At this juncture it is worth recalling that what we call history is not the same as what we call the past. History is a writing up of the past, based on documents. Although it may appear to be a primary artifact, a critical edition is essentially a history, or ‘write up’ of the primary document in question. The clear reading text is the crafted rendering of a past moment of intentionality; the editorial notes and apparatus are a narrative of the crafting. It goes without saying that such narrative constructs are necessarily subjective.