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I'm grateful for Sandy Johnson's explanation of the pragmatics that lie behind REED's editorial decisions; I think all of us who are familiar with the operation knew or assumed that economic considerations bulked large. But I was deliberately trying not to talk about REED as a specific undertaking; I was trying to follow James Cummings's lead by opening a discussion centered on methodological issues in general rather than on the cold economics of a particularized reality. I think it's useful and even healthy for us to explore what we think the parameters of our work might be, or ought to be, even if we know we can't afford to support the conclusions we come to. If we don't do that, then the publishers dictate the dimensions of our discipline. Hence my questions about philosophical positions, about the entailments of records research, and about the significance of "context", a much abused word. I'm still hoping to tempt some people to respond. Is there, for example, any point in worrying about whether a particular bit of evidence is central or tangential to "the discipline", as distinct from its centrality to our own hobbyhorse of the moment? Can we even speak of theatre history as a discipline, or is it merely the sum total of whatever it is we're all idiosyncratically doing? _______________________________________________________________________ William Ingram, English Dept, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045 e-mail: [log in to unmask] fax (departmental): 313 763 3128 -----------------------------------------------------------------------