We'll spend the quarter equipping ourselves with the knowledge--paleographical, textual, historical, literary--that will enable us to evalute the extent to which we might be able to discover what Shakespeare wrote. We'll give special attention to three different kinds of textual problems--those found in Macbeth, King Lear, and Henry V. Along the way we'll have an opportunity to explore the contemporary image of an editor as a cultural Visigoth with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, methodically (re)covering our literary heritage. The course has no prerequisites. Requirements: reports and essay or project. Books: William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies, 3rd ed. (New York: MLA, 1999), and your favorite collected edition of Shakespeare's works published within the past twenty-five years.