A Midsummer Night's Dream Front Matter

Credits

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Edited by
Richard F. and Judith M. Kennedy
with
Susan H. May
David Nicol
Roberta Barker

Preface

Horace Howard Furness’s edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the tenth in his ambitious New Variorum project, appeared in 1895. The present edition is built in large part on his model, but is neither a revision nor replacement. The text offered here is based on the First Quarto of 1600, and collated with all significant texts printed since that date to 2007, not the First Folio reprint to which Furness faithfully adhered. Other parts of the present edition attempt to accommodate over a hundred years of additional comment and performance, as well as to represent Furness’s work, though often necessarily abbreviated. The 1895 edition remains useful and delightful for its fuller presentation of 18th and 19th c. opinion and of Furness’s own lively comments.

For various reasons, the preparation of this edition has been spread over many years, and involved many people. Ruth L. Widmann and Richard F. Kennedy prepared the text; Richard Kennedy and Paul Werstine prepared the Textual Notes, Emendation of Accidentals, Unadopted Conjectures, and the Plan; Paul Werstine, the Textual Appendix; Susan H. May, the appendix on Criticism; Roberta Barker, Music in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; David Nicol, A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the Stage; Richard and Judith M. Kennedy, the Commentary Notes; Judith Kennedy the rest. All have helped one another; in particular Susan May’s unpublished doctoral dissertation was of great help to the Kennedys in beginning work, and she has continued with ready assistance through the years. We are all indebted to Richard Knowles, not only for his indispensable Shakespeare Variorum Handbook, but also for his personal support and valuable comments on drafts of sections. More recently Eric Rasmussen has also provided considerable assistance. Paul Werstine has far exceeded the responsibilities of a New Variorum General Editor in taking on the work of textual editor and coordinating editor when illness prevented the Kennedys from completing their duties.

Other individuals have assisted in various ways: Uta Doerr, Elizabeth Kennedy Klaassen and John F. Reynolds gave help with Latin, Greek and German translation; Walter Kemp advised on musical matters; Trevor Sawler devised computer programs for collation; Erika Buiteman, Mary Kate Didyk, Rachel Jones, James Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Tracy Lutz helped in gathering material and proofreading.

The editors thank their respective institutions, Dalhousie University, Longwood University and St. Thomas University for their support, specifically in financial aid, leaves of absence, and office space. Thanks go also to the libraries of these institutions, Killam Library, Greenwood Library, and Harriet Irving Library, especially to the interlibrary loan staffs. Generous financial support was provided to the Kennedys by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Many libraries offered their resources and hospitality. It is a joy and privilege to be allowed to work in great libraries and have access to their collections of rare books, helped by friendly and learned staff. Our thanks go to the Folger Shakespeare Library; the Henry E. Huntington Library; the Furness Memorial Library, University of Pennsylvania; the New York Public Library; the Boston Public Library; the Library of Congress; the Libraries of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, and North Carolina Universities; Dartmouth College Library; Alderman Library, University of Virginia; the British Library; the Bodleian Library; the Libraries of Trinity College and Pembroke College, Cambridge; Edinburgh University Library; the Shakespeare Centre Library of Stratford-upon-Avon; the Theatre and Performance Archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

We hope those who bring A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life in their minds and on stages will find something of interest and profit in this edition.

Plan of the Work

This edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has four main parts: (1) a text of the play reprinted with little change from its first edition in the Quarto of 1600 (Q1); (2) textual notes recording significant departures from the Q1 in sixty editions of the play ranging in date from 1619 to 2007; (3) commentary on the meaning or the verbal art of the text taken from previous editions, dictionaries, commentaries, and critical works; and (4), an appendix, comprising the second half of this edition, containing general discussions of the play’s text, date, sources, critical and theatrical interpretations, and music. This appendix is followed by a bibliography and an index.

