3 - Textual Studies

Summary

On the upper slopes of Shakespearian textual studies, where the air is thin and advances are measured in proudly gained inches, Professor Kristian Smidt and Professor J. K. Walton are already familiar figures. Both have returned this year to the scene of previous struggles, the question of the copy for the Folio Richard III. As before, they propose different solutions, although Smidt’s support for the sixth Quarto, 1622, as providing the printed basis for the F text is attended with more qualifications than he once admitted, while Walton’s championship of the third Quarto, 1602, has become, if anything, more absolute, so that he now speaks of its use as copy for F not as hypothetical but as an established fact.

Their two books are of very different scope and character. Smidt's short monograph restates and reassesses the evidence bearing on the nature of the Q text of Richard III and on the identification of the particular Quarto used as copy for F. Walton's aim is more ambitious: by examining the whole body of Folio plays printed from Quarto copy, whether or not the Quartos were annotated, he sets out to create a new context for the discussion of those few plays in F about which no consensus of opinion yet exists as to whether they were printed from Q copy or from independent manuscripts, or as to the identity of the particular Quarto edition used for copy.