University of Virginia Library

If there is only one point on which my namesake, John Russell Brown, and I are agreed, it is a very important one — the necessity for full and frank discussion of editorial methods, and for a clear understanding on the part of editors of what they are about. Several years ago, in a discussion of 'semi-popular' editions of Shakespeare,[1] I pleaded for a greater sense of responsibility from those engaged in the preparation of such editions, and much of what John Brown says seems to me to reinforce my plea; although perhaps not always in ways which he intended. Since he has declared his own vested interests — I do not, of course, use this phrase in any pejorative sense — as editor of a forthcoming modernized spelling edition of Webster, I should declare my own, as a member of the Council of the Malone Society, and as editor of a forthcoming old-spelling edition of Thomas Heywood. I do not think that in either his case or mine these interests have yet induced a state of positive prejudice.

Any form of reproduction of a sixteenth or seventeenth century play, whether it be by photography, by type facsimile, or by an edition in old or modernized spelling, must involve some degree of compromise, and it seems to me that one of the first considerations of an editor must be how far he is prepared to compromise in the presentation of his original. What is disturbing in John Brown's article is his apparent disregard, apart from one brief sentence ('Of course even photographs have their limitations'), of the degree of compromise involved in photographic reproduction. When he emphasizes, quite properly, that the textual student 'must be on the look-out for the slightest irregularity in the original printing',[2] that he must consider

possible disarrangement of type in assessing the evidence of press variants, that he must consider the possible needs of justification in collecting evidence from spelling tests for identification of compositors, that he must be able to identify odd pieces of type in his examination of the method of casting off copy, Brown almost invariably concludes with the formula 'for such work either the original edition or a photographic reproduction of it is required'. Occasionally he specifies 'a good photographic reproduction', but the point I wish to make is that he seems to find the original and the photographic reproduction of equal value in these matters.

In spite of the mass of evidence to the contrary, far too many people still have a touching faith in the notion that 'the camera does not lie'. From one point of view photographic reproduction is, for a textual student, the most dangerous thing of all, for the very method of producing it and its 'likeness' to the original lull him into a sense of false security, and put him off his guard against the multitude of tiny errors — the very things he ought to be interested in — which may creep in despite all the precautions of the photographer. It is no doubt unnecessary to warn Brown against the slight curve in the surface to be photographed, which may easily distort letters and spaces, particularly those near the margins; against badly inked letters and punctuation marks which assume a different form in the reproduction; against letters which have not inked at all, printing 'blind' in the original but disappearing altogether in the reproduction; against any haphazard ink mark or fly spot in the original to which a reproduction may give a new lease of life. All these hazards are known to textual students, or should be, and many more besides. And I feel that it is particularly risky to attempt to identify odd pieces of type from reproductions subject

to hazards such as these; in this matter surely, if nowhere else, only the original will serve.

Undoubtedly Brown is aware of the dangers; but in making such an eloquent plea for the provision of photographic facsimiles, to the extent of practically equating them with originals, it might have been fairer not to gloss over them entirely. It is remarkable, incidentally, that he makes no reference to the importance of a study of watermarks to the textual student, for which even the best photographic reproduction will not afford him much help. Lack of space no doubt prevented Brown from enlarging on what he means by a 'good' or 'reliable' facsimile, but he quotes with approval 'the excellent series of Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles which are now being published by the Oxford University Press' and which were being overseen by the late Sir Walter Greg. In general I share his approval, but he cannot be unaware that the Press has abandoned the original method of collotype reproduction for a less satisfactory one, and that it was possible for Professor Bowers, in his review of two of the most recent volumes, Loves Labours Lost and Henry V, to make some quite serious criticisms both of the methods and of the results.[3]

'Considerable experiment would be required before the best way of providing a large number of high-grade photographic facsimiles is discovered, and this may not prove to be the cheapest method of reproduction,' says Brown. If for may we substitute will, we shall be in less danger of understatement, especially if these facsimiles are to be composite copies, giving 'the preferred states of all variant formes' and 'if possible, reproductions of the rejected variant formes'. If the work is to be done in such a way that these facsimiles are even to approach rivalry with the originals, it is no use talking about 'advances in cheap photographic processes' (italics mine); nor do I share Brown's optimism about subventions and special subscriptions. He envisages a 'complete corpus of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in photographic reproductions, overseen and commented upon by responsible scholars' in the course of fifty years or so. He may be right; but I hope that we shall both be in a position to take a more detached view of the problem by then, and meanwhile we have to face present day realities.

