University of Virginia Library

Isaac Reed's 1785 Variorum Shakespeare
by
William C. Woodson

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]

I

Thanks to some surviving correspondence, the events leading up to the publication of the 1785 edition may be examined in more detail than has been possible. In 1783, with the urging of Dr. Farmer, Isaac Reed accepted the task of re-editing the 1778 variorum from his friend George Steevens, who for reasons not entirely clear had elected to retire "forever" from editing Shakespeare. He had edited Twenty Plays from the Shakespearean quartos in 1766, and he assisted Dr. Johnson in bringing out the 1773 variorum, which he revised in 1778. Edmond Malone became his protégé during the preparation of the 1778 edition, to which Malone published a two volume Supplement in 1780. Malone praised Steevens in his 1780 Preface, specifically extolling his mentor's achievement as a textual editor: because of the "diligent collation of all the old copies . . . and the judicious restoration of readings, the text of this author seems now finally settled" (p. iii). Despite his praise for the text, however, Malone suggested a number of textual changes in his 1780 notes, which were meant to supplement the 1778 edition. Malone's criticism of the 1778 text grew more pointed in his 1783 Second Appendix to the 1778 edition, for by this time Malone had completed a full historical collation of all the plays, something to which Dr. Johnson and Steevens had only pretended. Malone to be sure remained openly courteous to Steevens' 1778 edition, actually praising it in the Preface as an "excellent edition" (p. iii). Yet part of the explanation for Steevens' early retirement at the age

of forty-seven could have been his aversion to the mounting criticism of his text.

Whatever his reasons, Steevens stepped down as the reigning editor and transferred full responsibility to Reed. Although the transfer is competently described by Nichols and Prior, the uncatalogued correspondence by Steevens in the Folger Library actually preserves some of the crucial letters. Steevens wrote Malone on November 28, 1782, announcing that "I never mean again to appear Again as Editor of Shakespeare; nor will such assistance as I may be able to furnish go towards any future gratuitous publication of the same Author. Ingratitude and impertinence, from several of the Booksellers, have been my reward for conducting Two laborious editions, both of which except a few copies, are already sold." On April 15, 1783, Steevens again wrote to Malone, this time to let him know that Reed had been given full responsibility for the 1785 edition: "I return my best thanks for your communication, and, with your leave, will put it into the hands of Mr. Reed, to whom I had already given up your former sheets to be used at his discretion. As to his future publication, I am determined not to see a line of it till I purchase the whole. I shall not therefore become answerable for the reception or rejection of a single note that may be offered." The sheets to which Steevens refers are the proofs of Malone's 1780 Supplement and the 1783 Second Appendix, which had recently been published. Steevens continues the letter by encouraging Malone to prepare his own edition: "there is no man more capable of conducting one than yourself. I have done with the pursuit, and shall abstain even from troubling Mr. Reed with a syllable of advice in the course of his undertaking." In his Literary History (V, 441-442), Nichols records a similar letter from Steevens describing his intention to give Reed full control of the edition:

Thus there can be no doubt that Steevens made a careful and public decision to give Reed a free hand with the edition, and that he had no desire to be regarded as the editor of the 1785 variorum.

Reed already was an accomplished editor, with much of his experience coming from his edition of Dodsley's Old Plays. Steevens asked him in 1778 to edit the manuscript of The Witch, and a brief perusal of Reed's bibliography in the Dictionary of National Biography discloses that he had seen thirty-two volumes through the press before the 1785 variorum. Steevens moreover had praised Reed's editorial assistance in his 1778 Preface, writing that "no man is more conversant with English publications both ancient and modern, or more willing to assist the literary undertakings of others" (p.

239). Consequently, Professor Sherbo's belief that Reed had insufficient experience to edit Shakespeare simply disregards his obvious qualification for the task. The charming letter by which Steevens made the transfer of his materials to Reed was written April 9, 1783: "I send you the fixtures of the old shop, together with as much of the good will of it as lies in my power to bestow. You will probably inherit all the custom, except Mr. Malone's, who intends to "froth & lime" at a new house to which it seems he hath got a license." Steevens evidently hoped that the 1785 edition would establish Reed in the Shakespeare franchise; little could he have known that the appearance of Reed's edition would place his text under the long shadow of his former protégé, Malone.

Reed meanwhile publicly accepted full responsibility for the editorial work, as we learn from the draft of a letter he wrote in response to Ritson's critique of the 1785 edition (The Quip Modest; A Few Words . . . Occasioned by a Republication . . . Revised and Augmented by the Editor of Dodsley's Old Plays, 1788):

Reed to be sure is intent on defending Steevens from the innuendo Ritson launched, that the 1785 notes signed Editor were actually written by Steevens; but in doing so, Reed also independently confirms Steevens' testimony, that Reed absolutely controlled the edition.

