See my articles «Cervantes at Work: The Writing of Don Quixote, Part I», Journal of Hispanic Philology, 3 (1979), 133-60, and «The Lose and Recovery of Sancho's Ass in Don Quixote, Part I», The Modern Language Review, 73 (1980). 301-10. My book The Compositors of the First and Second Madrid Editions of «Don Quixote», Part I, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1975, and my article «El caso del epígrafe desaparecido: Capítulo 43 de la edición príncipe de la primera parte del Quijote», Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 28 (1980), 352-60, show that the compositors of the first and second editions of Don Quixote, Part I, altered the orthography of their copy-text. Some forthcoming studies and projects now in progress will demonstrate that the compositors who set the first editions of Don Quixote, Part II, Galatea, and the Novelas, also imposed their own orthographic preferences. The present article is based on the theories advanced and conclusions reached in these studies.

Gathering ¶ of Part II has two occurrences of the possessive pronown vuestra(s) and nine occurrences of the abbreviated form, but this gathering was set by compositor I, who used the form vuessa(s) in his other gatherings.

Another compositorial practice evident in both Parts was to set comparatively few abbreviations of the plural feminine form vuestras (seventeen abbreviations out of a possible eighty-five instances), and of the singular and plural masculine forms vuestro(s) (twenty-six abbreviations out of a possible two hundred and two instances).

For a detailed study of the development of the title vuestra merced see José Pla Cárceles, «La evolución del tratamiento 'vuestra-merced'», Revista de Filología Española, 10 (1923), 245-80. For a list of other monographs written on this subject see Rafael Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española, 8th edition, Madrid, 1980, p. 393, Footnote 62.

These quotations include the only ten exceptions to the grammatical rule discussed above.

Pla Cárceles considers that the form vuessa derived directly from the learned (written) form vuestra: (Lat.) vostra > vuestra > vuessa; but he studies this form only as an element of the title vues(tr)a merced (his only mention of the form vuestra alone -the excerpt he quotes has the form vuessa- appears on page 252, footnote 2), leaving out the likely possibility that the forms vuessa(s) and vuesso(s) might have appeared earlier, independent of the title. The uses and exact origin of this form are in fact not clear. In his Manual de gramática histórica española (sixth edition, Madrid, 1941) Ramón Menéndez Pidal notes: «En el caso de la [combinación] STR hay una solución ss que se halla en algunas voces hoy desusadas;... vuesso... puede remontar al latin vulgar; vuesa merced» (p. 145, item 51, 1), and, «La lengua antigua y vulgar conoce otra forma: vuesso» (p. 258, item 97, 1); and Juan de Luna (Diálogos, Paris, 1619) states: «si (el que habla) es de los más ladinos dize vuesasté, el común, vuesa merçed, y los mis rústicos vuestra merçed,» quoted by Pla Cárceles, p. 259.

If one wishes to find further textual evidence in other works of Cervantes to support these theories and conclusions, Galatea offers excellent text ground. In this work Cervantes had, of course, no intention of dwelling on or stressing ironically the differences between proper and improper forms because, from a linguistic point of view, all his characters are equals -shepherds shepherdesses, villagers- hence we would look in vain for an occurrence of the title vuestra merced in any form, or of any improper use of the forms vuessa(s), vuesso(s), or vuestra(s) even though the first edition of Galatea was set by more than one compositor and their setting habits and spelling preferences varied from each other. In the Novelas, in the Entremeses, and in Cervantes' poetry we will, on the other hand, find all these form again, and also some occurrences of the syncopated vulgarism boacé (Ginés de Pasamonte is the only character in Don Quixote who uses the form boacé, Part I, N8, 12, and N8v, 2; did the disguised Ginés use the vulgarism also in Part II in his character of Maese Pedro?).

There is little new or revolutionary about some of the general editorial policies I am proposing in this article. Scholars have given a great deal of thought to the many problems involved in editing. For a comprehensive survey of the controversies concerning editing which have arisen among specialists sea G. T. Tanselle, «Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing», Studies in Bibliography, 34 (1981), 23-65. Tanselle's definition of the «historical» and «ahistorical» approaches and of «scholarly», «unscholarly», «critical», and «noncritical» editions are somewhat narrow. He states that in a critical edition one uses «editorial judgment to determine when, and whether, emendations are to be made in the text», whereas in a noncritical edition one reproduces «exactly one particular text, without alteration» (p. 60). Out to reproduce a text without alterations is almost impossible. In fact, a true «noncritical» edition would have to be a one-hundred-per-cent faithful facsimile reproduction of only extant manuscript or printed copy of any given work. In other words, the editor of a noncritical edition would have to have no alternative as to his copy-text, because any decision involving a choice between different manuscript copies, between manuscript or printed copies, between different copies of the same edition, or between copies of different editions already constitutes an editorial judgment, as Tanselle acknowledges on page 62 of his article. «Regularizing and modernizing», Tanselle states, «(their aims may be different, but they amount to the same thing) are ahistorical in orientation and therefore have no place in the historical approach to texts -which is to say, in scholarly editions» (p. 61). First, regularization and modernization may in some instances «amount to the same thing», but this is not necessarily true in all cases, and, second, an editor may, and can, take the «historical approach» and, at the same time, produce a modernized edition (see above, footnote 1). Tanselle concludes that «a text prepared for scholars will also be the appropriate one to present to students and to the general public» (p. 61). Indeed, but leaving aside the fact that each work and the problems it presents to its editors are unique, I would go a step further: a text prepared by scholars for the general public, i.e. a scholarly, critical, modernized edition, will also be (in most circumstances) an appropriate text to present to scholars and to students.

E. C. Riley, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); Richard L. Predmore, The World of Don Quixote (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967) and Cervantes (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973); Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle, and the «Persiles», (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).

For a general account of the setting and individual critics see: René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), vol. 2 («The Romantic Age»), chapters 1-3. In English the fullest account of Friedrich Schlegel is: Hans Eichner, Friedrick Schlegel (New York: Twayne, 1970). The crucial works of Friedrich Schlegel are available in an English translation by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc: Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968). The standard edition of the original texts referred to is Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler with the collaboration of Jean-Jacques Anstett and Hans Eichner (Munich: Schönigh, 1958), vol. 2. Those texts are Gespräch über die Poesie (1799-1800) and the three sets of «fragments»: Kritische Fragmente, (1797), Athenäums-Fragmente (1798), and Ideen (1800). Cervantes' fortune in Germany is chronicled in the still indispensable work of J.-J. A. Bertrand, Cervantès et le Romantisme allemand (Paris: Alcan, 1914).