“Ralegh” vs. Ralegh
But if we consider that the “purest,” eighteen-line version of the poem survived only in a single manuscript, and the twenty-four or thirty-line versions of the poem were historically more important, what is the sense of editing “Ralegh” in a way that denigrates nonauthorial variants or that encourages historical erasure in the name of rescuing an authorial archetype that is allegedly prior to historical vicissitude? The “Ralegh” that emerged within the transmission and reception of a body of verse that was a mixture of authorially sanctioned work, additions and revisions to these texts, and the incorporation of texts by other writers is, finally, an authorship sign that makes sense historically in terms other than those of verifiable canon.
- Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric, 145-6
