Variant Texts

Abstract Variant texts contain errors. In editorial practice, this self-evident truth can be resolved most coherently by appealing to the authorial authority of the emendation, which places the edited text at a smaller remove from the hand of the author than the version copy text. Accordingly, the author is usually invoked as the basis for departing from a version whose identity finds initial grounding on a hypothesis of authorial alteration. The chapter focuses on the tipping-point case of the variant that makes some sort of sense in both iterations but that can potentially be explained alternatively through the mechanics of error. Readings from a passage in Hamlet are examined to argue that the techniques of textual analysis can be deployed effectively to navigate these variants, but only if authorial authority is invoked.