Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/350

 346 Mason THE FURNESS VARIORUM As everyone knows, the lamented death of Dr. Furness, Sr., brought out a widespread expression of the hope that, since a single editorship of all the plays was no longer possible, a committee of competent scholars might now be appointed to publish the remaining volumes in the "New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare" as rapidly as possible, inasmuch as the need for them is great and the present rate of production hopelessly slow. Mr. Furness, Jr., however, elected to take up and carry on his father's work single-handed, and no one was in a position to challenge his decision. It is the purpose of the present article to prove, on the basis of a careful examination of the Variorum Julius CcBsar, that there are reasonable grounds for setting aside the decision of Mr. Furness and entrusting the series forthwith to some suitably chosen corps of editors. It happens that the present writer reviewed (for the pur- poses of a general periodical's public) the Variorum edition of Julius Casar, by Mr. Furness, Jr., when it first came out, and that he then made certain unfavorable criticisms, which are still valid, calling for a systematic rearrangement of the method of presentation and for the insertion of a detailed table of contents. For instance, the Preface at present gives a brief critique of the text, a discussion of the sources and probable date of composi- tion, some comment on certain characters in the play and its later history, and some general aesthetic criticism; but the ten- page commentary on the Dramatis Personae and the four-page footnote on the title and opening stage-directions cover much the same ground, and then the Appendix exhausts each of these fields separately. So the material is handled in three distinct treatments, all having many points in common but each con- taining some points which the others lack: and the Index does not save the situation, for the Preface is not indexed. A change in the editorial management would afford a favorable oppor- tunity for introducing necessary reforms here in the matter of orderly and convenient presentation. Far more important, however, than this general impression that a change in the publishing policy would prove beneficial, is the mass of detailed