The gist of the idea is that an author is not an isolated genius; rather, authors are subject to the politics and other social structures of their age. A dramatist especially is a worker in a collaborative project, working most obviously with actors—parts may be written for particular actors—but working also with the audience. Consider the words of Samuel Johnson, written to be spoken by the actor David Garrick at the opening of a theater in 1747:

The stage but echoes back the public voice;
The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live.

The audience—the public taste as understood by the playwright—helps to determine what the play is. Moreover, even members of the public who are not part of the playwright’s immediate audience may exert an influence through censorship. We have already glanced at governmental censorship, but there are also other kinds. Take one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters, Falstaff, who appears in three of Shakespeare’s plays, the two parts of Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He appears with this name in the earliest printed version of the first of these plays, 1 Henry IV, but we know that Shakespeare originally called him (after an historical figure) Sir John Oldcastle. Oldcastle appears in Shakespeare’s source (partly reprinted in the Signet edition of 1 Henry IV), and a trace of the name survives in Shakespeare’s play, 1.2.43-44, where Prince Hal punningly addresses Falstaff as “my old lad of the castle.” But for some reason—perhaps because the family of the historical Oldcastle complained—Shakespeare had to change the name. In short, the play as we have it was (at least in this detail) subject to some sort of censorship. If we think that a text should present what we take to be the author’s intention, we probably will want to replace Falstaff with Oldcastle. But if we recognize that a play is a collaboration, we may welcome the change, even if it was forced on Shakespeare. Somehow Falstaff, with its hint of false-staff, i.e., inadequate prop, seems just right for this fat knight who, to our delight, entertains the young prince with untruths. We can go as far as saying that, at least so far as a play is concerned, an insistence on the author’s original intention (even if we could know it) can sometimes impoverish the text.

The tiny example of Falstaff’s name illustrates the point that the text we read is inevitably only a version—something in effect produced by the collaboration of the playwright with his actors, audiences, compositors, and editors—of a fluid text that Shakespeare once wrote, just as the Hamlet that we see on the screen starring Kenneth Branagh is not the Hamlet that Shakespeare saw in an open-air playhouse starring Richard Burbage. Hamlet itself, as we shall note in a moment, also exists in several versions. It is not surprising that there is now much talk about the instability of Shakespeare’s texts.

Because he was not only a playwright but was also an actor and a shareholder in a theatrical company, Shakespeare probably was much involved with the translation of the play from a manuscript to a stage production. He may or may not have done some rewriting during rehearsals, and he may or may not have been happy with cuts that were made. Some plays, notably Hamlet and King Lear, are so long that it is most unlikely that the texts we read were acted in their entirety. Further, for both of these plays we have more than one early text that demands consideration. In Hamlet, the Second Quarto (1604) includes some two hundred lines not found in the Folio (1623). Among the passages missing from the Folio are two of Hamlet’s reflective speeches, the “dram of evil” speech (1.4.13-38) and “How all occasions do inform against me” (4.4.32-66). Since the Folio has more numerous and often fuller stage directions, it certainly looks as though in the Folio we get a theatrical version of the play, a text whose cuts were probably made—this is only a hunch, of course—not because Shakespeare was changing his conception of Hamlet but because the playhouse demanded a modified play. (The problem is complicated, since the Folio not only cuts some of the Quarto but adds some material. Various explanations have been offered.)

Or take an example from King Lear. In the First and Second Quarto (1608, 1619), the final speech of the play is given to Albany, Lear’s surviving son-in-law, but in the First Folio version (1623), the speech is given to Edgar. The Quarto version is in accord with tradition—usually the highest-ranking character in a tragedy speaks the final words. Why does the Folio give the speech to Edgar? One possible answer is this: The Folio version omits some of Albany’s speeches in earlier scenes, so perhaps it was decided (by Shakespeare? by the players?) not to give the final lines to so pale a character. In fact, the discrepancies are so many between the two texts, that some scholars argue we do not simply have texts showing different theatrical productions. Rather, these scholars say, Shakespeare substantially revised the play, and we really have two versions of King Lear (and of Othello also, say some)—two different plays—not simply two texts, each of which is in some ways imperfect.

In this view, the 1608 version of Lear may derive from Shakespeare’s manuscript, and the 1623 version may derive from his later revision. The Quartos have almost three hundred lines not in the Folio, and the Folio has about a hundred lines not in the Quartos. It used to be held that all the texts were imperfect in various ways and from various causes—some passages in the Quartos were thought to have been set from a manuscript that was not entirely legible, other passages were thought to have been set by a compositor who was new to setting plays, and still other passages were thought to have been provided by an actor who misremem bered some of the lines. This traditional view held that an editor must draw on the Quartos and the Folio in order to get Shakespeare’s “real” play. The new argument holds (although not without considerable strain) that we have two authentic plays, Shakespeare’s early version (in the Quarto) and Shakespeare‘s—or his theatrical company’s—revised version (in the Folio). Not only theatrical demands but also Shakespeare’s own artistic sense, it is argued, called for extensive revisions.