The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Shakespeare-Expositor: An Aid to the Perfect Understanding of Shakespeare's Plays, by Thomas Keightley

Transcriber's Note

A [list] of the changes made can be found at the end of the book. Author's corrections are underscored with a thin gray dotted line "like this". Other corrections are underscored by a dotted red line "like this". Hover the cursor over the underlined text and an explanation of the error should appear.

THE
SHAKESPEARE-EXPOSITOR:
AN AID
TO THE PERFECT UNDERSTANDING OF
SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

BY

THOMAS KEIGHTLEY,

EDITOR OF THE 'PLAYS AND POEMS OF SHAKESPEARE.'

LONDON:

J. RUSSELL SMITH, 36 SOHO SQUARE.

1867.

Printed by Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.

PREFACE.

The object of this volume is to form a manual for the use chiefly of those who, not being possessed of a voluminous annotated edition, are fain to content themselves with the simple text. But even those who have a perfect Shakespeare library cannot well dispense with it; for my original corrections, which are very numerous, are nowhere else to be found.

It was originally intended to form the complement to my Edition of the Plays, and as such I had announced its immediate appearance. Why it did not appear has been explained in Notes and Queries (3 S. vii. 175), and the statement there made was incontrovertible; for it was the simple truth. The delay, however, has been no injury, but rather a benefit to it. Its relation to the Edition now is that, while it is perfectly independent and suited to any edition, the Edition without it is somewhat like what a Euclid would be without diagrams or demonstrations, as the reader will meet with numerous alterations of the text, and be quite ignorant of how or why they were made. Moreover the errors and oversights which escaped me in it will be found here all corrected.

To my own Edition I regard it, then, as indispensable; and if I were to mention any other to which it is peculiarly adapted, I should say that which is named the Globe; for it contains a copious and excellent Glossary—that in mine, which is not by me, is scanty—which, with the Notes and [Index] of this volume, will leave little unexplained.

It is certainly very disheartening to those who devote their time and labour to the elucidation of our Classic authors to find how small the number is of those readers who are at all anxious to understand them perfectly. The great majority, in fact, are quite satisfied if they can get at the general meaning of a difficult or obscure passage, and so glide over it. Still I am not without hope that among the tens of thousands who buy, and I presume read, these Plays, there may be found a few, a very few, hundreds who may wish to understand what they read, and will therefore possess themselves of this volume. Profit is not dreamed of, but it is hoped that loss may not be incurred.

When I was preparing my Edition of Milton's Poems, I fell into the habit of correcting the text of our old writers. Hence I have corrected copies of Chaucer, Spenser, the dramatists and others, which mayhap may prove useful to future editors. The corrections of Shakespeare proved so numerous as to form the present volume; but the idea of editing his works never entered my mind till it was proposed to me, when I fear my vanity became interested. I had been confessedly the best editor of Milton, I might perchance stand in the same relation to Shakespeare. My wish had been to be to the Faerie Queen what I had been to Paradise Lost; and I may yet, perhaps, communicate some remarks on it in the pages of Notes and Queries.

It was on the first edition of Collier's Shakespeare that I made my corrections, and of previous emendations, if not noticed there, I knew nothing. I afterwards read the Variorum and later editions; hence I shall often be found saying that I had been anticipated. This was always a source of pleasure to me, as a proof of the correctness of my emendation. Porson, we are told, actually shed tears of joy when on meeting with a copy of Aristophanes with MS. notes by Bentley, he found his corrections had so frequently been anticipated. His delight was still greater when on the discovery of the Ravenna MS. he saw so many of his readings confirmed.

I must confess that experience has given me a good deal of confidence in my own critical powers, and I am apt to fancy that when I cannot conquer a difficulty it is nearly insuperable. Hence I have been little anxious about learning what has been written by late critics.

At the risk, or rather I should say with the certainty, of being charged with egotism, I will here state the following fact; for why should truth be concealed? As I was one day, many years ago, discussing some points in my 'Tales and Popular Fictions' with the late Mr. Douce, he suddenly exclaimed "Oh, that you had but my knowledge! What discoveries you would make!" I believe he was right, and that, under more favourable circumstances, I should have done much; but it was not to be.

I have endeavoured to grapple with every difficulty, to leave, if possible, no knot unloosed. Some of my corrections must (many, I think, probably will) be admitted into the text. At the same time, I freely confess that some of these emendations are merely desperate remedies for desperate diseases; and it may be that future critics may have more success than I have had. I have, I believe, advanced the criticism of Shakespeare some stages; and if succeeding critics follow the path I have traced, the Plays will perhaps be, ere long, brought as near their original state as is possible.

I regard the Introduction to the Notes as the most valuable part of this volume, as I have there endeavoured to reduce emendatory criticism to rule and law. I would earnestly recommend the reader to make himself master of it before using the Notes. It would also perhaps be well to do the same with the Index. The chief object of the Life, I may add, is to remove suspicion respecting the poet's private character.

The portions of the text given in the Notes are always that of the original editions, unless when it is otherwise expressed. I have made them as brief as possible, as this book will, of course, only be read in conjunction with the Plays themselves. I have only occasionally given the metrical arrangement; those who would enjoy the pleasure of reading the Plays in perfect metric order must read them in my Edition. Finally, in very obvious corrections I have not deemed it necessary to state that I had been anticipated.

This is the last of my works; my literary life here terminates. I am fast approaching the utmost limit set to human life by the Psalmist, my powers are necessarily on the decline, and prudence counsels obedience to the precept:

"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne

Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat."

T. K.

Belvedere, Kent,

December 20, 1866.

^*_*^* I have also contributed to English literature:—

The Poems of John Milton with Notes. Two vols. 8vo, 21s.

An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an Introduction to Paradise Lost. 8vo, 10s. 6d.

CONTENTS.

Errata.

Page [122], "If thou engrossest," etc. This note should come after the two next.

Page [302], line 2, for pulling read putting.

LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE.

A FAMILY of the name of Shakespeare—pronounced, it would seem, Shǎkspěr—was numerous in Warwickshire during the middle ages. About the middle of the sixteenth century John, the son of Richard Shakespeare, a farmer residing at Snitterfield in that county, was settled at Stratford-on-Avon, and was—though it appears he could neither read nor write—a leading member of the Corporation. Various accounts are given of his trade and occupation. We have proof that in 1556 he was a glover; he was afterwards a farmer or yeoman; Aubrey says he was a butcher; and according to Rowe, he was "a considerable dealer in wool." He would seem in fact to have been one who was ready to turn to any honest occupation by which money might be made.

In 1557 John Shakespeare married Mary, the youngest daughter of Robert Arden of Wilmecote, a man of good landed property, and belonging to a family of no mean note in the county of Warwick. By her he had either eight or ten children, of whom we need only notice William, the third, who was baptized April 26th, 1564; but the exact date of his birth is unknown. As his father was a member of the Corporation, it is highly probable that, as Rowe asserts, he was sent to the Free School of the town. How long he continued at it, and what he learned there, are matters on which we have no certain information. He had probably an ordinary English education, and he certainly, as his writings show, had learned some Latin; but he does not seem to have got beyond the elementary books, and of Greek, if it was taught in the school, he learned nothing whatever. We are told by one authority that he acted as an assistant in the school; by another that his father took him away early to assist in his own business of wool-stapling or, as the former, namely Aubrey, says, of butchering, who adds that "when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech,"—of course a mere figment. Malone conjectures—and in my opinion not without a show of probability—from the frequent occurrence of law-terms in his dramas, and his correct appreciation of their meaning, that he may have been for some time in the office of an attorney in Stratford. This, however, is all uncertainty; but at all events, judging from the turn of his mind, I should be inclined to say that, beside his accurate observation of men and manners, he read all the books he could obtain in his native town.

In the registry of the diocese of Worcester is preserved a document bearing date November 28, 1582, securing the Bishop against injury in the case of his licensing certain persons to be married with once asking of the banns. These persons are William Shakespeare, then in his nineteenth year, and Anne Hathaway, then apparently aged twenty-six years; for she died in 1623 at the age of sixty-seven years: she was therefore about eight years her husband's senior. When their marriage was celebrated we are unable to learn; but the baptism of Susanna, their first child, took place on the 26th of May, 1583, just six months after the date of the document quoted above. The natural inference is obvious. Shakespeare, like Burns, knew his wife before the law had made her his; and, like him, he acted honourably towards her.

This, perhaps the only imprudent act of Shakespeare's life, has been variously judged. Nothing, we know, is more common than for young men to fall in love with women older than themselves; and among the class of society to which both parties belonged, instances were, and are, not uncommon of the rules of prudence being transgressed in moments of weakness, while the moral principle remains untainted. We know that Burns's "Bonnie Jean" proved a most exemplary wife; and one of the most truly virtuous and unaffectedly modest women I ever knew was one who had acted thus imprudently. The bride of the future poet was Anne, daughter of Richard Hathaway, a husbandman, or substantial yeoman, of Shottery, a hamlet about a mile from Stratford, an intimate friend, it would appear, of John Shakespeare's; and hence we may presume that an intimacy prevailed also between the two families, and the not unlikely result was what has been stated.

We now have Shakespeare, at the commencement of his twentieth year, a married man, and the father of a child. On the 2nd of February, 1584-85, before he had completed his twenty-first year, were baptized Hamnet and Judith, twins. We hear of no more children of William and Anne Shakespeare; and soon after—most probably in 1586—Shakespeare left Stratford, and set out to seek his fortune in the metropolis. According to Rowe, he fled to escape from the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote-park, near Stratford, from whose park he and some other young men had stolen deer—a not unusual, and not very discreditable practice in those days. The knight, we are told, was indignant and vindictive, and the transgressor took his revenge by writing and affixing to the gate of Charlecote-park a satirical ballad, of which the first stanza has been preserved, and which, if genuine, is mere doggrel and utterly unworthy of Shakespeare. He may, however, have so written it on purpose. This is said to have added oil to the fire of the knight's rage, and to escape from it the author fled to London. His biographers in general are of opinion that his resentment against his persecutor did not die out, and that after his death and the lapse of many years he ridiculed him in the character of Justice Shallow in The Merry Wives of Windsor. But this was little in the character of "gentle" Shakespeare; and the whole theory is refuted by the fact that the allusion to "the dozen white luces" in the Justice's coat-armour, on which it is founded, does not occur in the original form of that play. It may have been made afterwards by way of joke, and without any malignity.

