The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0428 Wednesday, 10 May 2006
From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 09 May 2006 19:50:26 -0400
Subject: 17.0422 Riverside Notes
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0422 Riverside Notes
>Note: I am working with the 1974 edition and don't know
>what changes have been made in later editions.
My correspondence with Gwynne Evans was initially inspired by the same
question.
The Second Edition added Edward III and the Elegy and added an essay
about performance history. It also contains new and more thorough
introductory text notes to the plays and poems to account for recent
scholarship, and it adds a few sections to Appendix C (formerly Appendix B).
There were almost no text changes. Indeed, it appears that most of the
Second Edition was printed from the same plates used for the First
Edition, as it contains most of the same typos, ink smudges, etc. The
only text changes noted in Evans's intitial letter to me (dated 21 June
1997) were in the following lines: Ham,II.ii.73; Ham,II.ii.541;
Ham,III.ii.223; KL,I..iv.137; KL, II.i.120; Tem,I.ii.173. I
subsequently discovered another small one (the addition of "Edward" in
2HVI,V.iii.osd). Evans noted that there were only three changes in the
commentary notes: T/S,IV.iii.157 (correcting "Grumio" for "Gremio"),
M/M,I.ii.129 (revised note); M/M,IV.i.1-6 (revised note). On 25
February 1998 Evans wrote me that the third printing of the Second
Edition "corrected the several errors that the printer made in the
second printing." I don't know what they were.
With respect to the question of who was responsible for the commentary
notes, I suppose I should share Evans's observations. I am less
reluctant to do so now that he has passed on. The question was mooted
on SHAKSPER by John Velz, who had a copy of the First Edition with a
commentary note to JC,IV.iii.110 which glossed "yoked with" as "like"
(my copies of the First and Second Editions do not have this gloss). I
wrote to Evans to see if he could shed light on this. Evans wrote to me
on 25 February 1998:
"You have opened up a mystery. The first printing of te original
(1974) edition does indeed read "yoked with: like" (which incidentally
is a wrong gloss); so too does my two volume set of the first edition
(unlike yours). Not surprisingly, I have no memory of making the change
to "lamb: Brutus" or when it was made (I would guess fairly early on in
the reprinting series, which went from A to X). Since the "yoke" one is
not accurate, it is possible that Frank Kermode had the change made
without consulting me."
A couple of weeks later (5 March 1998), Evans sent a further note:
"About 'yoke with: like' in Julius Caesar (IV.iii.110), it is, I
think, an erroneous gloss, but I heistate to pronounce on it, since
Frank Kermode, not I, did the original glossings of the tragedies. If
'opinions' were changed, they were most probably Kermode's, since I have
no recollection of getting rid of the 'yoked with' gloss."
I don't know if any of this answers anyone's question, but I offer it
for whatever it is worth.
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