University of Virginia Library

In the history of textual criticism, as of most human affairs, a few basic viewpoints have moved through the centuries in cyclical fashion, each losing favor temporarily in one area or another and then returning to prominence in an altered form. The fields concerned with reconstructing the past, like textual criticism, constantly reverberate with alternating claims about the place of judgment in the process. At one moment, objectivity seems possible, and artifacts tell their own stories with little or no assistance; at the next moment, subjectivity is welcomed, and artifacts are a springboard for the historical imagination. In the nineteenth century, for example, the genealogical approach to biblical and classical textual criticism, now associated with the name of Karl Lachmann, emerged from a desire to minimize the role of judgment in combining readings from variant texts and was thus a reaction to the less disciplined eclecticism of many eighteenth-century editors, who often altered texts according to their personal tastes. By the early twentieth century, in turn, there were efforts—as in the work of A. E. Housman—to reinstate an open acceptance of judgment. But even Housman's brilliant advocacy of the subjective element in textual criticism did not prevent several determined attempts in the twentieth century to develop mathematical procedures for weighing variants in ancient texts.

A distrust of subjectivity, in a different form from Lachmann's, came in the twentieth century to dominate the study of medieval writings: the procedure, which was anti-eclectic, involved selecting a "best text" and altering it only at the places that seemed obviously erroneous. Although, for post-medieval literature, the term "best text" has not been widely used, the term "copy-text" as employed by R. B. McKerrow in his 1904 edition of Thomas Nashe meant essentially the same thing. Thus the editing of Renaissance literature that proceeded alongside the "New Bibliography" emerged from this restrictive base—not unexpectedly,

since what was new in the "New Bibliography" (developed by McKerrow, A. W. Pollard, W. W. Greg, and their followers) was the analysis of the physical details of books for evidence that could solve textual cruxes without the use of literary judgment (or at least limit the role of such judgment in making textual decisions). No approach to editing can totally eliminate judgment, of course; and I am less concerned here with the amount of judgment that actually entered into various editors' work than with the general avoidance or acceptance of judgment embodied in their editorial theories. McKerrow, by the end of his life in 1940, had moved toward a greater willingness to allow variants from one text to be incorporated into a chosen copy-text, as he outlined his plans for an edition of Shakespeare. But it remained for W. W. Greg in 1949 to enunciate, in his famous lecture "The Rationale of Copy-Text," a position for the editing of Renaissance drama that approached Housman's of a half-century earlier for the editing of classical literature. Greg, like Housman, elevated the role of informed judgment in choosing among variant readings.[1]

One of the most revealing facts about his rationale, however, is—as the title of his paper suggests—its retention of a concept of "copy-text," a basic text into which alterations (or "emendations")[2] can be incorporated. It now seems time, after another half-century, to move beyond this often useful but nevertheless inherently restrictive concept. That Greg's intention was to liberate editorial judgment is indicated by his warning against "what may be called the tyranny of the copy-text"; but his recognition that a copy-text could indeed tyrannize did not cause him to abandon the concept. He was not quite ready to carry to its logical conclusion the dominant twentieth-century English line of thinking about the textual criticism of post-medieval literature, a line that had become gradually more liberal during the first half of the century—though the position he did take certainly constituted an important extension of it.

Greg's rationale has been much debated in the succeeding half-century, but the discussions have generally focused on his recommendations for selecting and emending a copy-text rather than on the necessity for designating a particular text as copy-text in the first place. To consider the latter issue is not to imply any repudiation of Greg at all; rather, living with his ideas for a considerable period has enabled us to see more clearly their essential direction and has put us in a position to understand how, paradoxically, a reduction of emphasis on "copy-text" actually builds on and completes his argument.