In view of this correspondence it is not surprising that most of the marginalia in the surviving printer's copy turns out to be in Reed's autograph. Although he was able to tip in most of Malone's clipped proof sheets and many of the new manuscript notes, he also transcribed many notes from Malone's 1780 and 1783 proof sheets, as well as a considerable number from the other contributors, including Ritson's critique of the 1778 edition (Remarks, Critical and Illustrative, 1783), and John Monck Mason's Comments on the Last Edition of Shakespeare's Plays, 1785. Mason's comments became available late in the preparation of the 1785 edition and they appear only in the last volumes. Reed's most amazing transcriptions, however, are of George Steevens' new notes, most of which in fact are in Reed's hand.

Despite the confidence shown in him by Steevens, Reed voiced serious anxiety about his performance as editor in his Advertisement to the 1785 edition:

Reed's profession of modesty was not merely a mannered convention, however, since he had not proofed the 1785 sheets very well at all, and allowed many compositorial changes in the text to stand, as I reported in volume 31, and as he implies in his letter to Ritson already quoted. Nevertheless, he received two hundred pounds from the booksellers, according to the cash receipt in the Folger Library (Mss.a.167), "for revising an Edition of the Works of Shakespeare."

Malone warned Reed early on that Steevens had not corrected the 1773 errata in the 1778 edition and inquired if he might not wish to make these changes as subsequent volumes were coming through the press:

This letter indicates Malone's keen interest in the progress of the 1785 edition as it was being printed, his recognition of Reed as the editor, and evidently his access to the 1785 proof sheets. These proof sheets would also let him know, before the entire edition was published, the fate of his 1780 and 1783 notes, as well as the disposition of the new notes he was providing to Reed. Malone's serial reading of the 1785 edition would give him increasing discomfort, and he virtually stopped contributing new notes mid-way through the printing of the edition.

Reed's labors were completed late in 1785 and the edition was advertised in The Whitehall Evening Post, December 17-20, 1785, as "this day" being published. Despite Reed's apology for the editorial flaws in the 1785 edition, the publication was well received in the Critical Review, 62 (1786):

The review continued in the next volume: "We must now pursue Mr. Reed in his improvements . . ." (p. 17). Malone's notes were singled out for approval, and notice was also given to the fact that Steevens gave some new notes. The positive reviews, however, did not deceive Steevens, who knew that Reed not only had botched the correcting of the proofs but also had introduced some fanciful readings of his own. Steevens confessed as much to Malone: "I was so heartily sickened by these Volumes of innaccuracy, that you will find little in them that can be of service to you. I shall never go throughout our Author again with diligence, till he appears in a more questionable shape" (Folger, undated). Joseph Ritson's critique of the 1785 edition observed that Reed even had omitted an errata list, and he offered one of his own devising (The Quip Modest, pp. iii-iv).

II

In preparing for the printer a revised copy of the 1778 variorum, Reed's task as editor involved three primary duties: he had to do a number of housekeeping chores, which he performed diligently; he had to select new notes, either pasting them in the margins or transcribing them; and he had the opportunity to make changes in the text. He also of course had the responsibility of seeing the edition through the press. In the following description of Reed's work in preparing the 1785 edition, I will limit myself to the thirty plays in the printer's copy, although I also have collated its 204 marked textual changes against the printed copy of the 1785 edition, Malone's of 1790, and Steevens' of 1793. What emerges is the measurable advance which the 1785 edition made over its predecessors.

The housekeeping of the edition gave Reed many opportunities to demonstrate his diligence. In accord with the signature on the will, the spelling of Shakespeare was altered to omit the medial "e," the letter "B." was expanded to Beaumont, the spelling of Grey was changed to Gray, the few missing footnote numbers were added, the singular exit was made plural where necessary, and minor mistakes in printing the 1778 notes were corrected (e.g., "lost" changed to "last" in Dr. Johnson's note, I, 23). More importantly, because Reed deleted most of Warburton's notes, he was obliged to remove also Dr. Johnson's responses to them. As a result, however, the 1785 edition contains very few examples of Dr. Johnson's 1765 notes. Whenever possible, Reed preferred to substitute a cross reference for a quoted passage from Shakespeare, and so began the disappearance of the easily considered similar passages at the foot of the variorum page. To the same end, some superfluous citations were swept out of the notes left standing, so that the number of parallels was somewhat reduced; this occurred primarily in Steevens' notes, since he regularly had offered a compilation of

similarities which often was disproportionate to the complexity of what he was glossing. Thus in The Tempest his six instances illustrating "frippery" become three, the five instances of "passion" as a verb are made three, and the seven instances of "flammel" are reduced to two.