The text printed here derives from the copy of the First Quarto of A Midsommer nights dreame (1600) in the Folger Shakespeare Library (STC 22302), with its uncorrected press variants altered to the corrected states. (For these press variants, see here.) The transcript of the Folger copy was compared with Michael J. B. Allen and Kenneth Muir’s Shakespeare’s Plays in Quarto: A Facsimile Edition (Berkeley, 1981) and with Thomas L. Berger’s A Midsommer nights dreame, 1600 (Oxford, 1995), the object being to make the Variorum text as accurate as possible. Silent alterations of the Q1 text include the representation of roman long s by s; the printing of ligatures (e.g., roman ss and st) as two letters; the suppression or reduction of display types, ornaments, printing space types, quads, and packing; the alignment of irregular letters and normalization of spacing (except in some instances noted below); the positioning of marginal stage directions to the right regardless of their placement in the Q1 line; and the correction of wrong-font types, including alteration of italic punctuation marks to roman in a roman context and vice versa. Other errors are corrected when there is no doubt what the true reading should be. In a few instances missing punctuation is supplied, words turned up or down by Q1 because the full line of text exceeded the measure of the column are printed in one line, and conventional closing punctuation is substituted for other marks at the end of completed speeches where no suspension seems intended. A list of these changes appears on here. The line numbers of the text are the Through Line Numbers introduced by Charlton Hinman in The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare (New York, 1968), but the headlines include, as well, the act-scene-line numbers of the 1974 Riverside MND, edited by G. Blakemore Evans. Riverside act and scene divisions are indicated by boldface numerals in the right margin. Also in the right margins, signature indicators of the beginning of each page in Q1 appear in square brackets, and signature and column indicators of the beginning of each column of the First Folio text of 1623 (F1) appear in parentheses.

The textual notes record alterations in the meaning or meter of the Q1 text found in the editions collated; alteration of meaning was decided by the variant’s receiving separate listing in the Oxford English Dictionary and a different definition. Modernizations of form are ignored. So are misprints unless the misprint creates an English word or was taken for a word. Conjectural emendations are included in the textual notes if the reading has been adopted by one of the editions collated; others are in the list of unadopted conjectures (see here). Alterations in punctuation and capitalization are ignored unless the alteration creates a different meaning. Stage directions added or altered in later editions appear only if the action implied by Q1 is affected in a major way.

Variant lining affecting meter—verse as prose, prose as verse, verse as different verse—is noted. The elision or expansion of syllables is recorded only if the alteration shifts the word’s accent or alters the number of feet in a verse line. When words that may be elided must be elided to make regular verse (e.g., in the to one-syllable i’th), it is assumed that elision was intended and no note is provided.

The expression one verse line indicates that part lines of verse shared by speakers have been arranged to indicate that taken together they constitute a pentameter. If the subject of the note is variant punctuation only, a word in the lemma that is repeated in the variant is represented there by a swung dash ( ~ ), and the absence of punctuation is indicated by an inferior caret (‸). Editions are represented by the sigla listed on here and on the endpapers of this book.

The basic form of the textual note may be illustrated by

1345 vnto] into F4-pope2, han1

which records the fact that in line 1345—I tould him of your stealth vnto this wood—the Fourth Folio of 1685 and editions following through Pope’s second edition of 1728 for vnto in the Variorum text read into. Theobald’s editions of 1733 and 1740 read into and so are represented by an honorable absence, but Hanmer’s edition of 1744 reverts to into. Warburton’s edition of 1747 restores the Q1 reading and is followed by all other collated editions.

Another type of textual note employs the formula etc. For example,

2076 beames]  ~  Q1-F1, sis, pen2, and; streames F2-hal, dyce1, col3, ktly, col4, oxf1; gleams knt1 conj., sing2, stau (text; streams in addenda), wh1 etc.

Here the editions that read with the Variorum text (Q1-F1, sis, pen2, and) appear first, then those that read streames, then those that read gleams, sing2 being the first to do so, and etc. means and all other editions collated but not already accounted for.

Yet another kind of note employs the + sign to refer to all the collated editions that date after the one indicated by the siglum that is followed by the + sign. Thus

506 gate] gait cap, mal+

means that Capell’s edition of 1768 and Malone’s of 1790, as well as all succeeding collated editions, read gait.

