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Notes
James Prior, Life of Edmond Malone (1860), p. 100. See also John Nichols, Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, V (1828), 444-467; DNB. This study was aided by a summer fellowship at the Folger Library.
G. Blakemore Evans, "Rough Notes on Editions Collated for 1 Henry VI," Shakespearean Research Opportunities, 2 (1966), 44. Christopher Spencer, "Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in Sixty-Three Editions," Studies in Bibliography, 25 (1972), 89-106, does not include the 1785 Variorum in his survey. However M. A. Shaaber and Matthew Black, both of whom have edited plays for the MLA Variorum, suggest full collation; see the Shakespeare Variorum Handbook, ed. Richard Hosley, Richard Knowles, and Ruth McGugan (MLA, 1971), p. 67.
In the Advertisement Reed thanks the "living Commentators" for their "assistances," I,ii. Citations are to The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig and David Bevington (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1973). I have given Globe references and through-line-numbering in parentheses.
See Prior, Nichols, DNB. Samuel Schoenbaum suggests that the quarrel had its beginnings as early as 1780, over Malone's Supplement to the 1778 edition—Shakespeare's Lives (1970), pp. 173-175.
Conventional ordering, awkward and misleading, designates the 1803 the first Variorum, the 1813 the second, the 1821 the third, and thus the fourth is the Furness series, including its revision and continuation by the MLA. Furness called his simply the new variorum.
The December 1, 1802 Prospectus for the Chalmers' edition announced with pride the use of the V1803 texts: "It appears, indeed, from the many alterations and improvements in Mr. Steevens's corrected copy, to be now fixed beyond the hope, or at least the probability, that any future discoveries will be able to add much to its purity." For the Boydell edition (1791-1802) Steevens prepared a text of Macbeth that differs substantively from V1803 in three readings. The often reprinted Bell's Shakspere adapted the text of V1778; see my discussion, "John Bell's Edition of Shakespeare, 1784-88," The Library Chronicle, 38 (1972), 136-139.
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