There is certainly no inherent improbability in this narrative; and it may have had its effect in determining Shakespeare to quit Stratford. But that it should have been the sole cause of his doing so is what I am disposed to question. We must recollect that Shakespeare was a man endowed with genius of the very highest order, and that he must have aspired to a wider field for its exercise than his native town could afford, that he had a family, and that his circumstances were very slender, while those of his father, as we have sufficient evidence, had been greatly reduced. Nor does it appear that he—who, as has been already observed, except in the case of his marriage, was always prudent—set out for London without having a definite object in view.

Now various companies of players, as we learn, were in the habit of visiting Stratford, like other country towns, and performing there in the Guildhall. It can be hardly doubted that Shakespeare, in whom dramatic genius was inborn, must have been excited by these performances, however low the merit of the pieces—perhaps even have felt that he was capable of producing something superior to them of the same kind. He probably then made the acquaintance of the players, one of whom, Burbage, was, it is supposed, a native of the town, and some others, natives of the county, and proposed embracing their profession. He was young, handsome, of animated and even brilliant conversation. There can be little doubt, then, that he met with encouragement, and was readily received among them. This was, it is most likely, in the year 1586, when he was two-and-twenty. Rowe says "he was received into the company at first in a very mean rank;" and in 1693 the parish-clerk of Stratford, a man eighty years of age, told a person named Dowdall, that he "was received into the playhouse as a serviture." Of course, like almost every other actor, he began at the bottom, having as it were to serve his apprenticeship. This, then, seems to be all true enough; not so another tradition, related by Johnson as coming from Pope and Rowe, namely, that his first occupation in London was holding gentlemen's horses at the door of the playhouse, in which business he succeeded so well that he hired boys to act under him. How little like Shakespeare this is need hardly be said.

A question which cannot be answered very satisfactorily is, What did Shakespeare at this time do with his wife and children? The probability would seem to be, that he left them at Stratford, and, as is most likely, at his father's, till he should see what success he was likely to meet with in London.

It would seem that for the first few years he was merely an actor; and if the Ellesmere Papers, published by Mr. Collier, be genuine, he had in 1589 become a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre. Before this date he may have begun to try his hand at making additions and alterations in the plays of others. Of these we seem to have examples in the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.; and there is a manifest allusion to this practice of his in the following passage of Green's Groat's Worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance, published after his death in 1592. Green is addressing his fellow dramatists Marlow, Peele, and others; and he says, "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygre's heart wrapt in a player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Here the allusion to Shakespeare's name is quite plain, and the line in italics is a parody on one in one of the plays which he appears to have thus treated. As this allusion seems to have caused just offence, Chettle, who had given Green's work to the world, took occasion shortly after in a work of his own, his Kind-hart's Dream, to make an apology, in which he says of Shakespeare, "Myself have seen his demeanour, no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art." We thus see that Shakespeare was regarded as an excellent player (for quality then answered to profession at the present time), as an elegant writer (facetious being employed in its classic sense), and as an upright and honourable man, and further, perhaps, as moving in what we should term good society.

Moreover this work of Chettle's, published at the end of 1592 or beginning of 1593, furnishes what I regard as a proof that Shakespeare had not at that time brought an original piece on the stage; for speaking of Green he says, "He was of singular pleasance, the very supporter, and—to no man's disgrace be this intended—the only comedian of a vulgar writer in this country;" of which last words the plain meaning is, that Green had as yet been the only tolerable writer of English comedy. Now we have sufficient means for judging of Green's comic powers; and surely no man in his senses would have ventured to write these words, had he been ever so prejudiced, if Shakespeare had already produced the Comedy of Errors or The Two Gentlemen of Verona. We may therefore venture to assert that neither of these plays was acted earlier than 1593.

We may here, by the way, notice some curious coincidences between Shakespeare and the great comic poet of France, Molière. There is some reason to suppose that both of them were originally connected with the law; they both went on the stage at, we may say, the age of twenty, or a little later. Shakespeare was in his thirtieth year when he produced his first original play, Molière in his thirty-second when he wrote L'Etourdi; but he had previously given some short pieces. Finally, the former died at the close, the latter at the commencement of his fifty-second year.

The allusion to the poet's literary character in Kindhart's Dream was in all probability to his Venus and Adonis, which was published in 1593, but which may, as was the custom in those days, have previously circulated in manuscript among his "private friends;" or it may have been to his Sonnets, which, as we shall presently see, thus circulated at this time. It is impossible to say when this poem was written; but there certainly is no necessity for supposing, with Mr. Collier, that it was composed at Stratford. Shakespeare's mind easily retained the requisite rural imagery; and with his power of rapid composition and command of language, a very few weeks would suffice at any time for its production. This poem, which he terms his "unpolished lines," and "the first heir of my invention," was dedicated to Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton. It met with general applause, and was followed, in 1594, by Lucrece, also dedicated to the same accomplished nobleman. The dedication, commencing with "The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end," would seem to intimate some degree of friendship on both sides; and as Shakespeare's private character, as we have seen, appears to have been most respectable, and Southampton was a well-known admirer of the drama, some kind of intimacy between him and the poet is not by any means improbable. There is also nothing incredible in what Rowe says had been "handed down by Sir William Davenant," of Lord Southampton's having "at one time given him £1000 to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." But the amount must be much exaggerated; for none of Shakespeare's purchases that we hear of ever came to so large a sum. Mr. Collier thinks, with some probability, that, as it appears that the Globe Theatre on the Bankside was built in 1594 by the company to which Shakespeare belonged, Lord Southampton may have given him as much money as his share of the cost came to, which could not well have been more than a few hundred pounds.

It was probably also about this time that he wrote his very enigmatic Sonnets, which Meres, in 1598, calls "his sugred sonnets among his private friends," meaning perhaps which only circulated privately in manuscript. I assign them this early date because their style and language so strongly resemble those of his two poems and his early plays, such as Love's Labour's Lost. They were not published till 1609, and then not by the author himself. They seem to have been collected from those who had the manuscripts by a Mr. W. H., whom therefore the publisher in his dedication terms "the only begetter" of them, "begetter" in the language of the time being getter, collector, &c. It has been conjectured, with great probability, that many of them were written in the person of Lord Southampton for the lady with whom he was enamoured; and others may have been written for other persons, a usual custom then of the poets of France and England. I feel almost convinced that few or none of them were written in the poet's own person. Thus in 1598 he was only thirty-four years old, and yet some of them are in the character of a man grey and advanced in years; even in 1609 he was only forty-five.

Along with the Sonnets was published a poem named A Lover's Complaint, of the genuineness of which I am rather dubious. There had already appeared, in 1599, under the name of Shakespeare, a catchpenny collection called The Passionate Pilgrim, in which are two of his manuscript sonnets, and three of those published the preceding year in Love's Labour's Lost, all of them with an altered text.

An account of the dates, &c., of Shakespeare's plays will follow this Life. Here, therefore, it need only be remarked that they extended over a space of less than twenty years (from 1592 to 1610?), during which time he had an active share in the management of the two theatres, and was also an actor for the whole or the greater part of it. He was, as we may well suppose, with Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and others, a member of the club instituted by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which met at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, in which street, it may be observed by the way, Milton was born during this period. Fuller has left us some account of the wit-combats that used to take place at the Mermaid between our poet and Ben Jonson.

The relations between Shakespeare and his family during this time are in a state of ambiguity, which no conjecture can fully clear up. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that he ever was on ill terms with his wife; and surely we have no right to suppose that, like La Fontaine, he left her in the country while he himself lived in the metropolis; for Shakespeare was a householder, while La Fontaine lived usually in the hôtels of his patrons. The more natural supposition is that he would have removed his wife and children to London as soon as he had got a firm footing there. Certainly no entry of the birth of any child of his is to be found in the register of any London parish; but may not some physical change, with which we are unacquainted, have caused his wife to cease from childbearing after the birth of the twins? There is also no entry of this kind in the register of Stratford; and yet it can hardly be that he, any more than La Fontaine, abstained from the bed of his wife in the annual visits which, according to Aubrey's very probable account, he was in the habit of making to his native town. But the burial of his son Hamnet took place in Stratford on the 11th of August, 1596, whence it might appear that the family was living there at that time. To this, however, it may be replied that the family, though usually resident in London, may have been down at Stratford when Hamnet took ill, or that he may have taken ill in London and have been ordered by the physicians to try the effect of his native air, or that, finally, he may have died in London, and his body have been taken down to Stratford for interment with his family, an act quite in character with Shakespeare. The mist, therefore, remains so far undispelled. But we are also to remember that Shakespeare, as above stated, was a householder in London, which might seem to intimate that he had a family there. It is to me a matter of extreme difficulty to believe that he who created so many of the loveliest female characters that the world has ever witnessed, should have led, as, we may say, he otherwise must have done, an irregular life with regard to the sex; for the effect of such conduct is almost always a degrading view of female nature; and how pure on this subject his ideas must always have been is strongly indicated by the circumstance that three of his most lovely female characters—Perdita, Miranda, Imogen—occur in the very last plays he wrote. We may here note the difference between him and La Fontaine. On the whole, then, my opinion is that Shakespeare had his wife and children with him in London, and that his life there was as regular and domestic as his profession permitted.

It has been argued, from a passage in Twelfth Night, in which a man is advised always to marry a woman younger than himself, that Shakespeare had felt the evil consequences of the opposite course. But surely we should not press thus closely language resulting from the situation of a character in a drama. And if Shakespeare was so convinced of the ill consequences of such a procedure, how came it that only a few months before his death he gave an apparently cheerful consent to the marriage of his daughter Judith with Thomas Quiney, who was four years her junior? This objection, then, also may be dismissed, and we remain as uncertain as ever.