Still another type of note makes use of family sigla:

169 remote] remouèd F1-john1, knt, wh1

knt here represents both of Knight’s editions (1839 and 1867) that were collated, but not Knight’s edition of 1842, which was only quoted from occasionally. Sometimes the family siglum will not be based on the editor’s name; cam, for example, indicates the Cambridge editions of 1863 (cam1), 1924 (cam3a), and 1984 (cam4). In the note above, as in first and second notes quoted, the hyphen, as one might expect, represents through. Elsewhere a minus sign is used to indicate exclusion:

150 eyes] eie F1-dyce1 (−col1, col2), ktly, knt3, oxf1

means that Collier’s first two editions read not eie but eyes, as does the lemma. Had Collier read eyeballs the note would have been

150 eyes] eie F1-knt1, hud1, sing2-dyce1, ktly, knt3, oxf1; eyeballs col1, col2

Although most variant readings originate in editions, some are found in other sources:

498 The] Thy mtby3 conj., col2, col3, col4

Here the variant originates in Styan Thirlby’s manuscript notes in a volume of Theobald’s edition of 1733 (see here), where it is considered a conjecture because it does not appear in a published edition. The reading does appear in Collier’s edition of 1853 (and it also occurs in his third and fourth editions of 1858 and 1875). The note does not mean, however, that Collier necessarily found the reading in Thirlby’s notes. Here and in similar notes the variant is given in the form in which it was first printed rather than in the sometimes eccentric form of its manuscript source.

Added stage directions calling for action clearly implied by the text are not recorded, nor are those calling in different words for essentially the same action as the stage direction of the text. The abbreviation subst. indicates that although their language differs, the collated stage directions have the same significance. For example,

1964 Holding up one hand, with a finger separated rann, cam3a (subst.)

There is no equivalent of Rann’s stage direction in Q1; it is derived from Wall’s speech in the play-within-the-play:

That I am that same wall; the truth is so.

And this the cranie is, right and sinister,

Through which the fearefull louers are to whisper.

Wilson’s (cam3a) version of the stage direction, while not identical to Rann’s, is close enough in its meaning not to require separate listing; it reads he stretches forth his fingers. The note has no lemma because no direction appears in Q1.

Beneath the textual notes is commentary on specific words or passages in the text. The glosses and explanatory notes of many editions of MND are quoted there, and definitions are drawn from works of reference and dictionaries, especially the Oxford English Dictionary but also dictionaries from or nearer to Shakespeare’s time such as Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall (1604), John Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, The Guide into Tongues (1617), and Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656), as well as Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Foreign language dictionaries— Thomas Thomas’s Dictionarum Linguae Anglicanae (1587) and John Florio’s English-Italian A Worlde of Wordes (1598), for example—are sometimes used. Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare-Lexicon and C. T. Onions’s Shakespeare Glossary are the sources of many definitions, and E. A. Abbott’s Shakespearian Grammar and Wilhelm Franz’s Die Sprache Shakespeares are frequently alluded to. In general, the first comment to be made is quoted, but if a later one is clearer, more accurate, or more explicit, it appears instead. In these notes and elsewhere square brackets within quotations enclose corrections or comments made by the editors of this volume; the square brackets of the quotations themselves have been transformed to angle brackets (< >). The spelling and punctuation of the works cited are retained except that if the beginning or the end of a sentence has been omitted but a complete sentence remains, it is provided with a beginning capital or a final period. Initial capitals are also supplied for direct discourse. No notes are printed entirely in italics even though the source may have done so.

The remainder of the edition begins with a list of the Q1 readings emended in the present text. Following that is another collection, a listing of proposed substantive emendations never adopted in the editions of MND collated. The subsequent sections are more general. Included are an essay on the text of the play—its authenticity, the printing and publication of Q1, Q2, and F1, the nature of printer’s copy for each, and the possibility of revision in the Q1 text and between it and F1. A second essay considers the date of the play’s composition; a third examines the play’s sources, that is, its most usually accepted probable sources. Other possible sources that have garnered significant critical support are also mentioned. Following is a selection of the literary criticism of the play and then a stage history that includes a record of how the text has been altered for the theater, an account of important performances, and a discussion of the actors who have taken major roles, as well as of directors responsible for significant interpretations. Finally, there is an account of the songs and dances that embellish the play’s dialogue and action.

