When contemplating which scene to choose for my edition project, I knew it had to be a scene that interested me. I thought back to our class discussions about Romeo and Juliet. The conversation I kept thinking back to was that of the moment Romeo and Juliet first meet. I remembered this conversation above all others because of our discussion of its structural importance. I learned that their first conversation was constructed in the form of a sonnet and for this reason, I wanted to dissect the scene further. I choose the scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet for my own personal interest, but also because of its poetic form. The whole play surrounds the relationship of Romeo and Juliet, so nothing felt more fitting than their initial moment of “love at first sight.” I thought it would be fascinating to see if this crucial moment changed drastically or hardly at all between different published versions. With the instruction to analyze the first published version as one of our editions, I thought it would be interesting to compare the first three editions; to follow the changes between printings in a consecutive series. The second version was published in 1599, and the third was published in 1609. I first looked to see if there were any large changes between the first and second published editions, as they were only published two years apart I assumed there would be little changed. I was surprised to see there were more changes between these two versions than I had expected, especially towards the end of my selected lines. In the final seven lines of my selected scene, there is a character change from Benvolio to Capulet which felt importantly different; switching the dialogue between a young guest and a host. I decided to use the 1599 (second edition) as my copy text because when comparing all three copies, I found it had the most similarities between the two. The 1599 edition provided a middle-of-the-line comparison, because of its placement in terms of chronology. I also found fewer changes between the 1609 and 1599 editions, alluding to the idea that the changes between the first two editions were impactful. I decided to keep some crucial language from the 1597 edition in my own edition, as it felt more powerful and notably was published first. I was not surprised to see that the lines between Romeo and Juliet did not break Shakespeare’s sonnet form from the first edition. Although there are punctuation and spelling variations, the body of their conversation stays intact between all three versions.
I started this project by printing out all three editions and placing them next to one another. I went through each of these texts and compared them, line by line. After deciding on my copy text, I went through this process once more comparing the 1597 and 1609 versions to my copy text. This process inspired me to make a chart. I am a very visual learner and thought it would make the most sense to re-create what I had laid out in front of me in the form of a chart, for my Textual Variants Catalogue. My goal was to be able to clearly see all the changes with no distractions. After creating my chart I decided to make a key in order to carefully identify each of the changes. It used colors such as red, blue, green, and orange to identify different changes ranging from a character change to a line break. Bold lettering was used for a change in spelling or grammar. I wanted the more crucial changes to stand out, thus I used colors–for less dramatic changes (such as spelling or grammar) I used bold lettering. This way I was able to keep track of the changes as well as different types of changes.
My editorial choices made my copy slightly different from my 1599 copy text. When writing my edition, I decided to make reader-friendly changes by modernizing letters; changing “f” to “s” and “u” to “v.” This more modern edition allowed me to better comprehend the text while not disrupting the sounds (iamb) and structure within the narrative. Since the sonnet form and the sounds of my chosen scene are so crucial, I was careful to not heavily disturb its original form. I was challenged when deciding what to highlight for annotations. I started this process by re-reading my edition and highlighting what lines interested me the most. From this, I had over twenty lines highlighted and realized I needed to narrow it down even further. I then looked to see which lines I had the most questions about, or that felt the most crucial to the overall narrative. For example, I annotated Romeo’s opening four-line speech to explain how it was the first quatrain apart of a sonnet created between Romeo and Juliet. This line began the first quatrain (ABAB) and set a pattern for the lines to follow. This annotation was valuable because without bringing attention to the sonnet form the reader may have never known and would have no chance to understand the text as a love poem. Annotations are intended to guide a reader’s thinking as well as inform them of crucial information that could help make sense of the text. My annotations around structure and form were informative, but I also wanted to define concepts perhaps unknown to a modern reader. For example, I chose to define “fin” so the reader could understand this word beyond its contemporary definition. A fin is defined as an organ attached to various parts of the body, but it is also defined as a way to make something physically pure, remove impurities, or be cleaned in a moral way. The second definition provides the reader with a better understanding. I aimed for my annotations to be interesting as well as informative; to push the reader to think more about the structure, and the arrangement of words, rather than just the plot.