We may also venture to deal in a similar way with a passage in the Tempest (iv. 1.), condemnatory of the conduct which he and his wife had pursued before their marriage. Further, as the only mention of his wife in his will is an interlineation, bequeathing her his "second best bed, with the furniture," a want of due regard for her comfort and independence has been inferred. But this in reality is rather indicative of affection; for, as Mr. Knight was the first to observe, as his property was mostly freehold, the law provided for her by assigning her what it terms dower. Lastly, the desire which Mrs. Shakespeare is said to have expressed to be buried with her husband is surely some proof of mutual affection.

It would also seem to be a matter of which there can be little doubt, that Shakespeare must have been an indefatigable reader during the first years of his residence in London. It is strange how none of the commentators appear to have been aware of this fact; for it is the only way of accounting for the remarkable copiousness of his vocabulary. Max Müller, following Professor Marsh, in his Lectures on the Science of Language, having observed, on the authority of a country clergyman, that some of our peasantry have not more than 300 words in their vocabulary, proceeds as follows:—

"A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the Times, and all the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words; Milton's works are built up with about 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say with 5642 words."

Now how else but by reading could Shakespeare have got such a store of words? It could not be by conversation, and he surely did not invent more than a few of them. This also tends to prove that Venus and Adonis was not written at Stratford; for his rural vocabulary could hardly have sufficed for such a poem.

But further, I think I am justified in asserting that during the earlier years of his dramatic career Shakespeare acquired a competent knowledge of the French and Italian languages. As we shall see, some of his plays were founded on Italian tales and plays of which no translation has ever been discovered; and the natural inference then is, that he had read them in the original. As to the French, he must have been able to write as well as read it. As a proof, in his Henry V. there are scenes of mingled French and English, which scenes are, like all the prose scenes in our old dramatists, in what I have denominated metric prose; and this could only be caused by the whole scene having been the production of the one mind. The French, too, is incorrect, as it is also in the really prose French scene between Katherine and Alice. It seems therefore probable in the highest degree that Shakespeare was able to write French. In like manner Ben Jonson has shown in his Alchemist and elsewhere, that he was able to write Spanish and other languages.

Another curious question is, Was Shakespeare ever out of England? This, too, cannot be determined; but it is clear to me, from various passages of his plays, that he must have been familiar with the sea-shore; and, from his correct use of nautical terms, we might suspect that he had been at sea on board a ship once, if not oftener. I cannot see any equal proof of his having been familiar with mountain scenery; and from the comparative vagueness of his language respecting mountains in Cymbeline and elsewhere, I rather suspect that he had never gazed on a mountain-range.

In 1597, the year after he had lost his only son, Shakespeare began to carry into effect his long-cherished project of acquiring property in his native county. For the seemingly trifling sum of £60 he purchased from William Underhill one of the best houses in the town of Stratford, named New Place, built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII., consisting of one messuage, two barns, and two gardens, with their appurtenances. It was situated in Chapel-street Ward; and as, in a note taken of corn and malt during a dearth in the beginning of the following year, we find him set down as the holder of ten quarters, it would appear that his family, if not he himself, must have been residing at that time in this place.

For some years subsequent to this date we find a few notices of purchases &c. in which Shakespeare was engaged, but nothing that throws any light on his personal history. Neither can we ascertain at what time it was that he disposed of his theatric property; for that he did so is plain, as he says nothing of it in his will. It would seem, however, to have been subsequent to 1610. It would also appear that he lived in Stratford in very handsome style, probably exercising a generous hospitality; for we learn from the diary of the Rev. J. Ward, vicar of that town in 1662, that he had heard that Shakespeare "spent at the rate of £1000 a-year." This sum, however, though not by any means so large, relative to the present value of money, as is usually supposed, is utterly incredible; but still it proves the tradition of his housekeeping having been liberal.

On the 5th of June, 1607, Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna, was married to Dr. John Hall, a physician of some eminence, settled in Stratford. They had but one child, a daughter named Elizabeth, who was married first to Thomas Nash, and secondly to John (afterwards Sir John) Barnard, of Abington, in Northamptonshire. She died in 1649, having had no children by either husband; and with her ended the lineal descent from the great Shakespeare; for Judith, his other daughter, who married a couple of months before his death, though she had three sons, outlived them all, as none of them attained to the age of twenty years. Poetic genius seems fated never to found a family; it is above the vulgar distinctions of human life.

We know not the exact date of Shakespeare's final departure from London and settlement at Stratford; but it probably was not much later than the year 1610. His life after his retirement was not destined to be very long. We may picture him to ourselves as passing his days in tranquil enjoyment, interesting himself somewhat in the affairs of the borough, conversing with his neighbours, telling anecdotes of his life in London, reading his Bible and Chaucer, Spenser, and other poets, and no doubt his North's Plutarch, giving occasional play to his wit, in short, leading the life of a wise and sensible man, contented with the condition he had made his mature choice of as most productive of happiness.

It is probable that in his fifty-second year he felt a decline in his constitution which reminded him of the uncertainty of life; for on the 25th of January, 1615-16, he made his Will, which was executed exactly two months later; and on the 23rd of the following April he breathed his last. He was buried in the church of Stratford, where his grave and monument may still be seen. The disease of which he died is unknown. The vicar, Mr. Ward, already referred to, says, "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." This no doubt is not impossible, but it is not very probable. If we may judge from passages in his plays, Shakespeare was an enemy to deep drinking; and it is hardly likely that he should, so late in life too, have committed such excess (worthy only of a Burns) as is here supposed, even in the company of Ben Jonson, a visit from whom to Stratford, if he had made it, would with its consequences in all probability have formed part of his communications to Drummond two years later. We may then, I think, safely venture to reject this account of Shakespeare's death, and acknowledge that its cause is utterly unknown, and will probably always remain unknown.

It would appear from Shakespeare's Will that he had at the time of his death but very little money; for, excepting a few trifling legacies, the only sum mentioned is £300 which he left to his younger daughter Judith, making apparently a very unequal division of his property; for to his elder daughter Susanna he left all his lands, tenements, etc., in Stratford and elsewhere, the value of which must have been very far beyond that of the sum devised to Judith. In fact we might suppose that the property enumerated in a general way in his Will had cost more, and were of greater value than would seem to be indicated.

It might be supposed that the cause of this unequal division was displeasure at Judith's marriage; but, beside that we have no proof of any such feeling towards her, the real cause lies evidently far deeper. It was his passionate desire to be the founder of a family in his native county. This it was that animated all his theatric exertions, and he regarded the wonderful creations of his genius merely as means to this one great end. We might have presumed that the death of his only son in 1596 would have given a check to this passion; but, on the contrary, it was, as we have seen, in the very next year that he commenced purchasing property in Warwickshire; and we also find that in that year, or more certainly in 1599, a grant of arms was made to John Shakespeare by the Heralds' College, in which he was authorized to impale the bearings of the Ardens, his wife's family, with his own; and the probability would seem to be, that previously the Shakespeare family had had no coat of arms. By a statute, however, of the later Plantagenets every freeholder was to have his proper seal of arms; and that of the Shakespeares may have been the eagle and spear, whence the Heralds easily formed the coat of arms used by Shakespeare. In obtaining this, John Shakespeare must have acted under the influence and at the expense of his son William.

In his Will, Shakespeare leaves his lands, tenements, &c. to his daughter Susanna, and after her death to her eldest son and his heirs male, and, in default of heirs male of him, to her second son, and so on to the seventh son, and, in default of such issue, to his niece (i.e. granddaughter) Elizabeth Hall and her heirs male, and, in default of them, to his daughter Judith and her heirs male, and, in their default, to the right heirs of the testator.

Every precaution we see was here taken, but all in vain; for, as we have hinted, it seems to be the order of Providence that literary genius should not be the foundation of worldly rank and greatness. Most persons will here call to mind the parallel case of Sir Walter Scott, who, too, as fondly and as vainly yearned to be the founder of a part of the rural aristocracy of his native land, and in whose eyes it was greater to be Laird of Abbotsford than the author of Waverley. But the advantage was on the side of the bard of Avon; for he sought no literary fame, content with a life of peace and competence, while the Scottish baronet would fain have had literary fame as well as wealth and title. How different were the latter days of the two men!

From what precedes—few, very few, as the circumstances are—some faint idea may be formed of Shakespeare as a man. As a poet, his works present him to us, in all his fulness, as the most wonderful dramatic genius that ever the world has seen, ranging with equal ease from the lowest to the highest point of the whole scale of the drama, from the broad farce of the Comedy of Errors, through the enchanting light and graceful comedy of As You Like It, and similar pieces, up to the sublimest tragedy of Macbeth, Lear, Othello. Of him alone can this be asserted. We have no reason to suppose that the great tragic poets of Greece, any more than those of France, excelled also in comedy; while the dramatists of Spain notoriously failed in tragedy, and their comedy, gay, spritely and animated as it is, depends chiefly on plot and intrigue, and is greatly deficient in variety of character.

Mr. Dyce has justly observed how absurd it is to say that Shakespeare was, though the greatest, only one of a race of contemporary giants. The poetic greatness of Jonson, Fletcher, and Massinger was doubtless beyond that witnessed in most other ages of the world; but surely they were but as the stars to the sun when compared with Shakespeare. In like manner I apprehend few will agree with the following character of Shakespeare as a poet, drawn by Gifford in his Introduction to the Plays of Massinger.

"The claims of this great poet on the admiration of mankind are innumerable, but rhythmical modulation is not one of them; nor do I think it either wise or just to hold him forth as supereminent in every quality which constitutes genius. Beaumont is as sublime, Fletcher as pathetic, and Jonson as nervous. Nor let it be accounted poor or niggard praise to allow him only an equality with these extraordinary men in their peculiar excellencies, while he is admitted to possess many others, to which they made no approaches. Indeed if I were asked for the discriminating quality of Shakespeare's mind, that by which he is raised above all competition, above all prospect of rivalry, I should say it was WIT."

