation for a reading text.
The case for the full collation of the later folios is stated by Frank Kermode in the Arden edition of The Tempest: 'The variants of the three later folios are fully recorded; not of course because they have such contact with the copy as might give them authority . . . but because they illustrate the mechanical progress of that corruption which vitiated the copy of the early eighteenth century editors, and the first rather undiscriminating attempt to castigate the text of errors surviving from manuscript as well as errors acquired in the process of transmission. The readings are, I think, of interest to anyone who wishes to familiarise himself with the antecedents of modern textual criticism.' All of which is perfectly true, but hardly consistent with the stated purpose of the Arden series.
In fairness, attention is drawn to the following statement on the apparatus criticus of Antony and Cleopatra edited in the Arden series by M. R. Ridley: 'This I have considerably lightened. In an edition such as this . . . it is important that what is given should be readily comprehensible, and should not obscure salient points by a cloud of minor ones. . . . I have tried to keep in mind . . . the student who is in the early or prentice days of his study of textual problems, and the ordinary reader who is mainly concerned with reading the plays as plays, who relies therefore on his edition primarily for discussion of points of meaning or dramatic presentation, but who is prepared every now and again to be interested in a technical problem.' This seems to me an excellent statement of the requirements of this section of a semi-popular edition.
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