Complete Works of Robert Browning: With Variant Readings and Annotations, Vol. 3

426 Pages·1972·14.8 MB·English

by  Robert Browning

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THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT kWNINGjC; VOLUME 111
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Vqoiirdi oinngt s Annototions
E D I T O R I A LB O A R D
PARK HONAN
WARNERB ARNES D
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VOLUME 111
OHIO UNIVERSITYP RESS
ATHENS,O HIO 1971
...
111
Copyright o 1971b y Ohio University Press
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:6 8-18389
ISBN 82 14-74-6
All rights reserved
Printed in the United Stateso f America
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CONTENTS
Page Number
PREFACE vii
TABLE OF EDITIONS REFERRED TO
THREVE O LUM E IN xxviii
Page Number
PIPPAP ASSES in Original
Edition
Introduction 13 3
Part I. Morning 23 4
Part 11. Noon 41 8
Part 111. Evening 58 IO
Part IV. Night 72 13
K I N GV I C T O RA N DK I N GC H A R L E S
First Year, 1730”
Part V ictor .K ing I 89 5
PartV i cto rK. ing I1 I02 8
Second Year, 1731 -
PaCrth a rl Kesi.n g I 125 13
PaCrht a rl Kesin. g I1 142 17
ESSAY ON C H A T T E R T O N 159
V
DRARIATICL YRICS
Cavalier Tunes
Marching Along 197 3
Give a Rouse 199 3
Boots and Saddle 200 3
My Last Duchess 20 1 4
Count Gismond “03 4
Incident of the French Camp PO9 5
The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister 21 1 6
In A Gondola 21-4 7
Artemis Prologizes 22-4 9
Waring 228 10
Rude1 to the Lady of Tripoli 237 12
Cristina , “S9 12
Johannes Agricola in Meditation 24 2 13
Porphyria’s Lover 24 5 13
Through the ,Metidja to Adb-el-Kadr 247 14
The Pied Pipeorf Hamelin 249 14
T H E R E T U R N O F T H E D R U S E S
Act I 27 1 3
Act I1 285 6
Act 111 299 10
IV Act 312 13
V Act 325 16
EDITORIAL.N OTES
Pippa Passes 34 3
King Victor and KingC l~arles 352
Essay on Chatterton 3 64
Dramatic Lyrics S 68
The Returno f the Druses 387
C U M U L A T I VI N ED EOTX I FT L E S 396
C U M U L A T I V EI N D E XO FF I R S TL I N E S 397
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PREFACE
This edition of the works of Robert Browning is intended to be
complete. 1t is expected to run to thirteen volumes andw ill contain:
I. The full contents of the first editions of Browning's work, ar-
ranged in chronological order. The poems included in Dramatic Lyrics,
DramolicR omances and I-yrics, and Men and Il'omen appear in the
order of their first publication rather than the order in which Browning
rearranged them for later publication.
2. All prefaces. dedications,a nda dvertisementsw hichB rowning
wrote for his own works or for those of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
others.
3. The twok nownp rose essays whichB rowningp ublished:t he
review of a book on Tasso,g enerallyr eferredt oa s "The Essay on
Chatterton," and the preface for a collection of letters supposed to have
been written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, generally referred toas "The Essay
on Shelley."
4. The front matter and the table of contents of each of the col-
lected editions (1849, 1863, 1868, 1888-89a, and 1889) which Browning
himself saw through the press. The table of contents will include both
the pagination of the first edition and of this edition.
5. Poems by Browning published during his lifetime but not col-
lected by him.
6. Unpublished poems by Browning which have come to light since
his death.
7. John Forster's Thomcrs Wentwoylh, Earl of Styafford to which
Browning contri1)utetl significantly, though to whatp recise extent so far
cannot be determined.
8. Variants from secondary materials (see section six of this pref-
ace).
11 GENERAL TEXIUAL PRINCIPLES: COPY-IEXT AND VARIANTS
It is increasingly recognized that methods of editing nineteenth-
century textsn eed to be reexamined and probably revised. The old
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fasI1ionetl notion that a nineteenth- or twentieth-century text could be
simply reprintet1 from either thef irst or last edition is no longer tenable.
Recente xamination of the works of Hawthorne,h lelville,T wain.
Cooper, Mill antl others, for example, reveal problems different from
those arising from texts of earlier centuries, antl also differing problems
among recent writers which distinguish any one from the others.
Before we published Volume One of this edition, and after three
years of intensive study of both the specific problems connected with
Browning’s texts and the adequacy of prevailing theory to solve them,
we arrived at certain basic principles which we felt would produce an
authoritative, useful edition of Browning’s work. We recogniLetl at that
time, however, that after further practical experience with the text and
with new information that would undoubtedly become available, we
might want to elaborate upon and further document our initial state-
ment of texttlal principles. We now feel that the time has come for a
restatement. We are convinced that the principlesa ncl methods outlined
