Notes on an Edition: Carlos V en Francia

Bulletin Of The Comediantes Vol. XX Fall, 1968 No. 2 Notes on an Edition: Carlos V en Francia Peter B. Bell, University of Toronto The Bulletin recently received from The University of Pennsylvania Press a copy of Arnold G. Reichenberger's edition of Lope's Carlos V en Francia (1962). There seems little point in enumerating at this late date the edition 's many virtues. Surely every comediante has by now acquired a copy of the work, or at the very least made sure that his university library has done so. The price of $10.00, at first glance rather high, is amply justified by the clear presentation of the text and by the careful photographic reproduction of the whole autograph manuscript. It is this reproduction that gives the edition its uniqueness and importance. This is just the fourth Lope autograph to be published in facsimile, and the only one made available as part of a full critical edition.' We can only hope that other editors (and publishers) of autograph texts will take heart from this example and attain to this new standard. By providing the reader with the raw materials of his research, the editor in effect invites him to be a collaborator in his scholarly efforts, to provide a check on the accuracy of his transcription , to serve as a second pair of eyes in deciphering the manuscript deletions and other markings. It is in this spirit of collaboration that I offer here in place of a review a number of suggested readings to supplement (and, in some cases, dissent from) Reichenberger 's, with the hope that others will feel the urge to try their hand at their own interpretations. "Every man his own editor!" will be the cry. Marshall McLuhan would no doubt approve; Professor Reichenberger has given us a comedia edition that is, of all things, "cool." Let it be said at the outset that R has done well by Lope's text proper. I have noted only two cases where the speech of a character is wrongly transcribed . For v. 923 R reads sin más que los remeros que la lieben; Lope certainly wrote los originally, but the I has been changed to ad. R may believe the emendation not to be Lope's, but he makes no mention of this in the MS notes. I feel the change to be valid (the method of correction, utilizing part of the original word, is consistent with Lope's usual practice), and read dos, as do the Parte and Academy editions (see R's variant notes). In lines 10-11 of the prose passage following v. 657, R reads en debolberle el Rey Cristian- ísimo a Hedín [a fortress] al César ... ; the MS has ha de bolberle, etc. R's misreading not only makes no sense grammatically (the sentence has no main verb), but it implies that Lope, in 1604, was already using the form devolver, whose earliest recorded appearance is as a legal term in 1612, and which did not come into general use until the eighteenth century.2 In two other cases, R's interpretation of MS markings affecting the text is perhaps open to question. For v. 1398, his note reads "One word or letter (q) at beginning of line crossed out."3 I would hesitate to call the mark at issue an intentional deletion; it seems either a blot or, if a deletion, by a hand other than Lope's; it is certainly not Lope's 26 usual helical cancellation, seen elsewhere on the same page. I would favor retaining the q[ue\. For a speech on w. 2128-2129, R transcribes Tu amor/ estime, noting "N is written above the last e in estime," and going on to say that the change "seem[s] to be by a different hand." The observation is just, but it seems equally probable from the visible evidence that Lope wrote estimo, and that the same hand that supplied the ? formed an e from the o. I would restore estimo. Three more misreadings, not affecting the text itself, were found. For v. 2329, R gives the speaker as Duque; Lope always uses the designation...