Will Sharpe "The Influence of Anxiety(?): Thoughts on the Supposed 'Crisis in Editing' and the use of Editions in Pedagogical Practice"

This paper is essentially tailored to the seminar topic as described and seeks to take stock of, and issue with, some of the more supposedly terminal injuries editing has sustained in recent years. Much ink and ire has been spilt in defense of the opposing viewpoints that 'critical editions'--and by extension, critical editors--'suck', on the one hand, and that such attitudes show little knowledge of (or human sympathy with) the practical problems facing editors or the realities of the book trade on the other. Critical editions continue to appear and don't seem to be going anywhere fast, so this paper will propose the need to continue to ask searching methodological questions which are difficult--or perhaps impossible--to answer regarding processes editors supposedly take for granted, while ceasing to abstract such critiques from the intensive and too readily undervalued labours of serious-minded and committed individuals. The paper will also seek to propose that a working knowledge of the apparatus and functions of modern scholarly editions should be a more routine methodological skill in Shakespeare studies undertaken at university level, an approach which seeks to empower the supposed victims of editorial choices rather than seeking to solve the problem by calling for the dismissal of the presumptuous editor silently making them on their behalf.