in Volume One are basically sound. We will attempt here, however, to
clarify any vagueness which might have existed in our original effort
andt op rovidea dditionale videncew hich, we believe. will further
increase the reasonablenesso f our choices ancl procedures.
0111fi-rs t problem was to select an authoritative text, ancl to tleter-
mine what was and what was not a legitimate variant to it. We have
manuscripts for nineteen of Browning’s thirty-four book publications.
Others may become available during the time we are working on this
editionN. one, howeverw, ith the possiblee xception of hok!ndo,
published on the day of Browming’s death, can be said to represent the
author’s final intentions. Each of Browming’s worksw ent througha
series of editions during his lifetime antl each was revised by Browning
himself.I f, indeed,t hem anuscripta nd each successive edition were
under Browning’s control and if it can be established that in all proba-
bility thec hanges macle ine ach were his own,t hen eachr epresents
Browning’s final decision att het ime,a ndm ust be considereda sa
possible copy-text.T hus thee stablishment of authorial control becomes
the central concern of the editors. That Browning did exercise control
over the publication of his works we shall demonstrate in due course.
Clearly in thec ase of a poet who was revising his work overa period
of more than fifty years neither the original manmcript nor the first
edition published from it can meet the accepted requirements for the
copy-text. Nor would any one text, producedb y a process of emendation
and conflation, result in a single text more representative than any one
we now have of what might be called the “real” Browning. To attempt
to-construct such a text would indicate not editorial responsibility, but
flagrant violation of the editorial principle that the author’s own deci-
sions are, to the extent they are discernible, to be respected. Indeed, the
...
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position we found ourselves in-that of producing n text carrying the
authority of (1~7a uthor-forced us to reconsider the commonly accepted
understanding of the terms (ex( and nzt/hol-.
Too often both text and author are considered as static entities,
Platonic archetypes. We do not have space here to consider fully the
philosophical implications of such an assumption and musto f necessity
restrict ourselves to ;I brief statement of a more practical nature. For
thosei nterested, we suggest that they read Morse Peckham’sa rticle
“Reflections on the Foundationso f Textual Criticism: Human Behavior
andB etterE ditions,” Proof I (1971).F ora w orkt hat variesi n a
series of documentsa nde ditions, each havinga uthoriala uthority,
clearly there is no such empirical entity asl hc text. Indeed, graspo f this
simple fact raises questions about the authorh imself. Which author-r
the author at whichst age in the process-is meant? Upon whatb asis can
we ascribe greater authenticity to one than to the others? The young
Browning who wrote P(1lrline in 1832, the maturing poet who revised it
in I 863 and 1868, and the old man who put it in final form in 1888 and
1889 differ greatly. Each of these editions represented Browning’s final
decisions as he understood himself at the time. Each has its own author-
ity, representingt hea uthor as hee xisted att hatp articular time.
Clearly. to reduce the Browning of those diverse stages to a static entity
renders him nol ess an artificial construction than to reduce a numbero f
versions of a work to a similar artificially constructed single text. Nei-
ther of such constructions canb e regarded as an empirical entity.
Our focus shifts, necessarily, from the text and the nulhor consid-
ered as static metaphysical entities to thep rocess of creating and editing
involved in the compilation of a series of documents; and concern about
the transmission of the text is redirected to the problem of understand-
ing the character of the decisions by which the successive and varying
versions of the work came to be.
It follows, therefore, that we are concerned more about authorial
function ande ditorial function thana bout nztlhol- and edilol-. Any
writer’s work consists of two processes: heg eneratesa w ork, and he
corrects or edits it by balancing his current conceptions of the coherence
of what he has written, and his grasp of the conventions applicable to
the kind of discourse he is composing as they then obtain and as he
understands them. The two functions are not necessarily isolated and
sequential. That is, he does not generate a statement once and then
forever afterm erely edit it. The text itself remainsf luid,s ubjectt o
continuous recreation. The manuscript that goes to the printer for the
first edition, no doubt, already represents a series of generations and
revisions; likewise, the marked copy for each subsequent edition may
and probably does represent both editing and recreation. The second
and subsequent editions of Pauline, for example, containing as they do,
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