George Washington University

Supplements to the New Variorum ShakespeareSource: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Summer, 1955), p. 247Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2866609 .

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Supplements to the New Variorum Shakespeare

N THE reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a poet was expected to become "a curious universal scholar", and a sufficiently in- trepid man might, like Francis Bacon, take "all knowledge to

i ,7 be his province", but with the current diversification of knowl- edge and multiplication of books even the specialist tends to know more and more about less and less. This is especially

true of Shakespearian studies. The wise man reads and inwardly digests the books and essays of greatest interest and importance to himself-and reads the others by deputy.

As long ago as i873, Dr. H. H. Furness took steps to help Shakespearians by publishing the first volume (Romeo and Juliet) of his New Variorum Edi- tion. His method was "to abridge the labour and to save the time by collecting the comments . . . and presenting them, on the same page, in a condensed form, in connection with the difficulties which they explain." This he and his son did for twenty plays by i930. Since that time the Edition has been continued by the Modern Language Association of America, which with various special editors has brought out i Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, The Poems, The Sonnets, and Troilus and Cressida, in that order.

Since I936, when i Henry IV came from press, there has been much dis- cussion of the History plays, so much that it would tax the energies of an able scholar to find and read everything of importance about the play in even the best of libraries. For the general reader, the private collector, and even libraries with substantial funds, the situation is almost hopeless.

The Shakespeare Association of America is taking steps to bring relief. In I956 it will publish a Supplement to the New Variorum Edition of i Henry IV as the Summer number of Shakespeare Quarterly.' This Supplement will bring together, in Variorum form, the best that has been put in print about the play since I936. The special editor will be Professor Gwynne B. Evans, Jr., of the University of Illinois, one of the editors of The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, who will work under the supervision of Professor Hyder E. Rollins, of Harvard, the General Editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare.2

At a later date, announcement will be made of the details of publication of the Supplement, and subscriptions will be invited for the purchase of separate copies, bound uniformly with the volumes of the New Variorum.

1 The earlier volumes of the New Variorum are much more in need of being brought up-to- date than I Henry IV, but changes in textual methods and the volume of published criticism of plays like Macbeth and Hamlet are such that nothing short of a new edition would suffice.

2 This Supplement has the blessing of the Executive Council of the M.L.A., which has rightly decided to conserve Variorum funds for the publication of additional volumes in the series, such as Richard II, now in press, while encouraging the Chairman of the M.L.A. Committee on the Variorum Shakespeare to make other arrangements for the publication of Variorum Supplements.

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