But from the point of view of the textual critic, why all this pother about photographic facsimiles? He knows, if he has had any experience at all, that in his heart of hearts he must not trust them in the last resort in any matter of significance, that with the best he can get at the moment (or is likely to get in the foreseeable future) 'constant and

continuous reference to the originals' for his special purposes will still be necessary. It was said of one of the pioneers in this field that 'in matters of bibliography he would not take the word of the arch-angel Gabriel on trust', and in the present rapid, almost bewildering, development of bibliographical techniques I see no reason for departing from this principle. When the textual critic has admitted, as he must, that his photographic facsimile is no more than a compromise and a convenience, it seems to me to matter little in principle whether he is using microfilm, positive or negative photostat, or a 'good' photograph; he will still consider himself bound, one hopes, to check all his findings against the original before committing himself to any statements. Further, human nature being what it is, even amongst textual critics of Brown's calibre, the more help he is given in the way of lists of variant readings, doubtful readings, misprints, and the like (all of which are envisaged by Brown as having a place in the kind of facsimile he wants for textual work), especially if these have been provided by 'a responsible scholar', the more he will be tempted to take on trust things which he should work out for himself. This may sound like a counsel of despair; but the textual critic must realize that his is a hard and exacting task, often unrewarding, and that more often than not he works out his own salvation or perishes. A photographic facsimile, whatever its quality and whatever kind of commentary is attached to it, is still a compromise and a convenience on which the critic relies at his peril; and the more he is encouraged to rely on it, the greater the peril.

For the purposes of the textual critic, then, in the last resort access to the original is the only answer, and I find much of Brown's theorising about facsimiles irrelevant from this point of view. The world is not, however, composed entirely of textual critics, not even the scholarly world, and I find much of his discussion of type facsimiles and old and modernized spelling editions coloured by the apparent assumption that it is. It is for this reason that I feel he has done less than justice to the type facsimiles of the Malone Society. For while it may be true that the modern textual critic is working now in fields which the older editors of the Society did not, for obvious reasons, fully appreciate, yet the Society's editorial principles have always been so clearly defined and so strictly enjoined upon its editors that, provided the reader is aware of these, there is little danger of his being misled. Even for the textual critic I do not feel that these volumes are as useless as Brown seems to think. Supposing that he has no easy access to the original that he wishes to study, and supposing that he has either no facsimile, or only a poor one, or even quite a good one; he can be sure that his

Malone Society edition has been prepared by someone carefully chosen for the job, that this editor has had access to the original, that he has spent many hours working on it, that his introduction will contain much, if not all, of the information that a textual critic needs at least to help him on his way to his own examination of the text in question, that all departures from the original have been carried out within carefully defined limits, and that the editor's work has at all stages been checked by another carefully chosen person. I freely admit that we are again faced by compromise and convenience; but I cannot feel much more grief for the textual critic who has only his Malone Society edition to work on than I can for one who has his photographic facsimile. For their special purposes they will both be forced back to the original.

Once we leave the textual critic working in his specialized field, questions of compromise and convenience become in some respects rather more acute, for there exists a variety of readers whose needs can only be properly met by some degree of editorial intervention. I find myself at a loss to understand, still less appreciate, Brown's attitude towards edited texts of any kind, since his own words seem to imply that he has only one class of reader in mind: 'If a facsimile reprint is now of limited use to a textual student, an old-spelling critical edition will be even less able to satisfy him.' To my mind, as I have tried to suggest in my discussion of photographic facsimiles, it has always been true that for the textual student as such nothing is satisfactory but the original edition or editions of the text with which he is involved. From this point of view, therefore, Brown's strictures upon the silent alterations in the Cambridge old-spelling edition of Dekker are irrelevant, for the genuine textual student will not, in the last resort, go to such an edition to decide how 'the spelling, punctuation, lining and general arrangement' of his play 'were modified in the printing house'. On the other hand Brown is surely guilty of exaggeration when he suggests that such a student 'would never know [from such a text] whether he was in possession of all the relevant facts for debating the value of an emendation or discovering the presence of a textual corruption'. I use the word 'exaggeration' deliberately, because of course it is in a sense true that no one will ever know this, whether he is using originals for himself or relying on facsimiles or using an old-spelling edition or (pace Brown) a modernized edition. But surely the most casual glance at the textual introductions to the plays in Bowers's Dekker, at his lists of copies examined, at his lists of variants found in these copies, at his lists of emendations of accidentals, should convince the most hardened textual sceptic that here was material collected and presented under

the control of a rigid discipline and a strict sense of responsibility, the conclusions drawn from which he might well be 'willing to take on trust' — unless he wished to do the whole job again for his own satisfaction; as, of course, he well might for his special purposes as a textual student.[4]

