Sir Walter Wilson Greg (9 July 1875 – 4 March 1959), known professionally asW. W. Greg, was one of the leading bibliographers andShakespeare scholars of the 20th century.[1]
Greg was born atWimbledon Common in 1875. His father,William Rathbone Greg, was an essayist; his mother was the daughter ofJames Wilson. As a child, Greg was expected one day to assume editorship ofThe Economist, which his grandfather had founded in 1843; Greg was educated atWixenford,Harrow andTrinity College, Cambridge.[2]
At Cambridge, he metRonald McKerrow, whose friendship helped shape Greg's decision to pursue a career in literature.[3] He was an inaugural member of theMalone Society. While still in school he compiled a list of Renaissance plays printed before 1700, and he joined theBibliographical Society the same year. He was President of the Society from 1930 to 1932,[4] and received its Gold Medal in 1935.[5]
After school, Greg settled into a life of steady productivity, while living on the proceeds of his shares ofThe Economist. Working in close association withA. H. Bullen, he producedPastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (1906), the first edited version of the account books ofPhilip Henslowe (1906–8) and the papers ofEdward Alleyn. The latter two works provided him with a knowledge of Renaissance theatrical conditions perhaps rivalled only byE. K. Chambers, and this knowledge he applied to the publications of theMalone Society, which he served as general editor between 1906 and 1939. He served as Librarian of Trinity College, 1907–13, resigning after his marriage to his cousin Elizabeth Gaskell.
In 1913 he held theSandars Readership in Bibliography atCambridge University lecturing on "Some bibliographical and textual problems of the English Miracle-play Cycles."
As an independent scholar, Greg produced editions ofThe Merry Wives of Windsor (1910),Robert Greene'sOrlando Furioso andGeorge Peele'sThe Battle of Alcazar (published together, 1923), andSir Thomas More (1911). He returned to specific editing with work onDoctor Faustus (1950). Greg also wrote on the material conditions ofEnglish Renaissance theatre and publishing; his work in this regard includesDramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses (1931) andEnglish Literary Autographs, 1550–1650 (1932).The Variants in the First Quarto of King Lear (1940) offered a careful examination of this printing. He also wrote hundreds of reviews, including a notably caustic rejection ofJ. Churton Collins's 1905 Oxford edition of Robert Greene.
At the beginning ofWorld War II, Greg moved toSussex, where he spent the war working on his edition ofFaustus. In addition, he began to prepare his great works of the 1950s:The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (1951),The Shakespeare First Folio: Its Bibliographical and Textual History (1955),Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing, 1550–1650 (1954), and the essay "The rationale of copy-text" (1950), which had a significant influence ontextual criticism. Greg was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1945.[6]
Greg wasknighted in the1950 King's Birthday Honours List. He wasLyell Reader in Bibliography at Oxford University, 1954–5 speaking on "Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650." Greg was strongly associated withAlfred W. Pollard in developing a modern understanding of the transmission of Shakespeare's texts.
