Publishers
who could not secure a copy of a
play by any other means would employ a shorthand writer to report
it, while it was being acted.
play by any other means would employ a shorthand writer to report
it, while it was being acted.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v05
The internal evidence of all three plays
is strongly against the theory that Shakespeare had anything to do
with their composition.
Faire Em is the work of some member of that early school
of dramatists who, under the leadership of Greene, delighted in
the union of fictitious English history with love romance. There
are two distinct plots in this play, and they have almost nothing
in common. That which furnishes the title is the story of the
.
courtship by three knights of Fair Em, the daughter of an English
noble who, robbed of his lands at the Norman conquest, is now
plying the trade of a miller at Manchester. A ballad, entered
on the Stationers' register on 2 March 1581, and entitled The
## p. 252 (#276) ############################################
252 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
6
Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is the probable source of this
portion of the play. The second plot is taken from Henry Wotton's
Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels (1578), a collection of five
stories translated from Jacques Yver's Le Printemps d'Iver. This
relates the unhistoric adventures of William the Conqueror, who, in
order to win the hand of the Danish king's daughter, visits his
court disguised as a knight and pursues his amours there under
strange changes of fortune. The workmanship of the play is very
poor, but certain allowances must be made for its early date. It
seems to have been in existence in 1587, for, in Greene's intro-
duction to his Farewell to Folly, registered in that year, he makes
a satiric reference to Faire Em, and quotes, in a slightly altered
form, two lines from the closing scene of the play.
The Merry Devill of Edmonton, although the earliest known
edition of it is dated 1608, was certainly written by 1604, when
T. M. (? Thomas Middleton) alludes to it, in company with A Woman
Kilde with Kindnesse, in his Blacke Book; twelve years later, in
the prologue to The Divill is an Asse, Jonson describes it as the
'dear delight' of the theatre-going public. The popularity which
the play enjoyed was not unmerited; in the words of Charles
Lamb, it'seems written to make the reader happy. ' In its blend-
ing of scenes of magic and the black art with a romantic love
comedy, standing out against a pleasant background of English
rural life, The Merry Devill recalls Frier Bacon and Frier
Bongay. But the magic element in the play is little more than
& sop to the popular taste of the day. After an induction,
which is a serio-comic imitation of the famous closing scene in
Dr Faustus, we hear little more of the doings of Peter Fabell,
the Edmonton magician, and give ourselves up to the main story,
which shows by what devices youth and true love overcome the
treasonable counsels of age and prudence. The lovers are lightly
conceived; but in their veins there flows the youthful spirit and
romantic ardour of the early school of Elizabethan comedy, and
Millicent, the heroine, who is willing to dare much lest love be
‘smothered in foggy gain,' is worthy of a place not far below the
early heroines of Shakespeare. The play is not Shakespeare's;
but its author, alike in his love romance and in the humorous and
realistic scenes in which Blague the host, Smug the smith and
Sir John the priest appear, is one of Shakespeare's imitators.
The character of the host of the George tavern at Edmonton
is modelled, as Hazlitt pointed out, on that of the host of The
Merry Wives of Windsor; and this fact furnishes us with a clue as
6
## p. 253 (#277) ############################################
Mucedorus
253
to the period at which the play was written. The source of the
story is unknown, but the adventures of Peter Fabell, who, in
the district round about Enfield Chase, enjoyed something of the
reputation of a Dr Faustus, had been already recorded. There
was a poem, now lost but known to Warton, entitled Fabyl's
Ghoste, written in octave stanzas and printed by John Rastell
in 1533, which may be the same as The Merry Pranks of
Fabyl mentioned by Weever; and, in the same year as that in
which the play was published, Thomas Brewer's prose tract, The
Life and Death of the Merry Devill of Edmonton, with the
Pleasant Pranks of Smug the Smith, Sir John and mine Host
of the George about the stealing of Venison, was entered at
Stationers' Hall. These Fabell stories, doubtless, furnished the
dramatist with some of the materials for the comic by-plot, but
not for the romantic love story.
