The Comedy of Errors (review)

Charles Whitworth has produced an excellent and welcome edition of The Comedy of Errors. Part of the Oxford series, Whitworth's is the first fully re-edited, modernized, single-volume edition of Errors since T. S. Dorsch's fine Cambridge volume of 1988 (itself the first such edition since R. A. Foakes's still-influential 1962 Arden version). Whitworth rethinks the text, sometimes provocatively; includes astute commentary notes; and provides an engaging introduction, with a special emphasis on genre. Appendixes offer a modernized edition of William Warner's 1595 translation of Plautus's Menaechmi along with the reproduction of key biblical passages and a discussion of proverbial language, as well as excerpts from Gesta Grayorum. Lucid, perceptive, and lively, this edition deserves an audience among scholars, students, performers, and the reading public.

All editions of The Comedy of Errors are based on the relatively short and clean 1623 Folio text. The F text has a few cruxes, but most textual problems involve specific matters of scansion, punctuation, lineation, and word choice. Crucial to such considerations is the question of the F-text's provenance. Following Ronald B. McKerrow and the editors of the 1986 Oxford Complete Works, Whitworth proceeds on the hypothesis that the F-text of Errors is based on Shakespeare's "foul papers" rather than a theatrical "promptbook." Recent scholarship by William Long and Paul Werstine, however, has challenged McKerrow's foundational arguments and categories. Werstine argues that, in the case of Folio Errors, it is impossible to distinguish whether the underlying copy is an authorial manuscript or a theatrical playtext. Like those editors who believe the F-text to be based on "foul papers" and who thus embrace a certain license to clean up the posited pre-performance foulness, Whitworth is an interventionist editor, and he is generally willing to emend diction, eliminate repetitions, improve verb forms, and regularize meter. His choices are always highly intelligent, elegantly reasoned, and stimulating.

Shakespeareans will note, for example, Whitworth's unique use of "Epidamnus" (the correct Latin nominative) for Pope's "Epidamnum"—this latter the preference of most editors over F's puzzling "Epidamium, " or Rowe's hybrid "Epidamnium." In other typical changes, Syracusan Antipholus's water drop is no longer "falling" but now "failing" (1.2.37), and he characterizes Ephesus not by its "liberties" but its "libertines" of sin (1.2.102). A more complicated example of Whitworth's approach occurs in 4.3 when, in the Folio, Dromio of Syracuse inquires of his master, concerning the absent arresting officer: "what haue you got the picture of old Adam new apparel'd?" (TLN 1196-97). This reference makes for difficult glossing or emending; most editors leave the line as it is and try to make some sense of it in a commentary note. Theobald, however, chooses to alter "the picture of" to "rid of the picture of"; Wells and Taylor go one better and offer "redemption from the picture of," recalling Dromio's request of Adriana for money as "redemption." Whitworth takes an "of" from Theobald and a "redemption" from Wells and Taylor, and emends to "redemption of the picture of" (4.3.13). While such a reading may have virtues of its own, it takes us far afield from F. Whitworth also moves beyond editorial tradition by reassigning a set of speeches in Act 5 to Angelo and the Second Merchant (5.1.118-28). And the Abbess's important last word still issues from the mouth of Hanmer: "felicity" (5.1.408) in place of F's "Natiuitie." Whether one agrees or disagrees with Whitworth's interventions, however, he explains them with a commendable thoroughness.

In terms of punctuation, Whitworth often favors full stops as against F's commas, colons, and semi-colons (in the tradition of the Oxford Complete Works). Whitworth's pointing makes for clarity and crispness, and in some places he improves on recent fashions (see 4.4.6-7 for one example). In stage directions Whitworth, again following...