The versions of MND published in the following editions were collated for substantive differences from Q1. Each title is preceded by the siglum that identifies the edition in the textual notes and other textual apparatus. The place of publication of these and all other books mentioned throughout the edition is London unless otherwise specified.

The editions, books, and manuscripts listed below are also referred to. Although all editions mentioned in the textual notes have been fully collated, only readings that they first print or, in a few instances, revive after long disuse are reported. Readings from revised editions (n&h, cam3b, pen1a) appear only when those editions differ from their predecessors.

The following sources are occasionally quoted in the commentary or critical discussion:

The Commentary quotes from and cites the following standard editions unless a different edition is specified.

List of abbreviations and terms

• ad.
  added, additionally
• adj.
  adjective; adjectival
• ad loc.
  ad locum referring to this word, line, passage
• Ado
  Much Ado about Nothing
• adv.
  adverb
• AEB
  Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography
• AI
  American Imago
• AJES
  The Aligarh Journal of English Studies
• AJP
  The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
• Am.
  Spenser, Amoretti
• Anm.
  Anmerkung, note
• Anon., anon.
  Anonymous
• ANQ
  ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews
• Ant.
  Antony and Cleopatra
• app.
  appendix
• apud
  according to
• Archiv
  Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
• ARIELE
  ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature
• Assn.
  Association
• Aufl.
  Auflage, edition
• AWW
  All’s Well that Ends Well
• AYL
  As You Like It
• b
  (superscript in a signature) right-hand column
• BD
  Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess
• BEPD
  W. W. Greg. Bibliography of the English Printed Drama (4 vols 1939–59)
• BJA
  British Journal of Aesthetics
• BJRL
  Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester
• BL
  British Library
• bull.
  bulletin
• BuR
  Bucknell Review
• c.
  century; circa
• CahiersE
  Cahiers Elisabéthains
• C&L
  Christianity and Literature
• CE
  College English
• CEA
  CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association
• cf.
  compare
• CHA
  Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos
• ch(s).
  chapter(s)
• CkT
  Chaucer, The Cook’s Tale
• CL
  Comparative Literature
• CLAJ
  College Language Association Journal
• CLQu
  Colby Library Quarterly
• CLS
  Comparative Literature Studies
• ClT
  Chaucer, The Cleric’s Tale
• CML
  Classical and Modern Literature
• CompD
  Comparative Drama
• conj.
  conjecture; conjunction
• ContempR
  Contemporary Review
• corr.
  corrected
• Cor.
  Coriolanus
• cp.
  compare
• CQ
  Cambridge Quarterly
• CritQ
  Critical Quarterly
• CrSurv
  Critical Survey
• CT
  Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
• CUP
  Cambridge University Press
• Cym.
  Cymbeline
• dir.
  director, directed by
• EA
  Études Anglaises
• EAA
  Estudos Anglo-Americanos
• EAN
  English Association Newsletter
• E&S
  Essays and Studies
• EAS
  Essays in Arts and Sciences
• ed.
  edited by, edition, editor
• eds.
  editions, editors
• EETS
  Early English Text Society
• EIC
  Essays in Criticism
• ELH
  ELH: English Literary History
• ELN
  English Language Notes
• ELR
  English Literary Renaissance
• EMEDD
  The Early Modern English Dictionaries Database [online], ed. Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto
• EMLS
  Early Modern Literary Studies
• Err.
  The Comedy of Errors
• ES
  English Studies
• ESC
  English Studies in Canada
• esp.
  especially
• ESTC
  English Short Title Catalogue
• et al.
  and others
• etc.