The popularity of The Merry Devill of Edmonton was as
nothing compared with that of A Most pleasant Comedie of
Mucedorus, the kings sonne of Valentia and Amadine the kings
daughter of Arragon, with the merie conceites of Mouse. The
earliest known edition of this play is dated 1598; but the words,
'newly set foorth,' on the title-page, indicate that it was first
produced at some earlier date; numerous reprints followed, and
W. W. Greg has succeeded in tracing no less than seventeen quarto
editions of the play up to the year 1700. This popularity is the
more remarkable since, as the epilogue makes clear, it was not
written for popular representation, but for a performance at
court. And, having delighted queen Elizabeth, it was revived,
with numerous additions and an altered epilogue, for a Shrovetide
performance at Whitehall early in the reign of James I. The text,
thus enlarged and amended, was first published in 1610. The
vogue of this 'very delectable' comedy, while it illustrates the
uncritical temper of the age, is somewhat hard to understand;
for the play, though doing credit to the infancy of Elizabethan
romantic comedy, is, in respect of plot construction, characterisa-
tion and metric art, a very primitive piece of work. It teems,
however, with action and romantic adventure, and these, with the
crude wit and cruder folly of Mouse the clown, seem to have been
deemed sufficient by courtier and groundling alike. A Spanish
prince, who, in the prosecution of his love, disguises himself first
as a shepherd and then as a hermit; a wild man of the woods, who
combines cannibal instincts with a nice taste for romance; a rustic
clown; and a bear that instructs the princess Amadine how to
## p. 254 (#278) ############################################
254
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
distinguish between the hero lover and the coward—these are the
most notable ingredients of the play. The appearance of such
morality figures as Envy and Comedy in the induction and epilogue
is a sign of an early date of production, and it is hard to believe
that the drama, in its original form, is later than 1590. The name
Mucedorus, and the disguise of that prince as a shepherd, recall
one of the two heroes of Sidney's Arcadia, and the probability is
that the plot is taken from some half chivalrous and half pastoral
romance of Spanish or Italian literature.
The London Prodigall and The Puritane, as already stated,
are examples of realistic city comedy. At the hands of Heywood
and Dekker, realism associated itself with romance; but, with
Middleton and his successors, the romantic element was purged
away, and nothing was allowed to interfere with the realistic, and
often satirical, representation of contemporary manners. The
authorship of these two plays is not easy to determine; but it can
be stated without hesitation that neither is the work of Shake-
speare, who, while interested in bourgeois comedy, rarely allowed
it to force its way into the foreground. Both plays, probably,
were written early in the seventeenth century, when Heywood and
Middleton were making this type of drama acceptable to popular
taste, and when Ben Jonson was also engaged in a close inspec-
tion of the social types of London life and in the discovery of
humours.
The London Prodigall was first published in 1605, and the
title-page of this edition informs us that the play was acted by
the Kings Majesties servants' and that its author was William
Shakespeare. It is full of bustling life, but is wholly wanting in
the higher elements of dramatic art, and, also, in poetic beauty.
The most striking feature in the plot is the resemblance,
pointed out by A. W. Ward, which it bears to the Charles Surface
story of Sheridan's School for Scandal. The wealthy father,
Flowerdale senior, who has just returned to England after long
years of absence, and who, under the disguise of a servant, attaches
himself to his prodigal son and, in the end, pardons his excesses,
is a crude prototype of uncle Oliver. But the author of the
Elizabethan play fails, where Sheridan succeeds, in winning the
reader's sympathy for the prodigal. Flowerdale junior's career
of riot and neglect has no redeeming feature in it, and his final
repentance, so far from convincing us of its reality and endurance,
only deepens our pity for the outraged and extravagantly patient
wife, Luce, who takes the repentant sinner to her bosom. The
## p. 255 (#279) ############################################
The Puritane
255
humour of the play is chiefly to be sought among the serving-
men of the wealthy city knight, and in the persons of Sir Launcelot
Spurcock, Weathercock the parasite and the Devonshire clothier
Oliver, whose west country talk and manners have the homely
honesty of the rough kersey cloth which he makes and wears.
The disguise of Luce as a Dutchwoman, and the pigeon English
by which, when thus disguised, she conceals her identity, may,
very possibly, have been suggested by the similar disguise of
Lacy in Dekker's highly popular play, The Shoemaker's Holiday.
The Puritane Or The Widdow of Watling-streete was one of the
plays acted by the choristers of St Paul's, and it was published in
1607 as 'written by W. S. ' It is a realistic comedy of intrigue,
bordering, at times, upon farce, and its main object is ridicule
of the puritan party and of London citizens. The scenes are
mainly in prose, and the few passages in verse are wholly wanting
in poetic feeling. The five acts are constructed out of a number
a
of episodes of shrewd knavery, which follow one another in swift
succession, but hardly form a plot. The moving spirit in these
knavish tricks is a certain George Pyeboard, who makes the
puritan family in Watling street his dupes up to the very last scene
of the play, when the intervention of the nobleman as a deus ex
machina exposes the chain of fraud. At least one of Pyeboard's
knaveries is taken from the so-called Merrie Conceited Jests
of George Peele', and it has long since been pointed out that,
under the name of George Pyeboard, George Peele was intended?
