Item 118 - Notes by W. W. Greg on the printing of the First Quarto of King Lear, c. 1940, written on part of a draft of The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, c. 1939

1 single sheet

(The draft passage corresponds to parts of pp. xviii-xix of the published text.)

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Transcript of the notes

The variation in the headlines, as determined by Professor Bowers {1}, raise† a difficulty in the way of my solution of the problem by showing that it would involve delay at several points, and it is quite possible that we may have to look for an alternative. At the same time I do not think that the new facts are irreconcilable. My theory was designed to allow the printing of each sheet with a minimum of delay: Professor Bowers raises the question of delay between sheets[.] But suppose that the sheets of Lear were being printed alternately with those of some other book, or, which is perhaps more likely, as stop-gaps between those of a work which was held to demand greater care and deliberation in composition and correction. In that case the difficulty of delay between sheets wou[l]d disappear, and we should have an explanation of the pooling of the headlines. Of course, if printing were strictly alternate we should be at a loss to explain the setting of a third skeleton forme: but there is no need to assume that it was; sheets B and C may have been printed together to fill an unusually long interval in the other work.

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{1} The reference is presumably to the article mentioned on p. 49 of Greg's Variants in the First Quarto of ‘King Lear’.

† Sic.

Formerly tipped into Greg’s copy of Variants in the First Quarto of ‘King Lear’, 1940 (V. 10. 64).

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