That Shakespeare possessed that aroma of humour which we denominate wit, beyond any of his contemporaries or successors, is a matter about which, I think, there cannot be two opinions. I will not deny that in nervousness Jonson may have equalled him, but I certainly know not where to look for the sublime in Beaumont which rivalled that of Macbeth and Lear; and unquestionably I should never even dream of putting the morbid softness of Fletcher in comparison with the genuine manly pathos of Shakespeare. There was however one thing in which I must confess they all exceeded him—perspicuity; for though in many, very many parts of his plays the language is most lucid and unconstrained, there are others—in Troilus and Cressida for instance—which task the intellect to understand them, and which never could have been intelligible to an ordinary audience. But the fact is, neither he nor any other of his brother dramatists ever seems to have asked himself the simple question, Will the audience understand this? I finally must assert, in opposition to Gifford, that, where Shakespeare's verse is uninjured, we have abundant proof that no poet ever excelled him in "rhythmical modulation," and that, when we would produce the most melodious verse in our language, it is in his plays that we shall find our best specimens. It seems to me quite idle to say with Coleridge that Shakespeare's verse is peculiar in rhythm and structure; for, from the nature of verse, it could not be so. It is just as idle to say with Johnson that the blank verse of Thomson is not that of Milton. The difference in such cases lies wholly in the language; and that of Shakespeare is peculiar. This is caused by an excess of figurative expression, in which his metaphors are often broken and confused and his similes imperfect, by inversions and transpositions, and by the use of words in unusual and even incorrect senses.

Shakespeare's power of observation must have been not merely extensive but marvellous:—

"He walk'd in every path of human life,

Felt every passion, and to all mankind

Doth now, will ever, that experience yield

Which his own genius only could acquire."

Nothing, in fact, high or low, seems to have escaped him; he discerned the nicest shades and varieties of looks, of manners, of language. He had also, in a remarkable degree, that power—that clairvoyance, as we may perhaps venture to term it—so requisite to the dramatist and the novelist, of developing from the faintest sketch, the merest outline, the entire of a character, with its appropriate sentiments, action, and language. In the number and variety of characters no writer ever equalled him, and all are fully and completely delineated, none are, as in other dramatists, mere sketches. Some, such as his Clowns, are peculiar to himself; we meet with no Clowns in the dramas of his contemporaries and successors,—the Gracioso of the Spanish drama, an independent creation, being the nearest approach to them. But of all his creations what has always most astonished me are his women. They are exclusively his own; Fletcher, Massinger, or any other, has nothing like them. Perhaps the nearest approach is made in Spain also, by Cervantes; in whom, however, as in the Spanish drama, they want variety. They would seem to have been produced, if I may so express it, by a projection of his own gentle and noble nature into female forms; for he surely never met his Rosalinds, Mirandas, and Perditas in real life, though he may have had some faint sketches of some of them in his own daughters. He seems to have shrunk almost instinctively from portraying bad women. Goneril and Regan alone are unredeemed; for Lady Macbeth is awful, not detestable, and even the Queen of Cymbeline is but an Agrippina, for like her she is criminal but not selfish.

In fine, though I will not, with Mr. Buckle, term Shakespeare "the greatest of the sons of men"—for I cannot give that preeminence to imagination, observation, and language over the other mental powers, so as to place him above Aristotle and Newton—I will say here of him, as I have said in my 'Life of Milton' that "he was the mightiest poetic mind that Nature has ever produced," and that, in his case, statues and other memorials are utterly needless and superfluous. If we are asked for his monument, we should simply point to his Plays and say,—Monumentum si quæris, inspice! and, in my opinion, he consults best for the poet's fame who seeks to restore his works to their pristine form.

The reader will see by this sketch how little is really known concerning Shakespeare. I have endeavoured, as will be seen, to rectify some points in his biography.

EDITIONS, DATES, AND ORIGINS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

In 1598 appeared a work, named Palladis Tamia, written by Francis Meres, in which among other passages respecting Shakespeare we meet with the following:—

"As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For comedy witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour's Lost, his Love Labour's Won, his Midsummer's Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet."

Critics have hence inferred that these were Shakespeare's only plays written before 1598; but they have not observed that, moved probably by a love of symmetry and uniformity, Meres has given just half a dozen of each; and as in reality there were only five of our author's original tragedies then in being, he adds a play to which he could at most have only given a few touches, omitting the two Parts of Henry VI., for which he had done a vast deal more. In like manner he seems in his list of comedies to have omitted The Taming of the Shrew, which must be regarded as the least original of the comedies, and which the language and verse prove to belong to this period of his plays. It is generally agreed that Shakespeare never himself gave a play to the press; those, then, of which there are editions published during his lifetime, must have been printed from copies surreptitiously obtained, perhaps from the prompter. Hence their inaccuracies and imperfections. There is a theory indeed that they may have been taken down in short-hand during representation; but this theory seems only tenable in a single instance, Henry V., and the practice must have found a strong obstacle in the metre, to speak of no other difficulty. My opinion is that when once a copy of a play had been obtained and printed, it became the groundwork of all the subsequent editions which were printed from it, sometimes with corrections, made by the printer himself or by some man of letters employed by him for the purpose—except in such cases as Romeo and Juliet, or The Merry Wives, where the author had himself "corrected, augmented, and amended" his play. I may add that our forefathers, like the Orientals, had not our ideas about adhering strictly to the text of an author. If they thought they could improve it, they never hesitated to do so. I will now briefly state what is of most importance respecting the editions, the dates, and the origins of these immortal dramas.

COMEDIES.

The Comedy of Errors.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. As it is mentioned by Meres it must be anterior to 1598. It was probably Shakespeare's first original piece. From the plain allusion (III. 2) to the civil war in France, it must have been written before February 1594, in which year Henry IV. was crowned. I have shown above that it could not have been acted earlier than 1593.

Origin. It is manifestly founded on the Menæchmi of Plautus; but Shakespeare hardly went to the original. He may have merely got an account of that piece from some learned friend; and there was a piece named The Historie of Error, which was played at Hampton Court before the Queen, on New Year's day 1576-77, which may have been formed on the Menæchmi. The proper title of this play seems to have been simply Errors, and The Comedy of Errors is like The Tragedy of Macbeth, &c.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. Anterior to 1598 as it is in Meres's list. The critics have not observed that the resemblance is so strong between Act III. Sc. 1 of this play, and Act I. Sc. 2 of Lyly's Midas, that the one must have been taken from the other. In my opinion our poet was the borrower, as his scene is so superior to Lyly's. Now Midas was printed in 1592; but Shakespeare, it may be said, may have seen the play acted, or he may have written that scene, and added it to his play after he had read Lyly's; so the present comedy might have been written before 1592. This, however, I have shown to be at the least very unlikely. Though in my edition of the Plays I have given, as here, precedence to The Comedy of Errors, I do not feel at all certain upon the point, and would by no means assert that this is not rather "the first heir of his [dramatic] invention."

Origin. The plot seems to have been, in the main, of our poet's own invention; though what relates to Proteus and Julia may have been suggested, mediately or immediately, by the story of Felix and Felismena in the Diana of Montemayor. Indeed the points of resemblance are such that I feel confident the poet must have been acquainted with that part of the Diana; and yet it was not translated till 1598. Might he not have learned it from some one who had read the work in Spanish?

Love's Labour's Lost.

Editions. 4to, 1598; in the folio, 1623.

Date. We have no means of ascertaining the exact time of its composition; but from internal evidence we must regard it as one of our author's earliest pieces, yet, I think, later than those I have placed before it.

Origin. It is apparently wholly our poet's own invention, as no novel, play, or anything else at all resembling it has been discovered.

All's Well that Ends Well.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. Meres, as we have seen, terms one of Shakespeare's comedies "Love Labour's Won." Among our author's extant comedies there is none with that title, and we have no reason whatever for supposing any original play of his to be lost; while on the other hand the subject of the present play accords most accurately with that title. It has therefore been conjectured, with great probability, that this is one of Shakespeare's early plays, which he altered and improved at a later period, giving it at the same time a new title. We can certainly discern in it the style and mode of composition of two different periods—the riming scenes, for instance, belonging to the earlier one. It is to be observed of these riming scenes, that they only occur in the three preceding plays, and in Romeo and Juliet, in all which plays soliloquies, letters, &c. are in stanzas—like the sonnets in Spanish plays; and the very same is the case in the present play, and in it alone of the later ones; whence we may fairly conclude that it belonged to the early period. The second act seems to retain, both in the serious and the comic scenes, much of the original play unaltered; and every one must be struck with the resemblance of the style in it to that of Love's Labour's Lost.

Origin. The tale of Giletta di Narbona in Boccaccio's Decameron, which Shakespeare may have read in the original, or in the translation in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The comic scenes are, of course, our author's own, as usual.

A Midsummer-Night's Dream.

Editions. 4to (by Fisher), 1600; 4to (by Roberts), 1600; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Anterior to 1598, as it is mentioned by Meres. I do think that in Act II. Sc. 1 there is an allusion to the state of the weather in the summer of 1594, and that Shakespeare may have been writing this play at that very time. I therefore incline to give that year, or 1595, as the date of its composition.

Origin. Purely and absolutely the whole the poet's own invention. He was well read in Chaucer, in Golding's Ovid, and in North's Plutarch, where he got the names of his characters and some circumstances.

The Taming of the Shrew.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. We have no means of ascertaining the exact date of this play; but the style proves it to belong to Shakespeare's early period. The reason of its omission by Meres has been already given.

Origin. It is a rifacimento of an anonymous play, first printed in 1594, though perhaps written and acted some time earlier, and termed "The Taming of a Shrew," and it may be anterior to the Midsummer-Night's Dream; the date 1594 would seem to have some connexion with both plays. The incident of the Pedant personating Vincentio was taken from The Supposes, a translation by Gascoigne of Ariosto's I Suppositi.

The Merchant of Venice.

Editions. 4to (by Roberts), 1600; 4to (by Heyes), 1600; in the folio, 1623. The two 4tos are in effect the same; for Heyes's was printed by J. R., i.e. James Roberts, who probably had contrived to get a transcript from the copy in the theatre, and then may have made some arrangement with Heyes for the publication.

Date. It is in Meres's list, and it was entered by Roberts in the Stationers' Registers 22nd July 1598; so that it was probably first acted in that or the preceding year. It is, I think, certainly later than any of the preceding comedies.

Origin. The remote origin of the incidents both of the bond and of the caskets is the Gesta Romanorum portions of which had been translated and published by Robinson in 1577. The incident of the bond is also in Il Pecorone of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, first printed in 1558, and which Shakespeare may have read. There was also a ballad on the subject, in Percy's Reliques, with which he may have been acquainted.

