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William Shakespeare: The Complete Works . General editors Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Pp. xlvii + 1432, 1986. £19.95.

Stanley Wells' book Re-Editing Shakespeare published two years ago warned that the emergence of the Complete Works might cause a few ripples of disquiet in academic waters. Full justification of editorial policy will be included next spring in their supplement to The Complete Works; William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Therefore on opening the covers of the new Oxford Complete Works one prepares for revolutionary changes, and for signs of the 'cultural hooliganism' which the editors feel is the way critics may receive their industry. This reader would not go so far as to level that charge. There are some splendid innovations and others which are less successful. Some of the more radical decisions are based on the findings of recent research which has used historical and textual evidence punctiliously for assessing chronology, staging and Shakespeare's authority in Quarto and Folio texts. The value of such research is self-evident. Before evaluations can be made of individual plays it is necessary to establish the integrity of the text as far as humanly possible, and it is the discipline of these recent research methods which informs the more successful aspects of this edition. In the introduction Professor Wells explains his conviction that the good Quartos, where they exist, are Shakespeare's work before play production — texts written in response to Bad Quartos, and so intended for publication rather than the stage; whereas the Folio 'represents a theatrical text of the play after he [i.e., Shakespeare] had revised it' (p. xxxiv). The interesting result of this conclusion is that when faced with the Quarto and Folio texts we do not have to choose between one authoritative and one imperfect version but between two texts by Shakespeare. The one used in this edition is that of the Folio and additional passages which appear in the Quartos are appended at the end of each play, King Lear is presented in its entirety from each source as the editors believe . . . that there are two distinct plays of King Lear, not merely two different texts of the same play' (p. xxxv). The value of such a presentation lies in the fact that the differences between Quarto and Folio can be kept distinct in one's mind. Where editors conflate the two texts it is easy for either reader or spectator to accept that the result has integrity whereas 'it is at least arguable that this produces a version that never existed in Shakespeare's time' (p. xxxiv). Two of the most interesting examples of textual contrasts