Reed also added many new notes. Over a thousand came from Malone, including for the early volumes 273 which are handwritten; some of these modified his 1780 or 1783 notes. He also added 305 new notes from Steevens and an additional 24 which were first printed in Malone's 1780 Supplement. Reed completely deleted 370 of Steevens' notes. Some of Steevens' new notes are in his own hand and are tipped in, but for the most part the new notes by Steevens have been transcribed by Reed. Reed himself gives 192 new notes, and he reports the opinions of Ritson, Dr. Farmer, and others in an additional thirty-six notes. Steevens reported Dr. Farmer in thirty-three notes, and this life-long friend of all three editors stands alone in about a half-dozen notes. Dr. Farmer entertained his friends in Cambridge and was entertained by them when he came to the city; in fact, although Professor Sherbo believes that Reed had insufficient time to edit the 1785 edition, his diary reveals that he left on September 27, 1784, for his annual visit to Cambridge. Less is known about most of the other contributors, except John Monck Mason and Joseph Ritson, whose critiques of the 1778 edition were incorporated into the 1785 commentary. A few dozen notes came from Rev. Henley, identified in the 1778 edition (I,85) as being from Harrow on the Hill, and an equal number altogether from Justice Blackstone, Brand, Collins, Henderson, Musgrave, Bishop Percy, Tollet, Tyrwhitt, Upton, Thomas Warton, and of course John Nichols. Dr. Lort, an occasional dinner companion and host to the three editors, also made a few contributions.

In isolated instances these minor contributors influenced the text. Dr. Farmer is clearly responsible for eight emendations, and Reed also may claim eight without dispute. Often unacknowledged, Ritson stands behind twenty emendations; Malone is responsible, also at times without acknowledgement, for sixty-three textual emendations. Steevens and Tyrwhitt each are credited with five changes in the text, and ten more are made by various hands. Omitting the corrected errata, the obvious housekeeping, the plural of exit and the alternative spelling of "oh," there are 86 more changes in the text which are unsigned. Because of Steevens' strong repudiation of the 1785 edition, we have good reason to suppose that Reed made many of these changes on his own.

III

The fact that Malone had completed a full historical collation of the text gave his commentary notes an authority and cogency seldom present in Steevens'. Malone insisted again and again that the 1778 text return to the reading of the copy-text, usually the first folio or occasionally a quarto. One way to remedy the almost embarrassing intellectual imbalance in the commentary

was to take textual emendations from Malone without crediting him, which actually happens in 21 places; the theft is easy to detect, because Malone's printed arguments in 1780 and 1783 for the changes were in all these instances simply omitted. For a similar reason, evidently, four of Malone's collation notes were attributed to Reed, Theobald, and Dr. Johnson, and eight were directly credited to Steevens. At least thirteen of Ritson's emendations are also plagiarized by the edition. Steevens, who announced he had retired forever from editing, reports nine new collation notes, some of which offer to correct Malone's collation published in 1783, while in another twenty new notes he defends his 1778 text against the emendations proposed by Malone. The cumulative effect of this petty plagiarism and sniping must have soured Malone against giving new commentary in manuscript to Reed. Although it cannot be established that the volumes were printed in precise serial order, Malone's new notes and the volumes in which they appear indicate a sharp falling off after the fifth volume: I(78); II(6); III(22); IV(101); V(46); VI(7); VII(3); VIII(4); IX(3); X(1). The highest count of notes stolen from Malone (5), emendations stolen from Malone (7), and new collation notes from Steevens and Reed (9) also comes in the fourth volume. There is only one more note stolen from Malone after the fifth volume, and only once again do Steevens or Reed offer a new collation. Malone's textual emendations are stolen only eight more times after the fifth volume.

Malone's reaction to this high-handedness is not recorded in any letters, and a perusal of Reed's diaries reveals that Malone did not break his social or professional relationship with Reed because of the 1785 edition. Unlike Steevens, who was generally incapable of sustaining personal relationships, Malone had the widely acknowledged gift of social grace and ease. Yet in his private hours the treatment he received must have been an irksome experience to contemplate. Some glimpse of his deeper feelings may be revealed in his collection of Shakespeariana now preserved in the Bodleian Library. Among the pamphlets and clippings which record the history of Shakespearean scholarship in his lifetime, Malone preserved many accounts of the damage which Steevens had inflicted on the careers of his contemporary Shakespeareans. What Malone had in common with these men was that each of them had challenged the ability of Steevens as a textual editor.