As You Like It.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. It is posterior to 1598, as Meres does not mention it, and was entered in the Stationer's Registers, August 4, 1600, by the booksellers Wise and Aspley; but for some reason, which we cannot now discover, they did not print it.

Origin. It is founded on Lodge's novel of Rosalynde, of which the chief origin was The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, ascribed, but wrongly, to Chaucer. The characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, and of course all the comic scenes, are Shakespeare's own.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Editions. 4to, 1600; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Not being mentioned by Meres, it is posterior to 1598; and as it is said, in the title-page of the 4to, that "it hath been sundry times publicly acted," it may have been written in 1598, and may be older than As You Like It; but we have no means of deciding.

Origin. The story of Ariodante and Ginevra in the Orlando Furioso, which Shakespeare may have read either in the original or in Sir John Harington's translation, published in 1591. The story had also been translated by Beverley and Turberville; and there was a play on it, performed before the Queen on Shrove Tuesday 1582-83; so that it was well known. Shakespeare's other authority was the novel of Timbreo di Cardona, &c., in Bandello, in which occur the names Pietro di Aragona, Messina, and Felicia Lionata, and with which therefore Shakespeare must have been acquainted. As there was no known translation of it, save a French one in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, I am of opinion that Shakespeare had read the original Italian. It need hardly be added that all the comic scenes and characters are our author's own.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Editions. 4to, 1602; 4to, 1619; in the folio, 1623.

Date. It was entered in the Stationers' Registers 18th January 1601-02, and was, consequently, written between 1597 (it is not in Meres's list) and that date; but we have no means of ascertaining the exact time. Mr. Dyce thinks it was written before 1600. It may be observed that, though some of the characters are the same as those in Henry IV. and Henry V., it is quite independent of these plays. I must here remark that the play is so brief, and, as it were, elementary, in the 4tos as compared with the folio, that it seems quite clear that the poet revised and augmented it some time after its first appearance; and this gives some probability to the tradition of its having been written at the command of the Queen, and in a few days, possibly in 1598 or 1599. Further, as in the 4tos there is no allusion whatever to the Lucy coat of arms, it is highly improbable that the poet showed in it any ill feeling towards that family. Lastly, the occurrence in the 4tos of numerous riming couplets which are not in the folio, completely upsets Mr. Collier's theory of that edition having been made up from memory, and from notes taken at the theatre. The expression "king's English" (I. 4) might seem to indicate that the enlargement of the play was not made till after the accession of James. The change, however, of queen to king may have been made by the Editors; but surely Shakespeare must have been aware that Falstaff lived in the time of the Henries.

Origin. Though some Italian and English tales are referred to as the possible sources of the plot, we may, I think, regard it as, at least in the greater part, Shakespeare's own invention. There is, however, a strong resemblance in part of it to a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick, who died in 1611. See on The Tempest.

Twelfth Night.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. We learn from the MS. diary of a barrister named Manningham, that this play was performed in the Middle Temple, on the 2nd of February 1601-02. It was therefore written between 1597 and that date; but the exact time is quite uncertain.

Origin. The more remote origin of this play is apparently one of the tales of Bandello, which Shakespeare may have read in the original, or in a French or English version of it; for there were such. But the Rev. Jos. Hunter directed attention to three Italian comedies, two named "Inganni"—one of which is noticed by Manningham—and a third named "Gl'Ingannati," or "Il Sacrificio;" and the resemblance between this last and Twelfth Night is so strong that it is hardly possible to suppose that Shakespeare was unacquainted with it. If so, as it was never translated, as far as we know, he must have read it in the original Italian, which was printed in 1537.

N.B. The reader will observe with respect to these last four comedies, that all that we know with certainty respecting their date is that they were written between 1597 and 1600 or 1602. The arranging of them is little more than guess-work. I have placed first those that we know to have been written before 1600.

Measure For Measure.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. In the Accounts of the Revels at Court, we are informed that this play was performed at Whitehall December 26, 1604. It was therefore probably written in that or the preceding year.

Origin. "The right excellent and famous History of Promos and Cassandra, a drama in Two Parts, by George Whetstone," published in 1578. Whetstone's drama was taken from one of the tales in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio, which Shakespeare may also have read. The comic scenes are of course all his own.

The Winter's Tale.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. It appears from the MS. diary of Dr. Forman, that he saw this play performed at the Globe, May 15, 1611; it was also performed at Whitehall on the 5th of November following. Its exact date cannot be assigned; but the great probability is that it could not have been written earlier than 1610. I am disposed to regard it as anterior to The Tempest, which was probably the last play that ever Shakespeare wrote. When we consider the probable date of this play, we see how utterly untenable is the theory of some writers that it was an indirect apology for Anne Boleyn, and a direct compliment to her royal daughter. I may here observe that those ingenious persons who find allusions (except in a very few plain instances) to public events and public persons in Shakespeare's plays merely waste their own and their readers' time. Thus Sir Philip Sidney died the very year the poet came to London; and yet we are told that he is figured in Hamlet, a play not written till many years afterwards!

Origin. With the exception of the comic scenes—which as usual are wholly Shakespeare's own—it was founded on Green's popular novel of Pandosto, The Triumph of Time.

The Tempest.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. As it (II. 1) copies a passage from Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays, published in 1603, we may assume that it is posterior to that year; and Malone has directed attention to the shipwreck of Sir George Somers on the island of Bermuda in July 1609, which may have suggested the scene of "The Tempest." We may therefore venture to assume that it may have been written not long after the account of that event reached England.

Origin. Collins, the poet, told Warton that he had seen a romance called "Aurelio and Isabella," printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English in 1588, which was the original of the Tempest. But no such romance has ever been discovered, and it may justly be questioned if ever such a one existed. Still it is not improbable that Shakespeare may have heard or read some story of people cast away on a desert island. There is also a German play by Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who died early in the seventeenth century, named "Die schöne Sidea," which in its plot and principal characters, bears so strong a resemblance to The Tempest that it is very difficult to avoid supposing a connexion between them; and it might thence appear that Collins was correct, for Shakespeare could hardly have had any knowledge of a German drama. It may, however, be said that he got his knowledge of the plot, &c., from one of the English actors who, as it is now well known, used to go over and perform in Germany.

HISTORIES.

The Life and Death of King John.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. Anterior to 1598, as it is in Meres's list.

Origin. It was founded on a play called "The First and Second Part of the Troublesome Reign of King John of England," published in 1591.

The Life and Death of King Richard II.

Editions. 4to, 1597; 4to, 1598; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1615; in the folio, 1623.

Date. The exact date cannot be ascertained; but from the style I should be inclined to regard it as one of Shakespeare's earliest plays.

Origin. Hollinshed's Chronicle, and an older play on the same subject.

The First Part of King Henry IV.

Editions. 4to, 1598; 4to, 1599; 4to, 1604; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1613; in the folio, 1623.

Date. All we can say is, that it was anterior to 1598, and was most probably written in 1597.

Origin. Hollinshed's Chronicle, and an anonymous play called "The Famous Victories of Henry V." The comic scenes are entirely Shakespeare's own, both in this and the two succeeding plays.

The Second Part of King Henry IV.

Editions. 4to, 1600; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Apparently in one of the years between 1597 and 1600. As has been already observed, it could hardly have been in existence when Meres wrote, or he would not have placed Titus Andronicus in his list. It is an objection that before 1597 Shakespeare had changed the name Oldcastle to Falstaff in the First Part, while in the 4to edition of this play a speech (I. 2) has the prefix Old. instead of Fal. But surely that may have been a slip of the copyist's memory, in consequence of Oldcastle having been the original title.

Origin. The same as of the First Part.

The Life of King Henry V.

Editions. 4to, 1600; 4to, 1602; 4to, 1608; in the folio, 1623.

Date. As in the chorus to Act V. there is an evident allusion to the expedition of the Earl of Essex to Ireland, whither he went in April 1599, and whence he returned in the following September, it would seem to be clear that the play was acted in the interval between those two months. The insertion of this passage seems to be inexplicable on any other hypothesis. This also proves that the choruses formed a part of the original play, though they are not to be found in the 4to editions, which, it is well known, are scandalously imperfect.

Origin. The same as that of the two preceding plays.

The Life and Death of King Richard III.

Editions. 4to, 1597; 4to, 1598; 4to, 1602; 4to, 1605; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Anterior, of course, to 1597. I incline to regard it as posterior to King John and to Richard II.; for it has no stanzas and no riming passages. It is also very free from quibbles and plays upon words, except in the unfortunate soliloquy of Richard in the last act—a wonderful instance of want of taste, and even of judgment. The same may be said of the scenes between Richard and Lady Anne and the Queen.

Origin. Hollinshed, and probably More.

The Life of King Henry VIII.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. The following memorandum is in the Stationers' Registers:—"12 Feb. 1604[-5]. Nath. Butter. Yf he get good allowance for the Interlude of K. Henry the 8th, before he begin to print it, &c." This has been supposed to be the present play; but the style militates against this supposition. I offer the following proof, which has never, that I am aware of, been observed. In his early plays Shakespeare very rarely puts the preposition or conjunction at the end of one line and the noun or verb at the beginning of the next; in his succeeding ones he does so more frequently, and in his latest he is rather profuse of the practice. Now this construction is as frequent in Henry VIII. as in Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and his other later ones, whence it might seem that it should be referred to the same epoch. We are told, indeed, that in 1613 the Globe Theatre was set on fire and burned down by the discharge of chambers in a new play called "Henry VIII.;" but it is hardly possible that it could be this play, as Shakespeare had retired before that year.

Origin. Hollinshed's Chronicle.

TRAGEDIES.

Romeo and Juliet.

Editions. 4to, 1597; 4to, 1599; 4to, 1609; in the folio, 1623. There is also an undated 4to issued by Smethwick, the publisher of that of 1609, in which many typographical errors are corrected.

