Gallery Five: The Justice

The authority of twentieth century scholarship

And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part

Building on the Cambridge edition (1863-66), the early twentieth century was something of a golden age of Shakespearean textual scholarship, as one authoritative corpus of work was established with introductions and critical commentaries. The first Oxford Complete Works was produced in 1891 by William James Craig – a forerunner of the modern Oxford Shakespeare series edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor from 1986. Craig then became the first editor of the Arden Shakespeare series, producing Hamlet in 1899 before passing the baton to R. H. Chase in 1909. Since then, two further Arden series have appeared, with the third series still in production.

Equally, tensions developed with other emerging media (such as the rise of film), exacerbated by a complex publishing market which saw a greater interest in publishing texts for purposes such as the school classroom.