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With textual material collected for the New Variorum edition of The Merchant of Venice and with the assistance of a computer, the following study analyzes the readings of sixty-three editions of The Merchant from the First Quarto (1600) to the text prepared by G. Blakemore Evans for the forthcoming New Riverside edition.[1] It shows the degree to which each of the sixty-three editions was dependent upon its various predecessors in substantive readings and in accidentals, and it also shows the quantity and kind of contribution that has been made by each edition to the text of the play in terms both of its new readings and of its contributions to the modern text. The study also lays out the pattern of the historical development of the text with sixty-three points of reference and in the different terms provided by several sets of statistics. The results supplement existing opinion, and the study gives an account of the various editions and a history of the text in much more specific terms than has heretofore been practicable.
The Merchant seems a fairly satisfactory play for a study of this kind. Since there are three quarto editions, two of which precede the First Folio, it has a more varied textual history during the seventeenth century than the eighteen of Shakespeare's plays that were not published before the Folio. On the other hand, the early texts of The Merchant are not independent: the differences among them are minor compared with the variations among quarto and First Folio texts of
The sixty-three editions on which this study is based consist of a group that have generally been collated by New Variorum editors (H. H. Furness, H. H. Furness Jr., S. B. Hemingway, M. A. Shaaber, H. N. Hillebrand, and M. W. Black), with additions and a few omissions resulting from the experience of G. B. Evans with I Henry VI and Richard Knowles with As You Like It, and from my own investigations.[3] Seven of the sixty-three are from the seventeenth century, 18 from the eighteenth, 24 from the nineteenth, and 14 from the twentieth. Of the 56 critical editions beginning with Rowe, 43 were prepared by British editors, 12 by American editors, and one by a German editor.
The readings of the sixty-three editions are recorded for 2583 passages in The Merchant. These are the variants remaining in the second stage of my preparation of the textual annotation for the New Variorum edition.[4] Originally I recorded readings for about five thousand variant passages and included almost all punctuation and many spelling differences. In revising this material I omitted most of the spelling and many of the punctuation variants and excluded also non-substantive changes in stage directions, thereby reducing the number of passages by about half. There remained 2583 variants in a play of
The computer produced two series of tables. One series consisted of a table for each of the sixty-two editions after Q1, listing the number of times the edition agreed uniquely with each of its predecessors and the total number of times the edition agreed with each of its predecessors; the tables recorded this information for each of the values. The second series of eight tables tabulated the number of new readings initiated by each of the sixty-three editions in each of the ten categories for each of the values (it also gave totals for each of the editions, categories, and values). Furthermore, this series gave the number of these new readings (for each edition in each category in each value, and with totals) that appear in Evans' edition and in Peter Alexander's edition of 1951.[9] The first series of tables showed the dependence of each edition upon its predecessors; the second series showed the contribution of each edition to the developing and to the modern text of the play. The three tables given below are composed of information from the seventy tables supplied by the computer and are designed to give the information in compact and emphatic form.
| Edition | Total new | Evans | Alex. | Major | Verbal |
| 1 Q1 (Heyes, 1600) | 2583 | 1479 | 1354 | 457 (370) | 621 (510) |
| 2 Q2 (Roberts, [1619]) | 592 | 228 | 253 | 101 (14) | 144 (31) |
| 3 F1 (1623) | 314 | 85 | 93 | 75 (8) | 90 (10) |
| 4 F2 (1632) | 119 | 20 | 20 | 41 (3) | 58 (7) |
| 5 Q3 (1637) | 176 | 41 | 49 | 23 (4) | 37 (3) |
| 6 F3 (3rd Imp., 1664) | 81 | 12 | 14 | 22 | 32 |
| 7 F4 (1685) | 225 | 79 | 111 | 13 (2) | 37 (6) |
| 8 Rowe I (1709) | 321 | 100 | 143 | 54 (5) | 70 (11) |
| 9 Rowe II (1709) | 16 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| 10 Rowe III (1714) | 64 | 13 | 18 | 8 | 18 (2) |
| 11 Pope I (1723) | 286 | 59 | 63 | 82 (10) | 78 (8) |
| 12 Pope II (1728) | 12 | 2 | 3 | 4 (1) | 8 (2) |
| 13 Theobald I (1733) | 195 | 72 | 85 | 22 (7) | 18 (2) |
| 14 Theobald II (1740) | 33 | 10 | 12 | 7 | 6 |
| 15 Hanmer I (1743) | 64 | 9 | 7 | 29 | 33 |
| 16 Warburton (1747) | 24 | 1 | 1 | 13 (1) | 13 (1) |
| 17 Theobald III (1757) | 11 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 (1) |
| 18 Johnson (Corbet, 1765) | 116 | 34 | 28 | 8 (3) | 11 (2) |
| 19 Capell (1768) | 330 | 102 | 126 | 33 (7) | 42 (8) |
| 20 Hanmer II (1770) | 11 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| 21 Johnson-Steevens I (1773) | 59 | 5 | 5 | 10 (1) | 10 |
| 22 Johnson-Steevens II (1778) | 19 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| 23 Rann (1787) | 18 | 3 | 3 | 7 (1) | 6 (1) |
| 24 Malone (1790) | 34 | 8 | 10 | 8 (1) | 7 (1) |
| 25 Steevens-Reed I (1793) | 15 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| 26 Steevens-Reed II (1803) | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 27 Eccles (1805) | 35 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 10 (1) |
| 28 Boswell-Malone (1821) | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 29 Singer I (1826) | 16 | 2 | 1 | 5 (1) | 3 (1) |
| 30 Knight (1841) | 39 | 8 | 9 | 6 (2) | 4 (1) |
| 31 Collier I (1842) | 90 | 27 | 25 | 12 (3) | 6 (1) |