One of the most poignant incidents concerns Dr. Kenrick, who undertook an edition of Shakespeare based on a full collation of David Garrick's superb collection of the quartos. He was apparently double-crossed by the booksellers' cabal, who originally promised Kenrick 100 guineas a volume; when Steevens offered to do the edition gratis, however, the cabal refused to publish Kenrick. Some measure of blame also seems to fall on Garrick, who knew what was afoot even as he made promises to Kenrick. Kenrick recounts the events in the Morning Chronicle (Malone dates it 1774). He was permanently blocked by the appearance of the 1773 edition, also edited gratuitously, for it seems to have tied up the booksellers with copyright obligations. Kenrick casts a scornful eye at the 1773 edition, "replete with

typographical errors, inelegant as incorrect . . . . I say nothing of such restorations and elucidations of the text as would be peculiar to my own edition." Kenrick complained that Steevens' gambit to block a potential rival had "rendered the labour and study of a considerable part of my life entirely useless."

Charles Jennens also felt hurt and abused by Steevens. His edition of King Lear (1770) received an extraordinarily harsh notice in the Critical Review, and he accused Steevens of instigating it so as to obliterate a rival editor (The Tragedy of King Lear . . . Vindicated, 1772). Jennens criticized the careless collation in Dr. Johnson's 1765 edition and Steevens' Twenty Plays (1766); both editors, he wrote, having "published an edition of Shakespeare without success (and whose many and gross errors and neglects have, as they occurred in the course of the collating, have been taken notice of in the new edition of Lear) are combined together, as co-editors of another edition [i.e. the 1773 variorum]," (p. 3). Although Jennens was attacked in the Critical Review for being too exact in his collation, which is the sort of defense Steevens might mount, it is difficult to conclude with Jennens that Steevens controlled the Critical Review. For example, when Capell complained in his Notes and Various Readings (1783), that Steevens had pilfered heavily from his 1768 text, the complaint was fully aired in the Critical Review (56, 404), which printed much of Capell's attack on the "regular system of plagiarism" and "the industry with which the purloining trade has been pursued," even though the reviewer did add the disclaimer that the charge had been "completely refuted."

By 1783, when Ritson mocked Malone for having endorsed Steevens' 1778 text, Malone doubtless already regretted what he wrote in his 1780 Supplement. Ritson expresses Malone's dilemma bluntly:

Ritson put his finger squarely on the issue, but Malone chose to suffer in silence, a tactic he maintained even in the publication of his own 1790 edition, when he virtually ignored Steevens in his account of the history of the text. John Monck Mason, who had also collated Shakespeare, aptly summarizes the growing public case against Steevens' competence as a textual editor: he "seems to have acted rather from caprice, than any settled principle" (Comments, p. viii).

Thus it is undeniable that Steevens' reputation as an editor, already

under attack from various quarters, suffered further from the inclusion of so many of Malone's notes in the 1785 edition, for in these notes Malone repudiated scores of emendations Steevens had allowed. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that although the integrity of Steevens' 1778 text was challenged by a number of Malone's contemporaries, Steevens' lack of editorial fidelity never seemed to shake the confidence of the booksellers or his popular successors, for as I reported in volume 29, Steevens' 1793 text was dominant into the mid-nineteenth century, until it was at last rejected by Charles Knight.

IV

Reed's sympathy with the increasing editorial conservatism of his fellow Shakespeareans is unmistakable in the marked emendations in the 1785 printer's copy, for they restore Folio or quarto readings in 117 instances. Only forty-five emendations abandon the Folio readings of 1778, and they are a mixed lot, ranging from the revision of spellings and changes in speech tags, to the less compelling conjectures by his correspondents, including eight by Dr. Farmer. While Steevens claims only a few new readings in the 1785 text, it is possible that he made other changes too. Nevertheless, there is no instance I have seen in the 1778 or 1785 text of Steevens actually defending the restoration of a Folio reading. Consequently, since fifty-two of the eighty-six anonymous emendations in 1785 do restore Folio text, the bulk of them are probably Reed's. He also is the likely hand behind the twenty anonymous new readings which neither Malone (1790) nor Steevens (1793) would follow. Although his editorial self-effacement has obscured his contribution to the 1785 variorum, his quiet challenge to the laxity of Steevens' 1778 text should win Isaac Reed a niche in the history of Shakespeare's editors.

In the face of the rising textual conservatism, be it noted, Steevens remained staunchly unregenerate, and in the Advertisement to his 1793 edition (p. xi) he mocked his fellow editors for believing any quarto or the Folio to represent Shakespeare's "genuine text": "few literary occurences are better understood, than that it came down to us discoloured by 'the variation of every soil' through which it had flowed, and that it stagnated at last in the muddy reservoir of the first folio." Only Steevens would be capable of retailing such a belief by this late date, or of comparing the integrity of the Folio text "with the innocence of females nursed in a camp and educated in a bagnio" (p. xii). With such a man, it was better not to quarrel at all.

Notes