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M L Stapleton, Shakespeare and Textual Theory. Arden Shakespeare. By Suzanne Gossett. Shakespeare / Text: Contemporary Readings in Textual Studies, Editing and Performance. Arden Shakespeare. Edited by Claire M. L. Bourne., Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 75, Issue 4, Winter 2024, Pages 333–337, https://doi.org/10.1093/sq/quae045
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I review these titles in the Arden Shakespeare series as a unit because of their complementarity. Since one volume provides context for its counterpart, a reader’s profit from either would be greatly enhanced by perusal of the other. I say this since the third and longest part of Suzanne Gossett’s history of Shakespeare editing (71–227) concerns the very rationale of Claire M. L. Bourne’s Shakespeare / Text. Bourne’s anthology offers contemporary perspectives informed by current theory, many of which incorporate elements not associated with traditional practice in this discipline. The collection, over 400 pages, therefore illustrates much of what Shakespeare and Textual Theory covers in slightly more than 200.
The sensibilities of the author and the editor determined the design of their productions. Shakespeare and Textual Theory proceeds in a logical, semi-linear fashion as befits a general history. It commences with the foundational story of the quartos and Folios and concludes this part with a very short narrative concerning eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions (10–35). Since Gossett’s mission is to explain the current freewheeling methods of approaching the text, she prefaces this account with three helpful chapters that trace the New Bibliography and its gradual undermining by poststructuralism (39–68). In contrast, Shakespeare / Text eschews linearity, as the governing virgule (slash) in all titles of the Arden series to which it belongs seems to imply, a printing mark that Bourne muses upon in several paragraphs of her initial essay (4–7). The collection’s organization, loosely anchored in four sections of five articles, seems impressionistic: “Inclusive / exclusive” (29–120); “Before / after” (123–220); “Authorized / unauthorized” (223–315); and “Present / absent” (319–423). The titles of the twenty essays are similarly bifurcated: for example, “Now / then,” “Miscellany / sequence.” Essays include full sets of notes followed by individuated bibliographies. Bourne frames the main content with her introduction and Molly G. Yarn’s exhaustive index. Though few of the studies devote themselves exclusively to editing, all provide untraditional matter to consider for those who engage themselves in this task. Each chapter glows with a faint aura of improvisation, as if the slash-mark-virgule topics were writing prompts that its authors were challenged to investigate to their roots. However, even if some contributors structure their ideas in ways that do not support the concepts they are meant to elucidate, the reader will always find something worth considering. In a different, omniscient way, Gossett enacts the same phenomenon. She explores a topic in textual criticism, illustrates it with examples from established, practicing scholars, and then analyzes rather than evaluates what she presents. This tactic allows the reader to decide whether a scholar’s structuring ideas actually support the concept pursued.