Do you think that the kinds of sociological/historical criticism Greg and Bowers proposed be considered with the aim of moving towards a more complete understanding of how and why we practise textual bibliography were essentially the same as those proposed by McKenzie? McKenzie claimed that he was "considering anew what bibliography is and how it relates to other disciplines" and indeed goes much further than Greg and Bowers in actually describing texts as products of sociological forces, but it is strange, I agree, why he apparently feels the need to brush the fact that Greg acknowledged this need under the carpet. Why not just build your reputation on actually undertaking to describe the considerations proposed by predecessors than pretend they never prescribed them? Is this what's happening, or do the criteria inherent in McKenzie's vision of historical/sociological bibliographic investigations actually differ from Greg's "extraneous considerations, of art, craft or biography"?

I can think of almost no other scholar in the field of textual/Shakespeare studies who is as frequently accused of intellectual parochialism or naivety as Greg, yet I have myself often sensed - as you have elegantly illustrated in this example - that such charges often necessitate a falsification or unfair reduction of his actual ideas. I really cannot think of another critic who I feel to be so routinely misquoted and wilfully refashioned into a blinkered (presumably Oxbridge, port and cigars-type) pseudo-scientist with a bullish confidence that texts could be made to conform to the limited range of idealisations he sought to impose upon them. Do you agree with this as something that stands up more generally than the example you have worked on? If so, could you comment on why you think this is?