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Base Text and Best Text
Before proceeding to some of the implications of Greg's theory and finally to the problems of medieval editing, "copy-text" needs to be distinguished from related editorial terminology, "best text," "base text," and such nontechnical terms as "basic text." The differences are not simply matters of definition. The terms "best text" and "base text" imply specific editorial procedures quite different from those implied by the terms "copy-text." The non-technical "basic text" owes its utility to the very absence of a restrictive definition.
Greg, as often noted, assumed a genealogical method of editing, and it was that system to which his terminology applied. Even though the editing of modern texts employs different methods, most of the interesting and productive theorizing on Greg has been based on situations where the language of the genealogical method still has some application. For example, the difference between early and later printed editions of a text (and consequently the choice of which to use as the basis of an edition) could be described as one of simple filiation, involving a single line of descent complicated by authorial variants. But medieval editing almost never confronts such a situation (most of the manuscript evidence post-dates the author), and the definition of "copy-text" in terms of an abstraction such as "authorial intentions" could apply to very few editorial situations. For medieval editions, the language of one editorial method is less easily transferable to another.
The types of editorial procedures implied by these terms are various, but in Chaucer editing, the three basic types of edition defined some eighty years ago by Eleanor Hammond can be used as a starting point: (1) the exact reproduction of single manuscript (Wright's 1848-51 edition); (2) eclectic (the editions of Tyrwhitt 1775-78 and Skeat 1894, 1899); (3) critical. By "critical," Hammond refers to a recension (or genealogical) edition; in 1908, there were
The three terms "best text," "base text," and "copy-text" can be matched with these three types of editorial procedure. Hammond's first type of edition relies on a single exemplar; and this exemplar is often called a "best text." The word "best" may be ill-chosen, since a "best-text edition" could certainly be made of any manuscript, even a manifestly inferior one (for this reason, I shall refer to so-called "best-text editions" as "single-text editions" below). But if the term is used, it implies a specific editorial theory or procedure.[8] In medieval studies, a so-called "best text" is simply the exemplar followed conservatively in a single-text edition. The term "base text," by contrast, refers to the exemplar(s) on which an eclectic edition is based. Such a base text might also be called a "foundation text" or "basic text"; the advantage of these latter terms is that they do not seem to have developed technical meanings or implications. In practice, an eclectic method would call for the use of a particular exemplar even if only as the base in which to admit corrections from a number of other sources (e.g., Skeat's use of El for his Canterbury Tales); in early editing (and even in some recent editing) the base manuscript might be an earlier edition (e.g., Tyrwhitt's apparent use of black-letter editions).[9] A "critical" edition in Hammond's sense (a recension or genealogical edition) would not necessarily have a base manuscript, since all manuscripts might be of equal authority; but it must have a copy-text or at least something to serve the various functions of a copy-text. That one of these functions in most practical editorial situations is to provide a basis for collation is generally simply assumed; McGann is one of the few textual-critical theorists to make it explicit (Critique, p. 24). In addition, that critical edition must take its spelling conventions from somewhere, since the genealogical methods that lead to a substantive authorial reading do not lead to the author's conventions on accidentals (this, of course, is on the assumption that scribes and early publishers distinguished substantives from accidentals as we might, and further that they felt responsibility only to retain the former as authorial). According to Greg, a copy-text can be chosen "irrespective of descent" (and thus irrespective of its authority on substantive matters). The exemplar Greg selects as copy-text in his edition of the Antichrist Play from the Chester Cycle is the earliest extant, but not the highest in the stemmata; that is, authority
Greg's theory of copy-text deals specifically with genealogical editions. Thus, an edition that relies on a copy-text in Greg's sense does not necessarily give what McGann calls "highest presumptive authority" to a single manuscript or exemplar. An edition that does so rely on a single exemplar may characterize it more usefully as a "base text"; if this exemplar has even greater authority (overriding or preemptive authority), the editors are producing a variant of a single-text edition and can then legitimately refer to this exemplar as a "best-text" (see, however, n8 and discussion above).
Although there can be no justification for calling a base text a copy-text, there are still advantages for retaining the term, even in editions that do not use the genealogical methods of Greg. Under any editorial method, an exemplar can be copy-text in Greg's sense if it serves as an authority for accidentals and (as a practical matter) a basis for collation. The use of the term should force an editor to describe editorial procedures and in particular to articulate the nature of the authority possessed by an exemplar or manuscript. Surely a copy-text can serve as base text, and in a single-text edition the copy-text is generally best, base, and copy-text.[11] But the choice of a base text does not mean that the question of copy-text is closed; in addition, the choice of an exemplar as a basis for collation and an authority for accidentals (a copy-text) does not mean that a base text or best text must even exist.
There are further implications to Greg's theory; under a perhaps overly literal interpretation, the copy-text could be a text of some other text. (I am going to reject such a use shortly, for obvious reasons, but the theoretical possibility of it should be reckoned with.) For early modern texts, this theoretical possibility poses few practical difficulties. If a fifteenth-century text existed only, say, in an eighteenth-century print, it is difficult to imagine why an editor would wish to produce an original spelling edition or how that edition could be justified. But the edition would certainly be possible. To produce it, an editor might rely either on a selected system of normalization as do classicists or might choose in lieu of such a system of normalization another text, one that would be ignored in all substantive matters. In classical editions, a major function of the copy-text is served by the text (a dictionary or perhaps better a school-grammar) that contains the spelling and punctuation conventions the edition follows. As for the basis of collation, any earlier edition (or translation) can serve as well, whatever its authority; even a list of line numbers
In many cases, the term copy-text might well be avoided, and its potential functions defined and dealt with separately. There is clearly no reason for a classicist to speak of a copy-text in relation to normalization. Nor is there any advantage to using the term if all it refers to is a "basis of collation"; the more explicit term is preferable. Moreover, a system of normalization or basis for manuscript collation that does not contain a version of the text to be edited cannot usefully be called a copy-text even if it serves the same function.[14]
Greg's article was a reaction against what he called "the tyranny of the copy-text" (p. 382). It was an attempt in part to reduce the functions of the copy-text, taking away from it the substantive authority that modern textual critics have begun to restore. A return to Greg's definition of the term might define the copy-text out of existence in many editorial situations. For medievalists, this might not be a bad thing. In practice, the difference between copy text, base text, and best text involves the relative authority granted a certain exemplar; the difference could be considered one of degree. But keeping the theoretical distinctions in view would lead to a more accurate assessment of that authority. Furthermore, a more conservative use of the term would avoid the confusion between the imagined tasks of a medieval "editorial office" and the real tasks of a modern one. Since we do not know in most cases the precise procedures or theories a medieval editor followed,
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