ABSTRACT
One of the most signifi cant developments in recent research into nineteenthcentury drama has been the attempts made by theatre historians to recover the specifi c details of individual performances. These attempts have been prompted by a desire to understand nineteenth-century plays as complex social experiences, a project which involves interrogating what Jill Sullivan summarizes as ‘the environment in which performances were produced’, when environment can extend beyond the stage space, and even the theatre building and its management, to the social and cultural geography of the district, town, or city in which a performance venue is located (Sullivan 2011: 11). Given the scale of these ambitions, it might seem perverse to argue that the publishing formats of nineteenth-century play-texts still merit examination, as well as to suggest that it is text-editing as much as the study of performance practices which forms a crucial element of how we value the genre. That print culture has in the past played a key role in determining the nineteenth-century dramatic canon is not now in dispute. Less often acknowledged are the ways in which modern judgments about nineteenth-century theatre continue to depend upon assumptions about the textual condition of nineteenth-century play-texts.