There is no reason whatever for associating the play with
Shakespeare; but its author, doubtless, was familiar with that
dramatist's work, and refers in act iv, sc. 3 to the appearance
of Banquo's ghost in Macbeth. It has been argued, with con-
siderable show of reason, that it was written either by an Oxford
student, or by a dramatist newly come from that university. The
hero of the play is a student adventurer, who is acquainted with
the academic phraseology of his university, while the author
exhibits a fondness for Latin phrases, and lays much stress on the
fact that a university scholar is a gentleman. Tucker Brooke
ascribes the play to Middleton, and compares it with Eastward
Hoe.
The only other play which calls for notice in this chapter is
The Two Noble Kinsmen, the question of Shakespeare's share
a
· See Dyce's introduction to Peele's Works, p. viii.
? • Peel' and 'pieboard' are synonymous terms for the flat wooden shovel used in
taking pies out of a brick oven.
## p. 256 (#280) ############################################
256 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
in which has evoked more discussion than all the remaining
doubtful plays together. It was first published in 1634 as the
work of 'the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher
and Mr William Shakespeare, Gent,' and the title-page of this
edition also informs us that it had been performed by the king's
players at the Blackfriars theatre. The famous Palamon and Arcite
story which it reproduces had been dramatised before. Richard
Edwards had written a Palamon and Arcyte as early as 1566,
which was performed before Elizabeth by Oxford students on the
occasion of the queen's visit to the university in that year; but
the account of this lost academic comedy, preserved in Anthony
à Wood's manuscripts and published in Nichols's Progresses of
Elizabeth, suggests that it was very different in character from
The Two Noble Kinsmen. Nothing is known of the Palamon
and Arsett mentioned by Henslowe as having been acted at the
Newington theatre in 1594.
The Two Noble Kinsmen follows Chaucer's Knight's Tale
as closely as an Elizabethan play can be expected to follow a
fourteenth century verse romance; but the dramatists, deferring
to the seventeenth century taste for a realistic underplot to a
romantic theme, have added the story of the gaoler's daughter,
of which there is but the faintest hint in The Knight's Tale.
The element of divine caprice which lurks in Chaucer's romance
is by no means eliminated from the play. In the closing speech
of the last scene, Theseus would fain convince us that, of the two
rival kinsmen, Palamon has the better right to the lady-because
he saw her first ! --but the enduring impression which the play
leaves upon the reader's mind is that man is but the puppet of
fortune. And if the dénouement of the play is unsatisfactory,
so, also, are the characters. Palamon and Arcite, except in the
scene in which they first appear, are not well distinguished from
each other; Theseus, though he discourses fine poetry, is a stilted
and a vacillating figure, and Emilia, a poor faded copy of Chaucer's
Emelye the sheene,' would be more in her place as Hotspur's
comfit-maker's wife than as a warrior's bride. Finally, the under-
plot, the author of which endeavours to make up for his lack of in-
vention by imitating familiar incidents in the plays of Shakespeare,
is both unskilful and indelicate. Yet, with all these shortcomings
-shortcomings which are largely due to the fact of double author.
ship—The Two Noble Kinsmen abounds in elements of greatness.
It is a play which needs to be seen in order that the masque-like
splendour of some of its scenes may be fully realised; bụt a mere
## p. 257 (#281) ############################################
The Two Noble Kinsmen
257
perusal of it suffices to reveal its imaginative power, the ripeness
and energy of the thought and the luminous colour of high
romance in which it is steeped. Into it are poured the riches
of classic legend, medieval romance, Elizabethan comedy and
Jacobean masque, and, in the union of these varying elements,
we recognise the genius of a dramatist who could subdue all
things to harmony.
The problem of authorship is beset with difficulties, for, while
it is certain that the play is the work of more than one author,
it seems also probable that the workmanship of the two men is
not sharply sundered, but that, in places, the hand of the one has
been engaged in revising what the other had written. With the
exception of Delius, who propounded the fanciful theory that
The Two Noble Kinsmen is the work of an anonymous dramatist
who deliberately set himself to imitate now the manner of
Shakespeare and now that of Fletcher, critics are agreed that
one of the two authors was Fletcher, and that to him may be
allotted most of acts II, III and iv, including the whole of the
underplot, with the possible exception of the two prose scenes',
but only a small, and comparatively unimportant, part of the
main story.
