Books November 1997
Shakespeare’s one poem
Review of The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al.
The Oxford Shakespeare (old- and modern-spelling editions), and its bulky Textual Companion, both first published in 1988, have not yet been wholly accepted by the community of textual scholars, and The Norton Shakespeare takes issue with several of its predecessor’s decisions. For instance, it reverses Oxford’s substitution of the name “Oldcastle” for “Falstaff” in the two parts of Henry IV and inserts passages unique to Quarto Hamlet (marked as such) within the Folio text. Where Oxford includes both the Quarto and Folio texts of King Lear, Norton prints them on facing pages, adding (less justifiably) a third, conflated text, as well. The editors follow Oxford in including “Shall I die?” as Shakespeare’s, and add in an appendix the poem “A Funeral Elegy” (1612) with an introduction by Donald W. Foster, who argues...
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