  (in a textual note) all other fully collated editions
• ETh
  Elizabethan Theatre
• ETJ
  Theatre Journal (Columbia, Mo.)
• Expl
  Explicator
• f.
  folio (leaf or page number)
• F, F1
  First Folio (1623)
• F2, F3, F4
  Second (1632), Third (1663–4), Fourth (1685) Folios
• facs.
  facsimile
• FCS
  Fifteenth-Century Studies
• Ff
  Folios
• fig.
  figurative(-ly)
• fn(n).
  footnote(s)
• FolioS
  Folio: Shakespeare-Genootschap van Nederland en Vlaanderen
• FQ
  Faerie Queene
• Fr.
  French
• FR
  The French Review: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of French
• FranT
  Chaucer, The Franklin’s Tale
• Gent. Mag.
  Gentleman’s Magazine
• Ger.
  German
• Glos.
  Glossary
• GP
  Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, General Prologue
• 1H4
  1 Henry IV
• 2H4
  2 Henry IV
• H5
  Henry V
• 1H6
  1 Henry VI
• 2H6
  2 Henry VI
• 3H6
  3 Henry VI
• H8
  Henry VIII
• Ham.
  Hamlet
• HF
  Chaucer, The House of Fame
• HLQ
  Huntington Library Quarterly
• ibid.
  ibidem, in the same place
• I{DEM}
  idem, the same person
• i.e.
  id est, that is
• introd.
  introduction
• It.
  Italian
• JC
  Julius Caesar
• JDTC
  Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
• JEGP
  Journal of English and Germanic Philology
• Jn.
  King John
• JRMMRA
  Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
• JSL
  Journal of the School of Languages
• KnT
  Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale
• KPR
  Kentucky Philological Review
• KR
  Kenyon Review
• l(l).
  line(s)
• L&P
  Literature and Psychology
• LC
  A Lover’s Complaint
• LCL
  Loeb Classical Libary
• LCrit
  The Literary Criterion
• LGW
  Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women
• LLL
  Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Lr.
  King Lear
• Luc.
  The Rape of Lucrece
• m
  (with a siglum) a manuscript source
• Mac.
  Macbeth
• MerT
  Chaucer, The Merchant’s Tale
• Met.
  Metamorphoses
• MichA
  Michigan Academician
• MilPro
  Chaucer, The Miller’s Prologue
• MilT
  Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale
• MLA
  Modern Language Association
• MLN
  MLN: formerly Modern Language Notes
• MLQ
  Modern Language Quarterly
• MLR
  Modern Language Review
• MLS
  Modern Language Studies
• MM
  Measure for Measure
• MND
  A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• MP
  Modern Philology
• MR
  Massachusetts Review
• MRDE
  Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England
• MS(S)
  manuscript(s)
• MSR
  Malone Society Reprint
• MV
  The Merchant of Venice
• n(n).
  note(s); noun
• N&Q
  Notes and Queries
• NCD
  Room’s Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. NTC’s Classical Dictionary, 1990
• n.d.
  not dated
• NLH
  New Literary History
• n.p.
  place of publication not specified
• n.s.
  new series
• NTQ
  New Theatre Quarterly
• obs.
  obsolete
• OCD
  Oxford Classical Dictionary
• ODEP
  Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs. 3rd. ed. OUP, 1970.
• OED
  Oxford English Dictionary
• om.
  omitted
• orig.
  original(ly)
• OSA
  Oxford Standard Authors
• OSSt
  On-Stage Studies: An Annual Publication of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival
• Oth.
  Othello
• OUP
  Oxford University Press
• PBA
  Proceedings of the British Academy
• PBSA
  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
• Per.
  Pericles
• PF
  Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls
• Phaed.
  Plato, Phaedrus
• PhT
  The Phoenix and Turtle
• PL
  Paradise Lost
• PMLA
  Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
• PoT
  Poetics Today
• PP
  The Passionate Pilgrim
• PQ
  Philological Quarterly
• prep.
  preposition
• pt(s).
  part(s)
• pub.
  published
• Q1
  First Quarto (1600)
• Q2
  Second Quarto (1619)
• Qd
  Quod
• Qq
  Q1 and Q2
• QQ
  Queen’s Quarterly
