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Shakespeare & Beyond

Barbara Mowat on editing Shakespeare

Barbara Mowat on editing Shakespeare
Barbara Mowat on editing Shakespeare

Barbara Mowat on editing ShakespeareHow do you edit the most famous author in the world? Barbara Mowat and co-editor Paul Werstine made that their love’s labor, editing more than 40 editions of the plays and poems for the Folger Shakespeare Library editions. The books are the most popular Shakespeare texts on the market, outselling all the competition in the United States and used by teachers and students all over the world.

When she retired from the Folger as Director of Research in 2009, Dr. Mowat reflected on the challenges and rewards of what may seem to some to be an audacious and somewhat puzzling endeavor: editing Shakespeare. The following excerpt first appeared in Folger Magazine.


During my years spent editing the works of Shakespeare, one question has been asked of me repeatedly: “What do you mean, you edit Shakespeare? What do you do, correct his grammar?”

Because the editing process is so complex, explaining what I do requires that I fill in huge gaps. Take, for example, the matter of the forms in which Shakespeare’s works were left at his death in 1616. Eighteen plays remained in manuscript and did not get printed until seven years after Shakespeare’s death; others had been printed individually, often in versions that differ considerably from their 1623 printing. Thus, when asked about what it means to edit Shakespeare, the most obvious initial answer is that, with many of the plays, my co-editor and I must first decide which version of the play to edit and whether or not to combine it in some fashion with another version.