ABSTRACT
When Horace Furness adopted the title 'New Variorum' he was distinguishing his new project from the previous variorum edition of Shakespeare, that of Edmond Malone and James Boswell, published a half-century earlier in 1821. Its most immediate sign of renewal is the imminent publication of Robert Turner and Virginia Haas's Variorum Winter's Tale, which is now in production and is expected to appear near the end of the millennial year 2001. Not everyone wants such knowledge or mastery, of course. The casual reader, coming upon a puzzling line of text in a Shakespeare play, wants elucidation with the least interruption, and is happy to settle for a quick fix, for the best interpretive guess of the latest Arden or Cambridge or Oxford editor. For the profession as a whole, though, a Variorum provides what no other alternative is able to offer.
