William Shakespeare

“ Every student of Shakespeare has now an easy opportunity of acquainting himself with the text of F1, by means of Mr Booth’s excellent reprint, and we are certain that not one of them will consider the spelling of that volume intrinsically better than that of our day. Rather more like Shakespeare’s it certainly is, but we doubt whether much is gained by such approximation, as long as it is short of perfect attainment. Moreover, in many of the Plays there is a competing claim to guide our spelling, put forward by an array of Quartos, of earlier date than F1. ”

“ We have endeavoured faithfully to record any variation of reading, however minute (except, as before said, mere differences of spelling or punctuation) , adopted by any editor, and to give that editor’s name. Sometimes, however, we have passed over in silence merely arbitrary rearrangements of the metre made in passages where no change was required and no improvement effected. ”

“ The well-known canon of criticism, that of two readings ‘ceteris paribus’ the more difficult is to be preferred, is not always to be applied in comparing the readings of the Folios. For very frequently an anomaly which would have been plausible on account of its apparent archaism proves to be more archaic than Shakespeare, if the earlier Quartos give the language of Shakespeare with more correctness. ”

“ Being, however, a man of natural ability and taste he improved the text by some happy guesses, while, from overhaste and negligence, he left it still deformed by many palpable errors. The best part of the work is that with which his experience of the stage as a dramatic poet had made him familiar. In many cases he first prefixed to the play a list of dramatis personæ, he supplied the defects of the Folios in the division and numbering of Acts and Scenes, and in the entrances and exits of characters. He also corrected and further modernized the spelling, the punctuation, and the grammar. ”

“ This last error points to a very common anomaly in grammar; one which seems almost to have become a rule, or, at any rate, a license in Shakespeare’s own time, that a verb shall agree in number with the nominative intervening between the true governing noun and the verb. ”

“ The excellence of the edition proved to be by no means proportionate to the arrogance of the editor. His text is, indeed, better than Pope’s, inasmuch as he introduced many of Theobald’s restorations and some probable emendations both of his own and of the two editors whom he so unsparingly denounced, but there is no trace whatever, so far as we have discovered, of his having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the Quartos. ”

“ For, in the first place, we admit none because we think it better rhythm or grammar or sense, unless we feel sure that the reading of the Folio is altogether impossible. In the second place, the conjecture must appear to us to be the only probable one. If the defect can be made good in more ways than one equally plausible, or, at least, equally possible, we have registered but not adopted these improvements, and the reader is intended to make his own selection out of the notes. ”

“ There is no doubt that a system of versification has taken root among us very different from that which was in use in the earlier days of our poetry. The influence of classical prosody has worked in a manner that could hardly have been expected. Quantity in the sense in which the Greeks and Romans understood it, is altogether foreign to our speech; and our poets, willing to imitate the verse regulated by laws of quantity, have partially adopted those laws, substituting for long syllables those that bear a stress of accent or emphasis. ”

“ The descriptions of Australian life in the early colonial days are marked by an unmistakable touch of reality and personal experience. A book which the public will be more inclined to read than to criticise, and we commend, them to each other.’ —Athenæum. ”

“ Rowe’s few changes of F4 are almost all in the same direction, and the work may be said to have been completed by Hanmer. It is to be feared that a result of two centuries of such a practice has been to bring about an idea of Shakespearian versification very different from Shakespeare’s. But we feel a xvii hope that the number of Shakespeare’s students who can appreciate the true nature of the English versification in our elder poets is increasing, and will increase more as the opportunity is furnished them of studying Shakespeare himself. ”

“ That such an edition was wanted seemed to be generally allowed, and it was thought that Cambridge afforded facilities for the execution of the task such as few other places could boast of. The Shakespearian collection given by Capell to the Library of Trinity College supplied a mass of material almost unrivalled in amount and value, and in some points unique; and there, too, might be found opportunities for combined literary labour, without which the work could not be executed at all. ”

“ Not one in twenty of the various readings is put in the margin, and the readings in his text very frequently rest upon no authority whatever. The glaring inconsistency between the promise in the preface and the performance in the book may well account for its failure with the public.
It would, however, be ungrateful not to acknowledge that Pope’s emendations are always ingenious and plausible, and sometimes unquestionably true. He never seems to nod over that ‘dull labour’ of which he complains. ”

“ He published in 1790 a new edition of Shakespeare in 10 volumes, 8vo, containing the Plays and Poems, ‘collated verbatim with the most authentic copies, and revised,’ together with several essay xxxix and dissertations, among the rest that on the order of the plays, corrected and enlarged.
The animosities which both Steevens and Malone had the misfortune to excite, have had the effect of throwing some slur on their names as editors, and even as men, and have prevented the fair appreciation and a due acknowledgment of the services they rendered jointly and severally to English literature. ”

“ Questions are marked and unnoticed almost at random; stops are inserted in the ends of lines fatal to the sense. In fact, in many places, we may almost say that a complete want of points would mislead us less than the punctuation of the Folios. The consequence is, that our punctuation is very little dependent upon the Folios and Quartos, but generally follows the practice which has taken possession of the text of Shakespeare, under xx the arrangement of the best editors, from Pope to Dyce and Staunton. ”

“ When the first Folio is corrupt, we have allowed some authority to the emendations of F2 above subsequent conjecture, and secondarily to F3 and F4; but a reference to our notes will show that the authority even of F2 in correcting is very small. Where we have Quartos of authority, their variations from F1 have been generally accepted, except where they are manifest errors, and where the text of the entire passage seems to be of an inferior recension to that of the Folio. ”

