Teaching & Learning Guide for: Modern Problems of Editing: The Two Texts of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

Abstract

Author's Introduction Most people familiar with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus will have experienced it as a unified entity neatly presented in a twentieth‐century edition. What is fairly well known, but not always taken into serious consideration by scholars, however, is that Doctor Faustus is a play that exists in two widely differing forms, and that in making modern editions, editors often produce something that is in turn similar to neither of these. Looking at how the problem of the two texts of Doctor Faustus has been dealt with by editors over the last hundred or so years provides students with an accessible way in to the subject of textual scholarship and editing theory, and the consideration of potential future directions for editing practice. Author Recommends The introduction to W. W. Greg's parallel edition Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: 1604–1616 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950) is a prime example of New Bibliographical editorial practice at work, while the mirrored texts provide a visual breakdown of the differences between the two texts of the play. For a more modern approach to the play in its variant forms see either the Revels Plays edition Doctor Faustus: A‐ and B‐ Texts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) or the Oxford World's Classics edition Doctor Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), both edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen. Great examples of Shakespeare in multiple text format can be found in Rene Weiss's King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition (London: Longman, 1993), and, more recently, in Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor's three‐text edition of Hamlet for the Arden Shakespeare series, released in two volumes: Hamlet (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006) and Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623 (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006). Leah S. Marcus's Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (London: Routledge, 1996) is an insightful and accessible example of the kind of challenges laid down to traditional author‐centric editing by late twentieth‐century editorial theory. Particularly useful in the context of this guide are the chapters on Doctor Faustus and The Tempest. Several recent publications offer useful collections of essays on the history and the current position of the textual scholarship and the editing of early modern texts, mainly with reference to Shakespeare. They include Shakespeare Studies 24 (1996); In Arden: Essays in Honour of Richard Proudfoot (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2003), edited by Ann Thompson and Gordon McMullan; and Shakespeare Survey 59 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), edited by Peter Holland. A more general approach is taken by Laurie E. Maguire and Thomas L. Berger's collection Textual Formations and Reformations (London: Associated University Presses, 1998). Finally, an up to date practical aid can be found in Michael Hunter's Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Online Materials 1. Early English Books Online http:/...