> Lee writes:
>
> While I certainly agree that knowing that "S" wasn't really
> "S" adds nothing to an appreciation of the plays themselves,

[My point exactly. Historical criticism helps us to understand a given text only if it consistently and thoroughly gives new definitions to the terms in it; if it is spotty - and it usually is - how can we have other than distortion of the whole text?]

> the biographical and historical data -- there is such a
> thing, after all as a history of literature quite apart from
> lit crit. -- are perfectly interesting and worth having in
> their own right. A study of an author's life or the history
> of work of literature, including who may or may not have
> written it, needs no defense from anyone.

[I agree - but is it not only because the texts exist that we are interested in the history of the author? Might I not pick any figure from any period and pursue the details of his life with equal moment? Certainly all knowledge is good, but some is significantly better than others. I presume that even Historical Criticism of Literature has the ultimate purpose of understanding what a work says. What a work says is couched in the calculus of its terms, and unless all of the terms are subjected to historical analysis distortion is inevitable.] ]


I want to know who
> wrote the interpolations in Macbeth.
>
> -----------
> Lee also writes:
>
> I was a bit surprised at the "People" remark, though, as I
> think much peering into biographies and the history of texts
> quite legitimate. Without some primary textual criticism, how
> do you know you even have the proper text to deal with;

[Should we not simply deal with the particular text before us? If there are different texts, should we not simply examine each as a separate work?]


this
> is the province of critical or variorum editions, and I'm
> more than happy to have them. The interpolations in Macbeth
> are well known; they come primarily in the so-called Hecate
> scene and are probably from Middleton's The Witch. On the
> whole, I think the play is genuine S, but there are certainly
> passages that are suspect. This is true in several
> Shakespeare plays, by the way, and only reinforces the
> necessity for a good text to begin with before any
> interpretive reading or criticism.

[Here is the heart of the matter. What possible difference can it make in the understanding of any work - that is, what it says - that texts are interpolated, or that variora are available? Strictly speaking, there are no authors, only the works before us; a difference in texts dictates that each should be treated as a distinct work. ]

[Essentially, my resistance to historical criticism of literature is that it is usually so muddled with formal criticism (since it is so spottily applied) that,under its influence, we distort the integrity of the work before us. Nowhere is this muddling and confusion so evident as in high school Literature classes. Historical criticism of literature should fall under the aegis of History classes and stand clear of any Literature class.

"Verily it is well for the world that it sees only the beauty of the completed work and not its origins nor the conditions whence it sprang; since knowledge of an artist's inspiration might often but confuse and alarm and so prevent the full effect of its excellence." Thomas Mann "Death in Venice"

'"What we make is more important than what we are, particularly if making is our profession...People are always imagining that if they get hold of the writer himself and, so to speak, shake him long enough and hard enough, something exciting and illuminating will drop out of him. But it doesn't ... What's due to come out has come out, in the only form in which it can very come out." Dorothy Sayers. Letter to her son.]

[L. Swilley]