University of Virginia Library

Anyone who undertakes to edit a text must necessarily make some basic decisions about the kind of editorial apparatus that is to accompany that text. Sometimes these decisions are so thoughtless that they are hardly recognized as decisions at all — as when a publisher's editor selects a particular early edition to be photographically reproduced, without commentary of any kind, in a cheap paperback series. At other times they are the result of careful deliberation — as when a scholarly editor who has constructed a critical text sets forth in several lists the data he had at his disposal in examining variants and making emendations. In between, the spectrum includes a wide variety of kinds of apparatus: one edition may be entirely unannotated except for a prefatory note explaining the source of the text and perhaps generalizing about certain changes made in it; another may record variant readings (or the more important of them) in brackets within the text or at the foot of the page; another may limit its annotation, at the foot of the page or at the end of the volume, to definition of obscure words and identification of historical allusions; and still another may be principally concerned with citing previous critics' remarks about individual passages. But whatever form the apparatus takes — from the rudimentary to the elaborate — it represents some sort of thought about the extent to which the editor should make himself visible to the audience at which he is aiming.

Some kinds of apparatus, of course, are in part determined by the purposes of the edition: thus a variorum edition must by definition include apparatus which records variant readings. But an editor's basic job is to produce a text, and normally neither the exact form nor the extent of the apparatus is automatically determined by that job. A careful and reliable text obviously could be published without any accompanying apparatus, while an irresponsible text could be offered with extensive notes and tables. Such is not usually the case; but the

fact remains that the precise nature of the apparatus is determined by a different set of decisions from that which lies behind the establishment of the text. It is true that most of the recent editions based on Greg's rationale for choosing a copy-text[1] have similar categories of lists in the apparatus. But there is nothing in his theory itself which requires such lists; rather, it could be said that these lists provide the most important kinds of information which ought to be supplied in any scholarly edition, regardless of the principles followed in constructing the text. Decisions affecting the text involve questions of authorial intent; decisions affecting the apparatus involve questions of editorial responsibility. When an editor prepares a text for a scholarly audience, it is his responsibility to furnish all the information required for evaluating and rethinking his textual decisions; in a popular edition, on the other hand, he may feel with some justification that his primary responsibility is to provide explanatory annotation rather than textual evidence — but of course the care with which the text itself is prepared would not be less merely because the apparatus is simpler.[2] It should be clear, therefore, that a general rationale for editorial apparatus can be discussed independently of any rationale for editing. And equally obvious is the basic principle to be borne in mind in making decisions about apparatus: that the kind of apparatus presented is an indication less of the nature of the text than of the type of audience for which the edition is intended.

Just what apparatus is appropriate for a particular audience is a matter about which opinion naturally changes over the course of time, as scholarly techniques develop and bibliographical knowledge accumulates. In the nineteenth century, conventional practice for scholarly editions was to list variant readings (usually a selection of those considered most significant) in footnotes, with more discursive notes placed either at the end (as in William Aldis Wright's Cambridge Shakespeare, which began in 1863) or in a second set of footnotes, below the first (as in Horace Howard Furness's Variorum Shakespeare, which began in 1874). A new standard was set in 1904, when the first volume of R. B. McKerrow's edition of Nashe appeared; though in arrangement it was similar to earlier editions (variants in footnotes, with discursive notes in a supplementary volume), it marked a turning point

in its discussions of the bibliographical history of each work, leading to a careful choice of "copy-text" (the term was first used here) — which in turn lent an added sense of objectivity and control to the record of variant readings, for it was defined to include all departures (with a few minor exceptions) from that copy-text, as well as other significant variants. McKerrow went on, in his Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare (1939), not only to refine and elaborate his editorial procedure but also to discuss in detail the form which he believed editorial apparatus should take; although in general arrangement he advocated the old system of two sets of footnotes (one of variant readings, one of historical and linguistic information), his discussion of the symbols and form to be employed in each entry for a variant reading (pp. 73-98) was by far the most extensive that had ever appeared, and its influence is still present today.

But the event which has been most important in influencing the form of the apparatus in many of the more recent scholarly editions was the publication in 1953 of the first volume of Fredson Bowers's Cambridge edition of Dekker. What Bowers did to make the apparatus more conveniently usable was to break down the listing of variants into several parts: only the substantive departures from the copy-text were recorded in footnotes; the departures in accidentals were then gathered into a separate list at the end of the text; and two more lists at the end dealt with press-variant formes and with substantive variants in other pre-1700 editions ("historical collation"). Since that time many editions have employed some variety of Bowers's plan, most notably the series of editions now in progress under the auspices of the MLA Center for Editions of American Authors. These editions maintain Bowers's distinction between lists of emendations and historical collation; but since they are "clear-text" editions, no apparatus appears on the pages of text, and all the emendations of the copy-text — both substantives and accidentals — are usually joined in one list. The adoption of this approach to editorial apparatus by the CEAA editions of Clemens, Stephen Crane, John Dewey, Hawthorne, Howells, Irving, Melville, and Simms[3] suggests that a new pattern for the treatment of

apparatus in scholarly editions seems to be emerging—at least for works of the sixteenth century and later. The elements in this pattern are basically four: a set of discursive textual notes, a list of emendations in the copy-text, a record of line-end hyphenation, and a historical collation. Other lists are sometimes added to cover special problems, but these four, along with an essay setting forth the textual situation which accounts for the particular choice of copy-text, have come in recent years to represent one established kind of scholarly apparatus.[4]

Although the form of the apparatus in a large number of scholarly editions from the last twenty years is therefore similar, it is by no means identical, even in those which follow the same basic plan. There is no reason, of course, to insist on such identity in outward appearance, so long as the approach to the material is sound, since different circumstances naturally entail somewhat different treatments. Nevertheless,

if a standard form exists and if there is no special reason to depart from it, following that form can be a positive advantage: it makes the apparatus easier to use, since readers acquainted with other editions will already know the system and will not be distracted from the content by trying to keep in mind a new plan or new symbols. Because one possible standard of this kind has been developing in recent years, it seems worthwhile to give further thought to the rationale of apparatus and to the implications of certain differences in form. The comments which I offer in the following pages are not intended as an attempt to establish "rules" but simply as a discussion of some of the considerations involved in thinking through the details of an editorial apparatus. Although I shall be mainly concerned with scholarly editions, many of the principles apply equally to more popular editions. Some remarks on the general arrangement of the apparatus and on the symbols to be employed will be followed by discussions of the four main divisions of modern apparatus enumerated above: textual notes, emendations, line-end hyphenation, and historical collation.