| 32 Hudson I (1851) | 25 | 4 | 7 | 4 (2) | 2 |
| 33 Singer II (1856) | 8 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 34 Halliwell (1856) | 44 | 4 | 4 | 6 (1) | 4 (1) |
| 35 Dyce I (1857) | 101 | 20 | 19 | 7 (1) | 10 |
| 36 Collier II (1858) | 38 | 1 | 1 | 18 | 24 |
| 37 Staunton (1858) | 18 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| 38 White I (1858) | 21 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 |
| 39 Old Cambridge I (1863) | 89 | 23 | 22 | 3 (2) | 4 (3) |
| 40 Globe (1864) | 10 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 41 Keightley (1864) | 81 | 12 | 11 | 13 | 14 |
| 42 Dyce II (1866) | 20 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 6 |
| 43 Rolfe I (1870) | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 44 Delius (1872) | 7 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 45 Hudson II (1880) | 17 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 5 |
| 46 White II (1883) | 9 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| 47 Rolfe II (1883) | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 48 Old Cambridge II (1891) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 49 Oxford (1891) | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 50 Rolfe III (1903) | 11 | 5 | 1 | 1 (1) | 1 (1) |
| 51 Old Arden (1905) | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 52 Neilson (1906) | 57 | 29 | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Character | Punctuation | Lineation | SDD etc. | Tr. & Misc. | Form & Sp. | Metrics | |
| Q1 | 42 (16) | 1000 (315) | 59 (31) | 196 (59) | 46 (38) | 231 (153) | 388 (357) |
| Q2 | 6 (3) | 274 (151) | 13 (2) | 18 (6) | 11 (2) | 75 (26) | 51 (7) |
| F1 | 5 | 116 (41) | 15 (4) | 23 (11) | 12 (3) | 34 (13) | 19 (3) |
| F2 | 3 | 36 (10) | 2 | 1 | 1 | 14 (3) | 4 |
| Q3 | 15 (3) | 96 (31) | 2 (1) | 2 | 1 | 16 (3) | 7 |
| F3 | 0 | 24 (8) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 18 (4) | 4 |
| F4 | 0 | 162 (65) | 1 | 5 (2) | 1 | 10 (4) | 9 (2) |
| R1 | 16 (10) | 105 (30) | 4 (1) | 65 (37) | 6 (2) | 22 (6) | 33 (3) |
| R2 | 0 | 8 (2) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| R3 | 0 | 33 (10) | 1 | 1 (1) | 0 | 6 | 5 |
| P1 | 0 | 77 (34) | 12 (9) | 16 (1) | 4 | 21 (6) | 78 (1) |
| P2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| T1 | 2 (2) | 140 (54) | 1 | 17 (9) | 3 (1) | 8 (2) | 6 (2) |
| T2 | 0 | 19 (10) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
| H1 | 1 | 15 (7) | 2 | 3 (2) | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| W | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| T3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 (1) |
| J0 | 3 | 91 (27) | 2 (2) | 7 (3) | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Ca | 15 (5) | 170 (48) | 6 (4) | 65 (33) | 0 | 6 (1) | 26 (3) |
| H2 | 0 | 5 (1) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| S1 | 0 | 45 (4) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 (1) |
| S2 | 1 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Ra | 2 | 5 (2) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Ma | 1 (1) | 10 (2) | 2 | 6 (4) | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| R1 | 0 | 4 (2) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| R2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 (1) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ec | 0 | 10 (1) | 2 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| BM | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| S1 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 (1) |
| Kn | 2 (1) | 29 (4) | 1 (1) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 (1) |
| C1 | 2 | 70 (23) | 3 (1) | 3 (1) | 0 | 5 (1) | 1 |
| H1 | 2 | 13 (2) | 2 (2) | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| S2 | 0 | 5 (1) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Ha | 0 | 34 (3) | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| D1 | 1 | 33 (11) | 0 | 14 (9) | 0 | 0 | 4312 |
| C2 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 1 (1) | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| St | 1 | 13 (1) | 0 | 2 (1) | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| W1 | 0 | 14 (1) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 (1) | 1 |
| C1 | 1 (1) | 27 (11) | 0 | 8 (8) | 0 | 5 | 4412 |
| Gl | 0 | 7 (3) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Ke | 0 | 52 (12) | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
| D2 | 2 | 6 (1) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| R1 | 0 | 3 (1) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| De | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| H2 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| W2 | 0 | 5 (1) | 0 | 1 (1) | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| R2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| C2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ox | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| R3 | 0 | 10 (4) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| OA | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Ne | 0 | 54 (27) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 (2) |
| Edition | Total new | Evans | Alex. | Major | Verbal |
| 53 New Cambridge I (1926) | 196 | 18 | 10 | 13 (4) | 12 (2) |
| 54 Ridley (1935) | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 55 Kittredge (1936) | 71 | 11 | 15 | 3 | 1 |
| 56 Neilson-Hill (1942) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 (1) | 1 |
| 57 Alexander (1951) | 17 | 1 | 17 | 2 | 3 |
| 58 Sisson (1953) | 47 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 11 |
| 59 New Arden (1955) | 175 | 13 | 0 | 2 | 4 (1) |
| 60 London (1958) | 19 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 61 New Yale (1960) | 22 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 62 New Cambridge II (1962) | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 63 Evans | 17 | 17 | 0 | 1 (1) | 2 (2) |
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