XXIV. The Punctuation of Shakespeare's Printers

Abstract

Until within a few years past, as all students of Shakespeare are aware, it was generally believed that the punctuation of his text in the early quartos and the First Folio was negligent, erratic, and wholly unauthoritative; the corollary being that modern editors must practically repunctuate the plays in accordance with modern usage, though avoiding scrupulously all other unnecessary alterations of the old texts. Even the late Dr. Furness, editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, whose veneration for the text of the Folio showed some tendency to become an obsession in his later years, did not permit this veneration to extend to punctuation, but commonly spoke of that element of the text as the negligible work of Elizabethan printers. Recently, however, there has been observable a disposition to claim no little authority for the punctuation of the old texts, and, on the part of certain scholars indubitably worthy of respectful attention, to draw inferences as to their significance of a remarkable, not to say revolutionary, character. The time would seem to be ripe for a careful consideration of the evidence which has been adduced.