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Although I sympathize with Bill's desire to broaden this discussion, his 5 March message stimulates me to raise my head briefly from the Somerset trenches of REED. There is much to say about how we have developed our principles of selection - a complex subject, by no means dictated simply by economic constraints and a domineering publisher. Obviously editing records text from diverse sources must involve some pragmatic decision-making: for example, at REED's foundation the decision was made not to systematically search all wills surviving for residents of a city or county - nor all estate documents.It is true that these limits were set because the extent of such a search on a county by county basis would have taken more time and money than the very important research to be done on documents more likely to yield dramatic records relevant for theatre history. This is not to say that wills are of less interest and we do pursue any that are discovered during the search of printed sources that accompanies the research in original documents. So economy most definitely played a role in this decision. But the approach taken in printing full or selective extracts from other sources that we do search systematically has evolved in significant ways since the early volumes of REED were published - shall we call the late seventies REED's post-Malone era? Although Coletti's article cited by James raised some stimulating questions, it focussed on these early volumes of civic records -- no assessment of the series and the editorial response to context for dramatic records can be fairly done without a careful review of the county and later city volumes. James may not have yet have read Coletti's later review of Herefordshire/Worcestershire, with Peter Greenfield's response, published in Envoi 3.1 (Spring, 1991). The selection of illuminating context for dramatic entries and the incorportion of complementary evidence (miscellaneous biographical materials for minstrels, for example) is part of our editorial game and we have worked out various strategies - including the detailed document descriptions referred to by Sandy which will always support an individual researcher's desire to do a more extensive study of a manuscript which we have opted to make selections from in accordance with our own guidelines. So there's much more to say in response to Bill's reflections on the general topic of editing dramatic records, but that will have to come another day, from me at least. In fact, this might better be the subject for a round table discussion at a conference when we can all put our editorial pencils down and exchange ideas more readily?