Discussing the Trends in the Editing of Shakespeare’s Plays: From the Early 17th Century to the Postmodern Time

Abstract

This paper summarizes the editing trends on Shakespeare’s works from the early modern period to the advent of digital texts. In doing this, I have highlighted the moral burden with which editors om Heminges and Condell through the eighteenth-century editors down to the New Bibliographers have tried to improve on Shakespeare, or, thereby, to re-present him from different editorial perspectives: from viewing the editor as a parent to viewing his as an inspector of facts and figures. In preparing this essay I have depended on certain scholarly essays, which I have acknowledged within the text. I have also stood by the postmodernist perception that a unitary text for a Shakespearean play is never possible to establish.