• qtd.
  quoted
• r
  (in a signature or folio, superscript) recto
• R2
  Richard II
• R3
  Richard III
• R&L
  Religion and Literature
• REALB
  REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature
• REL
  Review of English Literature
• RenD
  Renaissance Drama
• RenP
  Renaissance Papers
• RenQ
  Renaissance Quarterly
• RES
  Review of English Studies
• ReT
  Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale
• Rev.
  Review
• rev.
  revised
• Rom.
  Romeo and Juliet
• RORD
  Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama
• rpt.
  reprint, reprinted
• RSC
  Royal Shakespeare Company
• RSH
  Revue des Sciences Humaines
• SAQ
  South Atlantic Quarterly
• SB
  Studies in Bibliography
• sb.
  substantive (noun)
• SCRev
  South Central Review
• SD(s), SD(D)
  stage direction(s)
• SEL
  Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900
• ShAB
  Shakespeare Association Bulletin
• ShakB
  Shakespeare Bulletin (New York Sh. Soc.)
• ShakS
  Shakespeare Studies
• Sh(n).
  Shakespeare(an) (any spelling)
• ShE
  Shakespeare’s English
• Shep. Cal.
  Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar
• ShipT
  Chaucer, The Shipman’s Tale
• ShN
  The Shakespeare Newsletter
• Shr.
  The Taming of the Shrew
• SHR
  Southern Humanities Review
• ShS
  Shakespeare Survey
• ShSA
  Shakespeare in Southern Africa
• ShStud
  Shakespeare Studies (Tokyo)
• ShY
  Shakespeare Yearbook
• sig(s).
  signature(s)
• SIR
  Studies in Romanticism
• SJ
  Shakespeare-Jahrbuch
• SJH
  Shakespeare-Jahrbuch (Heidelberg)
• SJW
  Shakespeare-Jahrbuch (Weimar)
• SN
  Studia Neophilologica
• Soc.
  Society
• Son.
  The Sonnets
• SP
  Studies in Philology
• SP(s)
  speech prefix(es)
• SPWVSRA
  Selected Papers of the Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia
• SQ
  Shakespeare Quarterly
• SqT
  Chaucer, The Squire’s Tale
• SR
  Sewanee Review
• STC
  Short Title Catalogue (by A. W. Pollard & G. R. Redgrave; 2nd ed., rev. & enl. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, & K. F. Pantzer. 3 vols. 1986–91)
• StHum
  Studies in the Humanities
• Stud.
  Studies
• Studies
  Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (Dublin)
• subst.
  substantially, substantive
• s.v.
  sub verba or sub voce, under the words
• TDRev
  TDR: The Drama Review
• TGV
  Two Gentlemen of Verona
• ThS
  Theatre Survey
• Thop.
  Chaucer, Tale of Sir Thopas
• Tim.
  Timon of Athens
• Tit.
  Titus Andronicus
• TLN
  Through Line Number
• TLS
  Times Literary Supplement (London)
• Tmp.
  The Tempest
• TN
  Twelfth Night
• TNK
  The Two Noble Kinsmen
• tr.
  translated by, translation, translator
• Tr.
  Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde
• Trans.
  Transactions
• Tro.
  Troilus and Cressida
• TSLL
  Texas Studies in Literature and Language
• UCrow
  The Upstart Crow
• UMSE
  University of Mississippi Studies in English
• Univ.
  University
• UTQ
  University of Toronto Quarterly
• v
  (in a signature or folio, superscript) verso
• v.
  verb; verse; vide, see
• Var.
  Variorum
• Ven.
  Venus and Adonis
• vb.
  verb
• VN
  Victorian Newsletter
• vol(s).
  volume(s)
• WBT
  Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• Wiv.
  The Merry Wives of Windsor
• WS
  Women’s Studies
• WT
  The Winter’s Tale
• wt
  what or with
• wth
  with
• YES
  Yearbook of English Studies
• ye
  the
• yr
  your
• YR
  Yale Review
• yt
  that
• yu
  you

Symbols used in the textual apparatus include:

• ‸
  punctuation absent
•  ~ 
  corresponding word(s) of the lemma repeated
• -
  (between two sigla) all collated editions between and including those indicated by the two sigla
• +
  all succeeding collated editions
• (− )
  all sigla following the minus sign within parentheses indicate editions that agree with the Variorum text (i.e., with Q1)