The whole of the first act, the first scene in
act II, and almost the whole of the last act are clearly not by
Fletcher in the first instance, and in the determination of the
authorship of these scenes lies the chief problem of the play.
The choice seems to lie between Massinger and Shakespeare;
it has been argued by Robert Boyle that the handling of the
characters in these scenes is singularly unlike that of Shakespeare
and singularly like that of Massinger, and that the frequent
medical allusions, and the echoes of passages in Shakespeare's
authentic works, furnish further evidence in favour of Massinger
and against Shakespeare. Arguments such as these, though not
without force, are outweighed by others on the opposite side.
A comparison of the play with Massinger's scenes in The Lover's
Progress, & play which introduces the similar theme of the
love of two friends for one woman, shows the greatest variance
in the application of the principles of dramatic art. The resem-
blance, too, between the verse of Massinger and that of the non-
Fletcherian portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, on which Boyle
lays considerable stress, is only superficial. In the mechanical
elements of poetic rhythm, Massinger comes very near to Shake-
speare; but, when we look deeper, and come to the consideration
1 Act u, sc. 1 and act iv, so. 3.
17
R. L. v.
CA. X.
## p. 258 (#282) ############################################
258 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
of those features of style which do not admit of tabular analysis,
we find the widest difference. The diction of Massinger is, above
all things, orderly and lucid. He shows, at times, passion and
imagination; but he never allows these to check the stately decorum
and even flow of his verse. Now, the diction of The Two Noble
Kinsmen is of a peculiar nature, and Spalding, in his famous
Letter, with others after him, naturally directed his attention to
this, above all other things, in attributing these non-Fletcherian
scenes to Shakespeare. In the profusion of striking metaphors,
the copious outpouring of profound thoughts and the extreme
concision, often involving harshness and obscurity, of the utterance,
these scenes bear a marked resemblance to the plays of Shake-
speare's final period, and to nothing else in literature. Moreover,
the very defects of these scenes are the same defects which we
meet with in Shakespeare's so-called romances. The sacrifice of
dramatic probability to the attainment of magnificent spectacular
effects, the intrusion of the deus ex machina to cut the Gordian
knot which human effort cannot disentangle and the triumph of the
poetic and intellectual interests over the strictly dramatic-these
are all features common to The Two Noble Kinsmen and the
products of Shakespeare's genius in the last phase of his dramatic
career.
## p. 259 (#283) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE
THE text of Shakespeare is as uncertain as are the facts of his
life. In neither case are we in possession of any real authori-
ties. But, while there is evidence to establish the certainty of
some of the incidents in his career, we cannot be sure of the
accuracy of a single line in his plays. Not only are we without
Shakespeare's manuscript, but we do not even possess an authorised
edition of any play, such as we have of Venus and Adonis and
Lucrece. The conditions under which plays were produced in the
Elizabethan age supply us with two reasons for this, at first sight,
extraordinary fact. Shakespeare, like his fellow dramatists, wrote
for the stage and not for publication. The playwright's sole
ambition was to see his play on the stage. Hardly any play was
published by its author without some apology. Marston, in his
preface to The Malcontent (1604), actually complains that he is
detracting from the value of his work by publishing it; and he goes
on to state that his reason for consenting to this is that, if he did
not publish it, others would, thus inflicting upon him still greater
injury. All rights in a play were tacitly, if not legally, sur-
rendered to the acting company, and the author's interest in it
ceased. No more striking proof of this attitude could be desired
than the fact that Shakespeare himself described Venus and
Adonis as 'the first heire of my invention,' at a time when he had
certainly written several plays.
On the other hand, companies refrained from publication.
They sought by this means to increase the profit from their per-
formances. Thus, Thomas Heywood speaks of some of his plays
being 'still retained in the hands oi some actors, who think it
against their peculiar profit to have them come in print. ' But
a
1 The references throughout are to The Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Wright, W. Aldis,
1894.
17-2
## p. 260 (#284) ############################################
260
Text of Shakespeare
The
this shortsighted policy on the part of the companies did not
prevent others from supplying the demand for printed copies
which naturally existed. In the absence of any strict laws of
copyright? , it is not surprising that publishers were found ready
to snatch a profit by the surreptitious publication of the more
popular plays of so favourite a writer as Shakespeare.
