Item 101 - Letter from J. H. Walter to Sir Walter Greg

1 single sheet

27 Oakleigh Park North, Whetstone, N.20.—Praises Greg’s Shakespeare First Folio and refers to Cairncross’s work on Henry V.

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Transcript

27 Oakleigh Park North,
Whetstone,
N.20.
14 Feb., 1956.

Dear Greg,

I have just read your The Shakespeare First Folio with very great pleasure. In the last few years there seems to have been so much imperfectly founded speculation that it is most welcome to have a balanced appraisal and a clear analysis of the present position. I do congratulate you on its achievement. Indeed, it has stimulated in me the desire to do further work on dramatic texts—for me a kind of luxurious recreation whereby I can shuffle off the immoral evil of form-filling and return-making.

Cairncross, using the methods of Alice Walker, has suggested that the copy for F Henry V was based on Q1 and Q3 corrected by reference to a playhouse MS (unspecified) and eked out my MS sheets in places where the corrections or additions were extensive. The arguments are highly ingenious, but, I think, strained; inevitably they raise further difficulties.

With all good wishes

Yours sincerely,
J. H. Walter

Formerly inserted in Greg's copy of The Shakespeare First Folio (1955) (Adv. c. 26. 1).

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.