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Bowers of Bliss: Deconflation in the Shakespeare Canon

The new Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (1986), has shaken loose many of the assumptions of historical editing by questioning the existence of single authoritative ‘ur-texts’ and by attempting to present the plays as reflections of contemporary performance rather than as literary texts enshrining authorial intention. Inevitably, Brian Parker argues here, the editors’ success has been variable, and the new approach raises crucial questions of canon, format, the influence and potential of current technology, and the degree to which the editors’ own ‘postmodernist’ assumptions have influenced their decisions. This essay was presented as a discussion-paper for a session on the Shakespeare canon at the 1989 annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America in Austin, Texas. Brian Parker is a professor at Trinity College, University of Toronto, who has prepared critical editions of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Volpone for the ‘Revels Plays’ series and is currently editing Coriolanus for the Oxford English Texts.