John Payne Collier

John Payne Collier is a critic and editor whose books assemble dramatic history, old plays, textual notes and popular song into a sustained inquiry about literary transmission. His dramatic-poetry history follows the growth of performance through records, writers and changing stage practice. A Select Collection of Old Plays gives neglected drama a larger reading space, making editorial arrangement part of the encounter with earlier texts. Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays concentrates on disputed wording and the consequences of correction. A Book of Roxburghe Ballads broadens the field toward print culture and song, showing Collier’s recurring interest in how fragile materials are gathered, interpreted and passed onward.