“ Pope, unlike his predecessor, had at least seen the first Folio and some of the Quartos of separate plays, and from the following passage of his preface it might have been inferred that he had diligently collated them all:
‘This is the state in which Shakespeare’s writings be at present; for since the above-mentioned folio edition [i.e. F4] , all the rest have implicitly followed it without xxix having recourse to any of the former, or ever making the comparison between them. It is impossible to repair the injuries already done him; too much time has elaps’d, and the materials are too few. ”

“ It differs, however, from the first in many passages, sometimes widely, sometimes slightly, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. The emendations are evidently conjectural, and though occasionally right, appear more frequently to be wrong. They deserve no more respect than those of other guessers, except such as is due to their author’s familiar acquaintance with the language and customs of Shakespeare’s day, and possible knowledge of the acted plays.
Capell’s copy of the second Folio has been of great use to us in our collations. ”

“ It is probable that no one copy exactly corresponds with any other copy. We have indicated these variations, wherever they were known to us, in a note either at the foot of the page or at the end of each play.
A reprint of the first Folio, not free from inaccuracies, was published in 1807. A second reprint is now in course of publication by Mr Lionel Booth. The first part, containing the Comedies, has already appeared. It is probably the most correct reprint ever issued.
The second Folio (F2) is a reprint of the first, preserving the same pagination. ”

“ He used Warburton’s text, to print his own from. The readings and suggestions attributed to ‘Johnson,’ in our notes, are derived either from the edition of 1765, or from those which he furnished to the subsequent editions in which Steevens was his co-editor. Some few also found by the latter in Johnson’s hand on the margin of his copy of ‘Warburton,’ purchased by Steevens at Johnson’s sale, were incorporated in later editions. Johnson’s edition was attacked with great acrimony by Dr Kenrick, 1765 (Boswell, Vol. II. p. 300) . ”

“ Aber man läuft ein gefährliches Spiel, wenn man nicht überall offen und bescheiden bekennt, dass man ganz von den Engländern abhange: ja man scheitert gewiss, wenn man mit der einen Hand allen Stoff von dem man lebt und athmet ihnen entnimmt, und mit der andern zum Dank Hohn und Beleidigung auf ihren Namen wirft. ”

“ Capell, who might be supposed to write ‘sine ira et studio,’ denies to Theobald even this merit: ‘His work is only made a little better [than Pope’s] by his having a few more materials; of which he was not a better collator than the other, nor did he excel him in use of them.’ The result of the collations we have made leads us to a very different conclusion.
9. Notwithstanding this claim of identity, Warburton seems to have used Theobald’s text to print from. Capell positively affirms this, (Preface, p. 18) . ”

“ In a note to his preface, p. xxiii, Capell says:
‘In the manuscripts from which all these plays are printed, the emendations are given to their proper owners by initials and other marks that are in the margin of those manuscripts; but they are suppressed in the print for two reasons: First their number, in some pages, makes them a little unsightly; and the editor professes himself weak enough to like a well-printed book; in the next place, he does declare, that his only object has been to do service to his Author ”

“ F1 omits ‘trusty.’ F2 makes up the line by inserting ‘gentle.’
Where the Folios are all obviously wrong, and the Quartos also fail us, we have introduced into the text several conjectural emendations; especially we have often had recourse to Theobald’s ingenuity. But it must be confessed that a study of errors detracts very much from the apparent certainty of conjectures, the causelessness of the blunders warning us off the hope of restoring, by general principles or by discovery of causes of error. ”

“ We have borrowed from several literary journals, the Athenæum, Notes and Queries, and the Parthenon, and from Magazines, the conjectures of their correspondents. When the real name of the correspondent, or what might be such, was signed, we have given it in our notes, as ‘Hickson,’ ‘S. Verges’ (from Notes and Queries) . When the name was obviously fictitious, or when the article was not signed at all, we have noted it thus: ‘Anon. (N. and Q.) conj.,’ ‘Anon. (Fras. Mag.) ”

“ Forbids the robbing of a foe,
But what, to serve our private ends,
Forbids the cheating of our friends?’
Not only Johnson’s constitutional indolence and desultory habits, but also the deficiency of his eye-sight, incapacitated him for the task of minute collation. Nevertheless, he did consult the older copies, and has the merit of restoring some readings which had escaped Theobald. He had not systematically studied the literature and language xxxvi of the 16th and 17th centuries ”

“ To desert F1 for these, where they exist, would be but an occasional, and at best an uncertain means of attaining the lost spelling of Shakespeare, while the spelling of our volume would become even more inconsistent than that of F1 itself. Add to this; there are places, though, as has been seen, not many, where we have had to leave the reading of F1 altogether. How then shall we spell the correction which we substitute?
D. Metre.
Corrections of metre are avoided even more carefully than those of grammar. For the rules of prosody have xvi undergone perhaps greater change than those of grammar. ”

“ We will only state some of the differences between Shakespearian versification and that which has now become our normal prosody; namely, such as have excited an ambition of correcting in later editors. There is a large number of verses which a modern ear pronounces to want their first unaccented syllable. The following we quote as they appear in F1, in the opening of the Two Gentlemen of Verona:
No, I will not, for it boots thee not. I. 1. 28.
Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all. I. 2. 30. ”

“ To show that the later Folios only corrected the first by conjecture, we may instance two lines in Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Give me your neif, Mounsieur Mustard Seed. IV. 1.
‘Neif,’ which is spelt ‘niefe’ in Qq F1, becomes ‘newfe’ in F2, ‘newse’ and ‘news’ in F3 F4.
xii And finds his trusty Thisby’s mantle slain. V. 1. ”

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