University of Virginia Library

In Studies in Bibliography, Volume 28 (1975), I argued that the 1785 variorum edition of Shakespeare is distinct from its predecessor, the 1778 variorum, and in Volume 31 (1978) I reported the survival of the printer's copy, which confirms that the 1785 text was carelessly seen through the press. In Volume 32 (1979) Arthur Sherbo described the 1785 edition as "George Steevens's Variorum Shakespeare." Professor Sherbo seriously misconstrues the edition, however, both when he dismisses Isaac Reed as the editor, and more inexplicably when he concludes that Edmond Malone made no important contribution to the text or notes. Some of the confusion arises from his belief that Steevens gave the edition to Reed virtually ready for printing:

Apart from the mixed system of classification, in which he counts the subtractions from Steevens' notes among the additions, Professor Sherbo does not mention that Reed took full responsibility for subtracting the superfluous passages, mostly in the event Steevens', as he prepared the edition. Reed announced in the Advertisement that he was "the occasion of their removal" and further "desires it to be understood that no person is answerable for any of these innovations but himself" (I, iii).

Reed's determination to make the notes less pedantic and more scholarly also may be seen in his massive importation of notes from Edmond Malone. Professor Sherbo's collation of Malone's contribution badly misrepresents Malone's importance: "Malone contributed only five new notes to the 1785 variorum," he asserts, and in total gave only "about 36 notes" (p. 243). My collation of the thirty plays for which printer's copy survives (i.e. omitting Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Much Ado about Nothing, Henry IV, Part Two, and Love's Labor's Lost, British Library shelfmark C.117.e.3), finds that Malone gave for these thirty plays 1099 notes. Not only are Malone's notes qualitatively superior to Steevens', but also they repeatedly challenge his textual authority. Fortunately, some significant correspondence among the editors has survived, and it further clarifies Reed's control as well as Malone's participation in the edition.

Finally, while I have no objection to Professor Sherbo's account of the continuing amenities observed between Steevens and Malone, it is inescapable that Malone's disdain for Steevens' text (1778) forever drove a wedge between these once intimate friends. John Nichols, a friend to Reed, Steevens, and Malone, wrote in his Literary History (V, 450) that a serious quarrel arose over how Steevens could respond to Malone's 1785 notes. James Prior, in his Life of Edmond Malone (1860), pp. 121-122, also describes this incident, with the stronger conclusion that the quarrel ended their professional relationship. I have not been able to document this quarrel, and Professor Sherbo establishes from published accounts that the two remained courteous after 1785. Nevertheless, Professor Sherbo's conclusion that almost nothing changed because of the 1785 edition would be possible only if his collation were accurate. But Malone's frequent repudiation of Steevens' 1778 text, considered together with the awkward plagiarism of Malone's notes and emendations, reveals that the edition painfully diminished the mutual admiration which had once nurtured their friendship. Far from lionizing Steevens, Isaac Reed's 1785 variorum actually helped focus attention on the question of George Steevens' competence as a textual editor.[1]