Date. In Act I. Sc. 2, the Nurse says, "'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;" and, as Tyrwhitt justly observed, this could only have been the earthquake which was felt in England on the 6th of April 1580. It was quite in Shakespeare's way to make the allusion; and this would give 1591 as the year in which this play was first performed. This, then, may be the true date, though I greatly doubt of it; I should rather say, entirely reject it; for it surely can hardly be anterior to the first two comedies. The play, as appears from the 4to, 1597, was little more than a sketch of that which appeared, "corrected, augmented, and amended," in 1599.

Origin. The remote original is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which an Italian writer named Luigi da Porto made a tale, printed in 1535. A tale formed from this was given by Bandello in 1554; and in 1562 a poem of Romeus and Juliet, by Arthur Brookes, taken from Bandello's, or rather from the version of it in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, was published in London; in 1567 the same tale, also from Bandello, appeared in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Shakespeare chiefly followed Brooke; but he had also read the Palace of Pleasure, and probably Bandello's tale in the original.

Hamlet.

Editions. 4to, 1603; 4to, 1604; 4to, 1611; 4to undated (probably in 1607); in the folio, 1623.

Date. On the 26th of July 1602, an entry was made in the Stationers' Registers of "A Booke, The Revenge of Hamlett, prince of Denmarke, as yt was latelie acted, by the Lord Chambelayn his servantes." There can be little doubt that this was the present play. The text of the 4to, 1603, is in such a mangled, wretched condition, that it has not unreasonably been conjectured that it was formed from notes made during the representation. As in this the Polonius and Reynaldo of the present play are called Corambis and Montano, it is probable that the play received much addition and alteration; for the 4to, 1604, gives it "enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie." This play being so popular, it is not unlikely that the author may have frequently retouched it. It is very remarkable that it is by many degrees the most faulty of his plays, abounding, we may say, in incongruities, contradictions, and improbabilities.

Origin. Apparently a novel called The Hystorie of Hamblet, translated from Belleforest. There seems also to have been an older play on the subject.

Othello.

Editions. 4to, 1622; in the folio, 1623. There is also a 4to, 1630; but it is of little value, as it was evidently made not from a MS., but from the two preceding editions with some conjectural emendations. To the 4to, 1622, is prefixed—as to Troilus and Cressida—an Epistle "from the Stationer [Thos. Walkley] to the Reader."

Date. From the Accounts of the Revels, we learn that this play was performed at Court, November 1st, 1604; and if the Egerton Papers, published by Mr. Collier, can be relied on, it had been performed before Queen Elizabeth. In them we meet as follows:—"6 August, 1602. Rewards to the vaulters, players, and dancers—of this x^li to Burbidge's players for Othello—lxiiii^li xviii^s x^d." "The part of the memorandum which relates to Othello," says Mr. Collier, "is interlined as if added afterwards." Mr. Halliwell asserts that Othello must have been written even before 1600; for in a MS. of that date, entitled The Newe Metamorphosis, &c., is a passage evidently, he thinks, imitated from "who steals my purse steals trash" in Othello. But, though Mr. Halliwell thinks otherwise, this passage may have been a later insertion; or it may be a mere coincidence, a thing much more common than is usually supposed. At all events Othello was written, at latest, in 1604. I know not if it has been observed that Voltaire evidently had Othello in his mind when writing his Zaïre.

Origin. The only known source of this play is a tale in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio; and as no English translation of it is known to have existed, the obvious and natural inference is that Shakespeare had read it in the original. There was, however, it seems, a French translation: Paris, 1584.

Julius Cæsar.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. The real date of this play is very uncertain, and I am very dubious whether I am right or not in giving it this position. Mr. Collier—with whom Mr. Dyce agrees—is positive that it appeared before 1603, for in that year Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which is a passage so like the character of Brutus given in this play (v. 5), that one poet must have borrowed from the other; and it is inferred of course that Drayton was the borrower. But this is not by any means so certain, as the eagle did not always disdain to take a plume from the smaller birds (see above, The Two Gentlemen of Verona). It is very strange, however, that neither of these critics seems to have been aware that the very same ideas, and even expressions, are to be found in the character given of Crites in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (ii. 1), which was performed in 1600, and which may therefore I think justly be regarded as the real immediate original of the passages in both poets; the germ, however, is to be found in Chaucer's Tale of the Doctor of Physik. All, then, that we can venture to affirm is, that Julius Cæsar is posterior to 1600. I incline to place it in point of time before Shakespeare's other plays on Roman subjects. It may be observed that his Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are as much Histories as those that are so entitled, the history being Roman instead of English.

Origin. North's Plutarch, from the French of Amyot.

Antony and Cleopatra.

Edition. Only in the folio 1623.

Date. From the language of this play I feel inclined to place its date near that of Julius Cæsar. It is true that "A Booke called Anthony and Cleopatra," which may have been this play, was entered in the Stationers' Registers, May 20th, 1608; but it seems never to have appeared, and that entry is no proof that the play may not have been acted some years before that date.

Origin. Life of Antonius in North's Plutarch.

King Lear.

Edition. 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; 4to, 1608; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Certainly posterior to 1603, in which year appeared Harsnet's Discovery of Popish Impostures, from which Shakespeare evidently took the names of the fiends mentioned by Edgar. There is an entry of it in the Stationers' Registers, November 26th, 1607, in which it is stated that it had been played before the King on the night of St. Stephen's Day in the preceding year. The latest date of its composition, then, that we can suppose is 1606.

Origin. Hollinshed, Mirror of Magistrates, and an old play on the same subject. The episode of Gloster and his sons was taken from Sidney's Arcadia, ii. 10.

Macbeth.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. Dr. Forman states in his MS. Diary that he saw this play "at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday;" but it does not follow by any means that it was then a new play. I agree with Mr. Collier in thinking that the mention of "twofold balls and treble sceptres" should induce us to place it not very far from the accession of James I. (Oct. 24, 1604), and therefore in 1605 or 1606. Malone thought there was an allusion (in II. 3) to the state of the corn-market in 1606, and to the conduct of the Jesuit Garnet on his trial in that year; but this is little more than fancy.

Origin. Hollinshed's Chronicle.

Troilus and Cressida.

Editions. 4to, 1609; in the folio, 1623.

Date. It was entered in the Stationers' Registers, January 28, 1608-9. It had not been acted at that time; for the publishers state, in an Address to the Reader, that it had never been "staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar;" while in a reissue of it in the same year the Address was suppressed, and it was given "as it was acted by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe." It is therefore evident that it was first acted in 1609; but it might have been written some years earlier. It is a very curious question, and one to which I am unable to give a satisfactory answer, how it came into the hands of the publisher. I entirely disagree with those critics who think they discern in it the hand of another poet; for there is not a play in the whole collection more thoroughly Shakespearian in every scene. The conclusion certainly is huddled up in a way not elsewhere to be met with in these plays; but that is no proof of this theory; for if Shakespeare had taken up the work of another, the conclusion is the very part he would have been most likely to develope. It is further very remarkable, that though this play was not exposed to the wear and tear of the property-room, it contains more imperfect lines than almost any other. This I can only attribute to the haste and carelessness of the transcriber, who, as working surreptitiously, was anxious to hurry through his task in as short a time as possible. I will observe, in fine, that, though it contains the death of Hector—which might perhaps better have been omitted—it is in reality a tragi-comedy, as much so as any of Beaumont and Fletcher's.

Origin. Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseida, Caxton's Recuyl of the Historyes of Troye, and Lydgate's Historye, Sege, and Destruccyon of Troye.

Timon of Athens.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. We have no means of ascertaining the exact date; but the language and the use of rimes in the dialogue induce me to think that it was near that of Troilus and Cressida.

Origin. The story of Timon in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, and life of Antony in North's Plutarch.

Coriolanus.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. A little later, I think, than the two preceding plays; for there is only one riming passage in it.

Origin. Life of Coriolanus in North's Plutarch.

Cymbeline.

Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

Date. From the style and the family resemblance—as appears to me—between Imogen, Miranda, and Perdita, I should deem it to be contemporaneous with the Tempest and the Winter's Tale. We may place it, then, in or after 1610.

Origin. The tale of Bernabò da Genova in the Decamerone, which Shakespeare had probably read in the original. There was an imitation of it in a tract called Westward for Smelts, of which, however, no edition earlier than 1620 is known. For the historical part, he, of course, had resorted to Hollinshed.

In these plays we may, I think, distinguish four different phases of composition, in each of which the thoughts and the language of the poet present a peculiar appearance.

The first phase extends we may say from 1593 to 1598, and contains the plays in Meres's list—except 1 Henry IV., and The Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew. It is distinguished by a continual play on words and by frequent rimes—both in couplets and in stanzas—while the blank verse, which is as yet unformed, is harmonious and almost always decasyllabic. Richard III. seems to form the connecting link between this and the next phase; for it is free from both rimes and play on words, while the blank verse has not yet acquired its appropriate form.

The second phase would seem to extend from 1598 to 1603. It contains The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, 1 and 2 Henry IV., Henry V., Hamlet, Othello, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra. Here the dramatic blank verse is perfect, trisyllabic feet being admitted, and the lines running into each other, rimes only appearing in final couplets. There rarely occurs a play on words, and the language is in general easy and natural.

The third phase may extend from 1603 to 1609. It contains Measure for Measure, Lear, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, and Coriolanus. In this the poet returned to the practice of giving passages of several lines in rime, though not in stanzas, and his language is obscured by periphrases, inversions, and ellipses to such an extent that many places—the speeches of Ulysses, for instance, in Troilus and Cressida—must have been perfectly unintelligible to an ordinary audience. He had already, as in Antony and Cleopatra, begun to place more frequently the preposition or conjunction at the end of one line and the word connected with it at the beginning of the next, and he continues to do so here, chiefly in Coriolanus, though hardly at all in Troilus and Cressida, or in Timon of Athens.

The fourth and last phase contains The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII., Cymbeline. He here seems to have made a return to the simpler language of the second phase. In Henry VIII. and The Tempest, what has been said of prepositions and conjunctions goes on to a great extent.

The plays above noticed—thirty-two in number—are the genuine productions of the poet. Two of them, King John and The Taming of the Shrew, were founded on plays that are still extant, and we may see that he used them precisely as he did the tales and chronicles on which he founded so many of his other plays, taking the story, the incidents, the characters, and, when it suited his purpose, the language which they contained.