Nor do I understand, from the point of view of the reader for whom these texts are being produced, the fuss that Brown makes about the uncertainties of authorial spelling as opposed to compositorial spelling. Of course 'a workman's predilections or the exigencies of justification or type-shortage' might account for variations in spelling, and might effectively disguise the author's own spelling, although unless we are to suppose that the average Elizabethan compositor, maliciously or otherwise, went out of his way to vary the spelling of every other word in the copy before him this factor might be much less important than Brown seems to imply. But are there many intelligent people reading these plays nowadays who are not aware of this and who would put their trust 'in any single spelling as due to the author'? We must keep a sense of proportion about these things and realize that a statement such as 'the modern reader. . . . cannot (or, rather, should not) take the spelling of an old-spelling critical edition seriously with respect to the author's intentions' is again a serious exaggeration. We know that the compositor interfered; but we need to know a good deal more about compositors and their habits before we can assume, as Brown seems to do, that they interfered to such an extent as to put the author out of the picture altogether.

In the whole of his discussion of 'old spelling' Brown seems to raise an entire field of hares; of course the retention of old spelling will result in a number of ambiguities; of course we shall have the chaff along with the wheat, although I feel that for a student of literature

any spelling from a text of this period, whether it be authorial or compositorial, should have an intrinsic interest of its own and the distinction between chaff and wheat is not an entirely fair one. But in our present state of knowledge I do not see how this can be avoided; nor do I think any serious damage is done provided that the student does not misuse the evidence presented to him, and on this point Brown seems to be unduly pessimistic, to take it for granted that most people will misuse this evidence. Again, surely a question of editorial responsibility is raised: he will not interfere with the spelling of his edition, but as a result of his training and of his intimate knowledge of the text, its author, and its method of production he should be in a position to guide and warn his readers against making unjustifiable assumptions. I do not quite see the force of Brown's rather casual remark that these ambiguities will remain unresolved in such an edition 'unless, of course, the old-spelling editor resorts to explanatory footnotes like a modernizing one'. It had not occurred to me that such notes were ever considered to be the prerogative of a modernizing editor.[5] I can see no reason why an old-spelling editor should feel himself debarred from including such notes; I have a suspicion that he will also use them more judiciously than his modernizing counterpart.

Quoting one of my own remarks against me, Brown seems to suggest that it is no longer true that the scholarly reader of an old-spelling edition will be in possession of sufficient evidence to make up his mind in a case of ambiguity; what I have quoted of Bowers's theory, and what can be seen as his practice in his Dekker surely justifies my original comment. It is a matter of editorial responsibility, as Brown himself remarks and as I tried to make clear in my original paper; but I cannot understand that the most convenient way of assuming this responsibility is 'to give the modern, unequivocal form in the printed text wherever possible', the words 'unequivocal' and 'wherever possible' coming rather strangely after Brown has spent so much time in explaining how tenuous these concepts may be. I cannot understand how a responsible editor can conceive it to be part of his duty to erect more barriers than are absolutely necessary between his reader and the text. I cannot understand how anything between the 'extremes' (perhaps not the best word in this context, but Brown's own) of a photographic

reproduction and a fully modernized critical edition must of necessity 'be incomplete for the specialist and misleading for other readers'. A responsible editor of a Malone Society edition is presenting a type-facsimile of a single copy within clearly defined limits, including in a scholarly introduction variants from other copies and any other material of textual significance, and making no changes in the spelling or punctuation of his original; a responsible editor of a critical old-spelling text is presenting a text based upon an examination of all available copies of his original, with emendations of spelling, punctuation and actual words resulting either from this examination or on his own editorial responsibility, feeling himself bound to give reasons for such emendations and to present the evidence upon which he has based them. What can be either incomplete or misleading about these two methods, provided that the user of the volumes has taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the principles involved, passes my comprehension.

I have elsewhere expressed my opinions on modernized editions (see note 1 above), and have since seen no reason for modifying them in any important respects. It is a pity that Brown did not elaborate a little more the principles upon which he is proposing to work ('they have only been stated in simple form in this paper', he says), for although it may be true that experience of such modernized editions has been gained from the various series which he mentions, it is also sadly true that so far these have for the most part proceeded by lack of principles rather than by the formulation of consistent ones. To remark, as Brown does, that 'their methods have not always been informed by up-to-date textual and linguistic understanding' is again to be guilty of understatement, as a perusal of some of the recent scholarly reviews of the volumes he cites will make abundantly clear. It will be interesting to see his modernized edition of Webster, not least in order to find out to what extent his apparatus has had to be increased in order to allow him to justify the extra editorial responsibilities that he is apparently prepared to take upon himself. Meanwhile I shall continue to go back to the originals for textual purposes, even if my study is crammed with good photographic reproductions for the occasions when I cannot easily get to a library, and for all other purposes, and even occasionally for textual ones, I shall continue to rely on my Malone Society editions and my critical old-spelling editions, confident that in these I shall find editorial responsibility of a high order and the minimum of editorial intervention between myself and the author.