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While working on an edition of Shakespeare, F.J.
Furnivall is reported to have said “Why didn’t the brute edit
his own works? He could have done it in a month, and spared us
poor devils the bother of centuries.”(209) In Shakespeare in
Print, Andrew Murphy provides readers with a history and a
catalogue of much of the work these “poor devils” have done over
the years. The result is a magnificently researched, stylishly
written, highly informative account that both students and scholars
will find useful.
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The book is divided into two parts. The first
is a narrative history, in eleven chapters, of editing and publishing
from the early quartos through the early twenty-first century.
Murphy’s objective is to “set the extended narrative of Shakespeare
publishing within something of its greater historical and cultural
contexts.”(10) He rightly argues that editing and publishing are
inextricably linked, yet the latter is often neglected by Shakespeare
scholars. Thus, he does more than simply retell the history of
various editions; he discusses the role of publishers such as
the Tonsons, the importance of the copyright disputes of the eighteenth
century, and the impact of popular editions in the nineteenth
century (and beyond). The second part is an appendix of publications,
in chronological order, from 1593 to 2002. Over 1,700 editions
are listed, many with annotation describing them. All single editions
up to Nicholas Rowe’s in 1709 are included, as are all collected/complete
editions until 1821. The sheer number of editions that have appeared
since the early nineteenth century led Murphy to base this part
of his work on the works recommended in the Variorum Handbook,
a resource for editors working in the New Variorum series. More
than 1,200 editions published after 1821 are listed. Five indices
guide the reader through the chronology; these are organized by
title, series title, editor, publisher and place of publication.
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The focus throughout Shakespeare in Print
is on work published in English in England, Scotland, Ireland
and America. (As the author points out, trying to tell the story
of Shakespeare in translation would require volumes, as would
attempting to discuss editing and publishing in the wider English-speaking
world.) All the usual editorial suspects are here, from Rowe,
Pope and Malone in the eighteenth century to Wilson, Alexander
and Wells in the twentieth. But Murphy also focuses on the important
work other editors have done, including one working in the nineteenth
century whose ground-breaking edition has largely been neglected
by scholars rummaging around in the eighteenth-century archives:
Richard Grant White. (He was the first American editor to base
his work on the texts of early quartos and folios, which he was
able to access in certain private collections in the United States.)
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One real highlight is Murphy’s style. While the
narrative is in chronological order, he deftly moves back and
forth across chapters to make links. For example, he splits his
story of the nineteenth century into two chapters, discussing
first popular and then scholarly editions, but within each chapter
he refers to the other. Nothing, in other words, is discussed
in isolation.
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My one reservation concerns balance in the chapter
on late twentieth-century editions, where more than twelve pages
are devoted to the 1986 Oxford edition of the complete works.
This is one of the most detailed discussions of any single work
in the book, no doubt due in part to its controversial reception.
By contrast, G. Blakemore Evans’s 1972 Riverside edition is quickly
glossed over in a page. This is a pity, as it gives readers the
impression that the one has been ten times as important as the
other. While Murphy is at pains to point out that his work is
not as exhaustive as it might be, I believe a bit less on Oxford
and a bit more on Riverside would have given a fairer impression
of their relative influence.
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All in all, however, Murphy’s work is exemplary,
and deserves to reach a wide audience. I am confident most readers
will learn something new, particularly about Shakespeare publishing
outside London, and in the nineteenth century. The appendix is
a pioneering and essential reference work: no one has attempted
to gather such a large amount of information in one monograph
before. This will be the first place many textual scholars will
turn to in future. The narrative should also be the starting place
for newcomers to the history of Shakespeare on the page. The final
three chapters on the New Bibliography, its influence and the
backlash against it, are particularly fine.