But beside these, we find in the folio four other plays of a different kind, of which the most that any critic ventures to assert is that they were retouched, improved, and enlarged by Shakespeare. Of two of these, namely The Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. this would seem to be the truth; for we have the two plays in their original form, and there can be little doubt that it was them chiefly that Green had in view in the passage quoted above from his Groat's Worth of Wit, &c.; and upon examination it appears that in the first of them Shakespeare's additions and improvements amount to a fifth, in the second to only an eighth part of the text. Of the other two, The First Part of Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, after a very careful study of them, my decided opinion, and apparently that of Mr. Dyce also, is that, with an exception presently to be noticed, neither the one nor the other contains a single speech or even a single line from the pen of Shakespeare. How they got into the folio is a question not easy to answer. Heminge and Condell, no doubt, may not have been critics, and so may have fancied that he had had to do with The First Part of Henry VI. also; or they may have merely inserted it as being connected with the other Parts. As to Titus Andronicus, I have already given a reason for its appearance in Meres's list. He had probably heard that it was by Shakespeare, and he made no exact inquiry, and so ascribed it to him; and the editors of the folio may have taken it on his authority, or have followed the same tradition. I do not believe that it was at any time in Shakespeare's nature to write the horrors of one of these plays, or to treat the noble Maid of Orleans as she is treated in the other, or even to labour on and improve the pieces that contained them. Besides, there are nowhere to be found plays more entirely of one single cast than these are. There is also displayed in them an acquaintance with Horace and others of the ancient Classics which Shakespeare did not possess. They may have been written by either Kyd or Marlow, each of whom had this acquaintance, and also a taste for horrors, and abundant talent for their composition. At the same time I think it possible that, as there is a Clown in Titus Andronicus—the only instance I believe out of the plays of Shakespeare—the two short, trifling, and needless scenes in which he appears may be from our poet's pen, and that hence the play was hastily ascribed to him.

The following plays also were published during Shakespeare's life-time with his name, in full or in initials, on the title-pages: Locrine, 1595; The Life of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600—known to be by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway; History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602; The London Prodigal, 1605; The Puritan, or The Widow of Watling Street, 1607; A Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608. These, with Pericles, Prince of Tyre—also published under his name in 1609—were printed in the 3rd folio, 1664, and reprinted in the 4th, 1685, and finally by Rowe in his edition of Shakespeare's Plays. The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and Shakespeare, was published in 1634.

Of the first six of these plays the opinion of the critics is tolerably unanimous that Shakespeare had nothing whatever to do with them. Yet, as in Locrine (printed so early as 1595) it is said, "newly set forth, overseen and corrected, by W. S." it is possible, though most unlikely, that it may be one of the plays on which he operated in the early part of his dramatic career; and the fame of his Poems lately printed, may have induced the publisher to place his initials in the title-page. As to Pericles, it was rejected, with Locrine, &c., by Pope, Theobald, and all the editors down to Malone, who printed all these pieces in 1780 in the Supplement to the edition of Johnson and Steevens; he did not, however, include any of them in his own edition of 1790. Steevens admitted Pericles into his edition of 1793 on the authority of Farmer, but marked with an asterisk, as being only in part Shakespeare's, to which opinion Malone, who at first thought it wholly his, acceded. It finally was included in Reed's and in the Boswell-Malone or Variorum edition, which succeeding editors have followed. From mine it has been excluded, as I am most firmly of opinion that it does not contain a single line of Shakespeare's, and that it is an insult to his memory to give it a place among his genuine works. In fact the deliberate rejection of it by Heminge and Condell from the folio ought to outweigh all conjectural proofs in its favour. These, we must recollect, were not ordinary players, they were Shakespeare's fellows or partners in the theatres; and it was therefore utterly impossible that any play could be acted there without their knowing who was the author. They must, then, have known that Shakespeare had had nothing to do with it; for their admission of 1 Hen. VI. and Titus Andronicus proves that evidence even of the slenderest kind would have turned the beam with them. His name at full length in the title-page proves nothing; for it is also in that of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, which is known not to be his.

As to the Two Noble Kinsmen, it was published in 1634 as "written by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare"—putting the greater last—an evident bookseller's artifice; for surely Shakespeare at the zenith of his fame, and toward the close of his dramatic career, would not join with a young poet in the composition of a play, a thing that he never seems to have done, even when he was a young poet himself. Mr. Dyce, who had rejected, afterwards adopted the theory of its being in a certain sense a joint composition; and he makes some strange hypotheses upon the subject, which to me seem utterly devoid of probability. Surely, for example, it is not to be supposed that a man of Shakespeare's business-habits would, when winding-up, as we may term it, leave behind him, in the hands of the House, an unfinished drama, and that what he left should have been the beginning and the end of a play! It is pretty generally agreed that the entire play, except the first and fifth acts, is by Fletcher. To me it seems certain that the first act, though the work of a superior poet, is not Shakespeare's; and I feel quite confident that the first, as well as the second, scene of the last act is by Fletcher; while the concluding scenes are by some other poet, different from, and, I think, superior to, the writer of the first act. My theory is, that Fletcher either obtained the commencement of a play by some one else, or began to write in conjunction with some one, and, the play being unfinished at his death, it was concluded by another poet, possibly Massinger, who alone seems capable of writing such a noble termination of so fine a drama.

THE TEXT

CORRECTED AND ELUCIDATED.

INTRODUCTION.

I. THE TEXT. II. THE VERSE.

COMEDIES.

HISTORIES.

TRAGEDIES.

INTRODUCTION.

I. The Text.

1.

In reading and criticising the plays of Shakespeare, we must always bear in mind that they were written for the stage, not for the closet, to be acted, not to be read. Shakespeare, as it would appear, was utterly regardless of literary fame; he had, as we have seen, one sole object in view, to acquire as much money as would enable him to quit the hurry and bustle of London, and settle down in his native Stratford-on-Avon as a man of independent property, and be, if possible, the founder of a family. Pouring forth, therefore, his tragic and comic strains, with as little apparent effort as the songsters of the grove warble their native notes, he set no value on them but as they filled the Globe and the Blackfriars and thus tended to the realization of the great object of all his ambition; and he never gave a single one of them to the press, as was done by Jonson and others who sought for literary fame by their dramas. Hence, though the verse is always melodious, we must not look in them for the finish and perfection which we find in those of a Racine or a Molière; we must, on the contrary, be prepared to meet with all the marks of haste and carelessness, with contradictions and even with absurdities. It would really dismay one to think of their being submitted to the ordeal through which the pieces of the great Corneille have been made to pass by Voltaire. Corneille, by the way, like Shakespeare, valued his plays by the money they produced.

Copies of about one-half of his plays were surreptitiously obtained by the booksellers, who printed them with more or less of care; but of this he took no heed: and when he finally retired to Stratford, he left in the hands of his fellowplayers the manuscripts of his plays, published and unpublished. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that he ever had any intention of collecting and publishing his dramatic writings—a thing of which there had as yet been no instance. In 1616, the very year of Shakespeare's death, Ben Jonson, who, widely different from the great dramatist, set a high value, and a just one, on his plays as literary compositions, collected all he had written up to that date and published them, with his other poetical pieces, in a folio volume. It may have been this that induced Heminge and Condell, two members of the company to which Shakespeare had belonged, to make a collection of his pieces also, and give them to the world in a folio volume. For this purpose they used the 4to impressions of such plays as had been printed, making some corrections and alterations in them from the playhouse copies; and adding to these the manuscript plays which were in the possession of the theatre, they put the whole into the hands of the publishers, one of whom, Edward Blount, who was a man of some literary pretensions, is supposed, not without probability, to have undertaken the task of seeing the work through the press. Such was the origin of the celebrated folio of 1623, of which it was, in my opinion most justly, said by the late Mr. Hunter, that "perhaps in the whole annals of English typography there is no record of any book of any extent and any reputation having been dismissed from the press with less care and attention;" while Mr. Knight (who ought to have known a good deal about such matters) boldly declares that "perhaps, all things considered, there never was a book so correctly printed!" Such as it is, however, it and the previous 4to impressions are the only authority we have for the text of these marvellous creations of the human intellect.

2.

Few, I should hope, will refuse to assent to the two following postulates.

I. No eminent writer—however he might obscure his meaning by metaphor, ellipsis, or other figures of speech—has ever written pure nonsense.

II. No true poet ever wrote limping, imperfect, or inharmonious verses.

We may add to these the plain facts, that printers are not, and never were, infallible, and that those works of which the authors themselves read the proof-sheets are in general more correct than those of which those sheets were read by others.

3.

Now the plays of Shakespeare are, as is well known, full of passages of which it is nearly impossible to make any good sense, and they abound in imperfect and inharmonious verses. On the other hand, the poems of Venus and Adonis, and of Lucrece, which he himself probably saw through the press, are almost entirely free from error, and do not contain a single unmelodious verse. The natural inference, then, is, that the defects of the plays are all owing to the transcribers and printers, and that the correction of them and the restoration of sense and melody, when possible, is the legitimate office of sound emendatory criticism. The truth of this has been felt from the very beginning; for in the 2nd folio, published in 1632, only nine years after the first, there are numerous corrections, which must have been made by the editor solely on his own authority, for, many of them being very bad, he could not have derived them from any manuscripts. And the same is the case in the subsequent folios, of all of which there are many copies in existence, like that which Mr. Collier met with to his misfortune, and which has excited such a storm in a puddle,—of which, by the way, my own opinion is that the corrections in it were made between 1744, the date of Hanmer's, and 1765, that of Johnson's edition; whence I only cite it for the corrections later than the former date. These contain manuscript corrections, some, like that copy, anonymously, others by Southern and other men of repute. In the beginning of the last century Rowe gave the first example of an annotated edition of Shakespeare's works, and from that time to the present edition has succeeded edition bearing the names of critics of various degrees of ability and eminence, but all agreeing in the necessity of revising the text and rendering it as correct as may be possible.

