From Stanley Wells

Professor Sir Stanley Wells CBE, FRSL is the chief editor of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works and Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Image courtesy: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

What do think are the main challenges of editing a collection of Shakespeare’s work? 

Among the challenges of editing a Complete Works (some of which will be determined by the publisher) are:

• Whether it will be in old or modern spelling (this, like other matters, will be determined wholly or largely by the publisher)
• Whether it will be edited from the ground upwards - i.e., using the original quarto and Folio texts - or from a pre-existing edition 
• Deciding whether to base a text on the Quarto or the Folio when the choice exists
• Deciding how much ancillary material, such as introductions, annotation, glosses, etc., to include, and thinking about length of such material, potential readership, etc

What do you see as the distinguishing features of your edition of Shakespeare’s complete works? 

Among the distinguishing features of the Oxford edition are:

• It prioritises theatre derived texts over texts based on foul papers. For example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream uses the Folio rather than the Quarto. 
• It is based on a complete rethinking of the principles of modernising spelling, punctuation etc (some of these decisions have proved to be controversial).
• The second edition differs significantly from the first, e g in including a text of Edward III in response to ongoing research about authorship. It illustrates how editors need to respond to fresh textual thought.

How much do you feel the work of previous editors of Shakespeare have informed and shaped your own edition? Is there a particular one you would single out? 

The work of previous editors is extremely important but needs always to be critically reconsidered. 

In which ways do you think the technological, social, and political changes of our times may affect future editions of Shakespeare’s complete works? 

This is a big question! We are all children of our own time, often unconsciously so. But, to give one illustration, when we first started we’re using typewriters. This changed dramatically when computers came into use. I write about the challenges of editing Shakespeare in my book Re-editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader.