George Frederic Warner

“ More remarkable still was a so-called seventeenth-century manuscript of ballads (lot 214, now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 32380) . Extracts from this volume, highly interesting in relation to Shakespeare and Marlowe, were published by Collier in 1836 and 1839, but he had never produced it. As had been suspected, it proved to be an artful fraud; real old ballads, already well known, are mixed up with three which have every appearance of being spurious, and the whole collection is written in a manifestly imitative hand (E. M. Thompson in Academy, xxvii. 170, 1885) . ”

“ In this edition he transferred the deference he showed in 1842-1844 to the first folio, 1623, to the anonymous corrections of the second, 1632, which were imported wholesale into the text without an attempt to distinguish them. The intrinsic merits of the manuscript readings had been questioned from the first. Real students of Shakespeare, such as Dyce, Knight, Staunton, and Halliwell, were not disposed to accept them blindly, and the proved futility of many of them negatived the idea of their specially authoritative character. ”

“ The ‘College of God's Gift’ thus incorporated consisted of a master, warden (both of whom were to be of the name of Alleyn) , four fellows, six poor brothers, six poor sisters, and twelve poor scholars, its endowment, besides the Dulwich estate, comprising property in Lambeth and Bishopsgate, together with the Fortune Theatre, the freehold of which Alleyn had secured in 1610. During the five years covered by his diary, and possibly until his death, Alleyn personally managed the affairs of the college, his average yearly expenditure on all accounts amounting to 1,700l. ”

“ Of the London theatres he seems to have had an interest in the Rose, the Hope, and the Red Bull, as well as in the Fortune; but the evidence adduced by Mr. Collier to show that he also possessed a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, purchased from Shakespeare, is of modern fabrication. ”

“ Meanwhile Collier completed an annotated edition of Shakespeare, 8 vols., published in 1842-4. It was preceded by a pamphlet dwelling upon ' the lately acquired means of illustrating the plays, poems, and biography of the poet.' Besides the materials already noticed, they included certain manuscript corrections, 'probably as old as the reign of Charles I,' in a copy of the first folio of 1623 at Bridgewater House. In the text of his edition Collier was essentially conservative. ”

“ In spite of all criticism, Collier's own faith in his folio remained unshaken. In a new edition of his annotated Shakespeare, 6 vols. 1858, he adopted most of its manuscript readings, and avowed his conviction that the great majority ' were made not from better manuscripts, still less from unknown printed copies but from the recitations of actors.' While this work was in the press he lost his wife, who : died, aged 70, on 10 Dec. 1857. His patron, the Duke of Devonshire, died soon after, 17 Jan. ”

“ His faculty of verse was no doubt shown to more advantage in his lighter pieces. Some of these, including imitations of early ballads, are printed in his 'Old Man's Diary,' 1871-2, and ' Odds and Ends,' 1870 ; and two of his translations from Schiller appeared separately in 1824-5. In 1825-7 he published a new edition of Dodsley's 'Old Plays,' in 12 vols. ”

“ He states himself (Spenser, i. p. vii) that he declined the post of a police magistrate in 1832, and that a proposal of Lord Campbell in 1848 or 1849 to procure him a county-court appointment was treated ay him in the same way. ”