Of the early editors, Rowe and Pope made little more than the most obvious corrections, Warburton, always ingenious and almost always wrong, made notwithstanding some that were very good, as also did Hanmer. But they were all eclipsed by Theobald, one of the acutest emendatory critics that this country has produced, whose merits, though long clouded through the malignity of Pope, are now fully acknowledged. Capell, the next in order of time, also rendered good service; but Johnson, Steevens, and Malone have done much less than might have been expected. Of these the last was a native of Ireland, the only emendatory critic that country has produced; and, in my opinion, he is not at all inferior to his English rival Steevens. That true critic Tyrwhitt should also be noticed as an emendator of a high order. It is surprising how little has really been done in the present century; and I was perfectly astonished to find what a number of passages still remained in a corrupt or imperfect state when I ventured on the task of emendation. It would seem as if critical sagacity, low in rank as it may be, is one of those talents most rarely bestowed; and besides, print appears to exercise almost a magic power over most persons; they seem to think that what is in print cannot be wrong: it is in fact only very few minds that can fully emancipate themselves from its influence. It must, however, be remembered that alteration and critical emendation are widely different. The former is in the power of almost any one; the latter, as I said, requires a peculiar faculty. It is a curious fact that in nothing does critical sagacity show itself more than in, as I may say, seeing what is before the eyes. For an instance see the first note on Henry V. Another curious fact is this, that poets (Coleridge for example) are rarely good emendators. It is, in fine, the merest folly, and a proof of the grossest ignorance, to sneer at such labours and represent them as needless, if not mischievous. Editors, however, ought to be very cautious about introducing their conjectures into the text, and should place them only in notes, unless when they are such as must almost command assent, and the place corrected had previously yielded no tolerable sense or metric melody. It is a good rule to let well alone, as we say, and not to alter what gives tolerable good sense. I have, I believe, transgressed this rule only in a couple of places.

4.

The following instance is a convincing proof of the evil consequences of the proof-sheets not having passed under the author's own eye. Sismondi, the celebrated historian of France, wrote an historic tale named Julia Severa, which was of course written in French, and it was printed at one of the best offices in Paris; but the author himself did not see the proofs, whence, though it makes only two rather slender duodecimo volumes, there are actually whole pages of errata! I know, by the way, no better mode of weaning oneself from what I shall presently describe as printer-worship than a habit of examining the errata in books printed in the two last centuries. Further, in good printing-offices, at least in this country, it is the practice that the proofs, after they come from the compositor, should be read in the office and corrected before they are sent to the author or editor; while, even at the present day, in the Royal printing-office in Copenhagen there are no readers, and the sheets are sent out just as they come from the compositor, and what that state is must be known to any one conversant with printing-offices. Now it is very possible, or rather highly probable, if not certain, that such was the case in England also in former times; and supposing that it was the editors, and not Blount, that read the proofs, as the wretched state of the punctuation might seem to indicate, we need not feel any surprise at the very unsatisfactory state of the text of the folio of 1623. In opposition, however, to this opinion, the Cambridge editors think that "there were no proof-sheets, in those days, sent either to author or editor," and that "after a MS. had been sent to press it was seen only by the printers, and one or more correctors of the press employed by the publishers for that purpose." But on this hypothesis how are we to account for the great correctness of our author's Poems, Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, the Works of Jonson, Drayton, and others? The following words on the title-page of Marston's Fawne, 2nd edition, offer decisive evidence that authors did read the proof-sheets of their works:—"Now corrected of many faults, which, by reason of the author's absence, were let slip in the first edition."

5.

Notwithstanding all this, there are editors of Shakespeare who, rejecting the evidence of sense, grammar, and logic, obstinately adhere to the printed text, terming that alone authority, and even holding the second and later folios to be such; and it is really pitiable to see them superstitiously retaining for instance 'tis or it's when the metre requires it is, and syncopated forms as lov'd, own'd, etc., when the verse has need of the complete word, and vice versâ. These I denominate Printer-worshipers; for it is in reality to the authority of the printer, not of the poet, that they bow. The most extraordinary instance of this propensity in existence is the retention of "strain at a gnat" in our authorized version of the New Testament, a most manifest printer's error; for no schoolboy could have made it in translating, and in all the previous English versions the word is out. Yet there it has stood uncorrected for two centuries and a half! Hardly inferior as a piece of printer-worship is the following. A stanza of a song in Fletcher's Spanish Curate (ii. 5) ends thus:

From that breath, whose native smell

Indian odours far excel,

thus expressing the very contrary of what was meant! Theobald, a true critic, therefore most properly added doth—in the wrong place, however, as it should begin the line; yet Mr. Dyce says, "the old text is doubtless what the poet wrote"!!

To conclude, then, if the printed text cannot be made to yield sense the fault must lie, not with the poet, but with the transcriber or the printer, and a correction, made in conformity with the language and mode of thinking of the poet and his time, as it may give what he wrote, or may have written, should be admitted into the text. I must here, en passant, impress it on the reader as a maxim, that no word should be used in correction that is not to be found in the poet himself, or in his contemporaries.

6.

A printer is a transcriber or copyist, with the only difference that he uses type instead of a pen. He looks at the copy, as it is termed, and takes up the whole or part of a sentence in his mind, and then goes on composing or setting up the type. Meanwhile he is very possibly engaged in conversation, or he is listening to that of others, or he is thinking of something else. His mind being thus distracted, errors will naturally arise in what he is composing. Besides, he has very often to contend with the difficulties caused by illegible writing in the manuscript. There is another source of error—and one in which the printer is perfectly blameless—which I have never seen noticed. It is this, that in speaking and reading we often slur over, elide or suppress the final consonant if the following word begin with a consonant; and this is not peculiar to the English, but is to be found in the French, German, and other languages, being in fact a law of nature, the result of our organization. The most usual case is when, as in the following example, the first word ends and the next begins with the same consonant. Thus in one of the Irish Melodies of Moore, a poet more devoted to euphony than to sense, we have

Thou wouldest still be adored as this moment thou art,

where it will be seen that the letters in italics are not, and cannot be pronounced, without making a pause between the words. In another song of the same poet we have

Mary, I believed thee true,

And I was blest in thus believing.

Here, if it were not for the second line, no one, on only hearing the first, could tell whether the word was believed or believe; for the sound is exactly the same: see on Much Ado, iv. 1; M. N. D. ii. 1. We surely then cannot blame the printer who makes a mistake in such cases, but we should not hesitate to correct it. We should also remember that this suppression or clipping is more frequent with the classes to which the printer probably belonged than with the educated.

It is chiefly the dentals t and d that are thus suppressed before words commencing with a mute consonant; and it is surprising what a number of words there are in common use that have been thus curtailed. Thus in and the d is rarely sounded, even before vowels; of is so generally pronounced o' that it were needless printing it so, as is usual in the dramatists, were it not that o' represents on as well as of; we all say "Who did you see?" though we should write it "Whom did you see?" Instances, in fine, are numberless; but we should keep the principle constantly in mind. See the note on sly-slow, Rich. II. i. 3; and on by peeping, Cymb. i. 7.

On the other hand, there is sometimes a transference of a consonant from the end of one word to the beginning of the next, which injures the sense,—ex. gr.,

Thence forth descending to that perilous porch

Those dreadful flames she also found delayed.

F. Q. iii. 12. 42.

Here the poet probably wrote allayed, and the printer transferred to it the d of found. See on Temp. iv. 1.

While treating of elision, it may not be useless to remark that when a word beginning with h is monosyllabic, or is not accented on its first syllable, the h is not sounded. Any one who will observe will find that his, for example, is usually pronounced is; so that there is no occasion for the 's of the dramatists. So we should write and pronounce a history, but write an historian and pronounce an 'istorian; for a historian, as it is too often written and pronounced, makes a most unpleasant hiatus. We may observe how constantly the aspirate is suppressed in the poetry of Greece and Rome.

The errors of transcribers and printers are Omission, Addition, Transposition, Substitution. Of these I will now give instances, chiefly from my own experience. I must, however, previously notice the rather curious fact, that these four sources of error, which I had traced out in our printed works, are all, and no other, acted upon by that, in my mind, most able of the German critics, J. Olshausen, in that chef d'œuvre of criticism, his Comment on the Book of Psalms, thus showing how universal they are.

7.

Omission.—If any one will examine a proof-sheet as it comes from the hands of a compositor, he will find abundant instances of this source of error. One would think that such could hardly escape the author's eye; and yet, in the edition of Ben Jonson's plays corrected by himself, almost the only errors detected by the editors have been those of omission; and a few more have, I think, escaped them. I may add that the words supplied by them seem to me to be almost invariably the very words which had been omitted. In Notes and Queries (3 S. vii.) there is a list of the principal errata in the reprint of the First Folio, in 1808; and the far larger portion of them are omissions which can easily be supplied. From my own experience in the case of reprints, I can further assert that corrections of this kind are by no means a matter of hap-hazard; for where I have supplied the words I supposed lost or altered I have almost invariably found, on referring to the original edition, that I had hit on the exact word. As an instance, in a late reprint of Akenside's Poems, the following line occurs in the Hymn to the Naiads:

Your sultry springs, through every urn.

Here I at once corrected salutary, and on looking at the original edition I found I was right. Yet, had this correction been made in Shakespeare, we know how it would have been disputed. As to omissions I can give the following instances. In a reprint (Lond. 1816) of Fletcher's Purple Island, we find (xii. 74, 85) the following lines:

Thus with glad sorrow did she plain her.

In th' own fair silver shines and borrow'd gold.

Each line being short, I read in the first "sweetly plain her," and in the second one and "fairer borrow'd gold," and on looking at the original 4to I found I had supplied the poet's very words. In Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, the following line is in all the MSS. and editions,

She hadde a gay mirrour,

which is evidently a foot short. I read 'She had in hand,' and on looking at the original I found en sa main.

It is not often that proofs have been read more carefully than were those of my edition of Milton's Poems, both by myself and by others; and yet, in the reprint of the text, in one place (Par. Lost, x. 422) it will be found that the word to is missing, thus destroying the metre; and yet none of us perceived it.

A far stronger case is the following. Never apparently was a work edited with greater care than Mr. Panizzi's edition of Bojardo and Ariosto; and yet in the Orlando Innamorato, II. xxiv. 54, the concluding couplet of the stanza is printed thus:

Persa ho mia gioia, e'l mio bel Paradiso,