This explains the origin of the quartos, in which form the text
of nineteen plays? first saw the light. As all these plays appear
again in the folio edition (Pericles for the first time in the third
folio), the relative value of the quarto and folio texts becomes
the fundamental question for textual discussion. No generalisa-
tion is possible with regard to the quarto text, owing to its
unequal character. But, for textual purposes, the quarto plays
may be classified as duplicate, variant and doublet. The duplicate
quarto plays are those in which the text of the first folio has been
derived from that of one of the quartos. The first quarto, there-
fore, is entitled to rank as the only authoritative text for these
eight plays. The printing of some of these plays is equal to any-
thing in the first folio; that of A Midsummer Night's Dream is
excellent. Their comparative freedom from corruption and their
adoption by the editors of the first folio suggest that they were
drawn from copies not far removed in date from Shakespeare's
manuscript. The spelling of the quarto text is more archaic than
that of the first folio. In many cases, it resembles that of the first
quarto of the Poems, which may fairly be taken to represent
Shakespeare's own spelling.
The text of the remaining quarto plays diverges to a very large
extent from that of the folio, not only in respect of verbal
differences, but by the addition or omission of passages amounting,
in some cases, to thirty or forty lines, and even to whole scenes. In
Parts II and III of Henry VI, Henry V and The Merry Wives,
the omissions are all made by the quarto, as are also the most
1 Companies gradually had their rights acknowledged, and, in 1637, the lord
chamberlain issued an injunction to the Stationers' company, prohibiting the publica-
tion of plays without consent of the players.
2 Part II of Henry VI (First Part of the Contention, Q, 1594), Part III of Henry VI
(True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, Q. 1595), Richard II (Q, 1597), Richard III
(Q 1597), Romeo and Juliet (Q. 1597), Love's Labour's Lost (Q. 1598), Part I of
Henry IV (Q, 1598), Much Ado (Q 1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Q: Q, 1600), The
Merchant of Venice (Q, Q, 1600), Part II of Henry IV (Q 1600), Henry V (Q, 1600),
Titus Andronicus (Q, 1600), The Merry Wives (Q, 1602), Hamlet (Q, 1603), King Lear
(Q, 1608), Troilus and Cressida (Q 1609), Pericles (Q, 1609), Othello (Q, 1622).
3 Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,
Part I of Henry IV, Much Ado, Pericles, Titus Andronicus (with exception of one
scene added in F,), Richard II (part of scene added in Qs).
## p. 261 (#285) ############################################
Length of Texts
261
serious omissions in Part II of Henry IV; in Troilus and
Cressida, King Lear and Othello, they are fairly evenly divided.
The greater completeness of the folio text constitutes it the chief
authority for these variant quarto plays. An exception has to be
noted in the case of Richard III. Here, the omissions in the folio
are trifling, compared with those in the quarto; but textual evidence
conclusively proves that the folio text follows two different quarto
texts and contains systematic alterations. The first quarto, there-
fore, becomes the authoritative text for all except the omitted
passages? Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are unique in possessing
doublet, quarto texts. The first quarto, in both cases, is very
defective; but, in the case of the former play, the folio text was
derived from the second quarto, while, in the case of the latter,
the folio text was taken from a copy which was considerably less
complete.
The great discrepancies in these texts demand some explanation.
There can be little doubt that they are due, in the main, to the
fact that the defective texts were based on copies which had been
adapted for the stage. From the fact that Shakespeare wrote for the
stage, it must not be inferred that he allowed himself to be bound
by the exigencies of stage performance. The need of adaptation
for stage purposes has always made itself felt in the case of the
texts of plays, even to the present day; and it is highly probable
that none of the longer plays of Shakespeare were ever pro-
duced in the theatre exactly as they were written. There is,
moreover, definite evidence that the plays of other dramatists
were shortened for the stage. It is in this sense that we are to
understand the statement made on the title-page of the second
quarto of Hamlet, 'newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much
againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie,' and
similar statements in the quartos of other plays.
The references in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet to the
two hours traffic of our stage,' and in that of Henry VIII to 'two
short hours,' fix the average length of a performance. The mere
length of such plays as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,
Troilus and Cressida, Part II of Henry IV, Henry V, necessi-
tated curtailment. Thus, of the long scene in Richard III",
numbering five hundred and forty lines in the folio, nearly eighty
are omitted (including a passage of over fifty lines); the quarto text
of Hamlet omits sixty lines of Hamlet's interview with Rosencrantz
* The genealogy of the text of Richard III is described in an appendix to this chapter,
? Act 19, 80. 4.
## p. 262 (#286) ############################################
262
The Text of Shakespeare
and Guildenstern concerning the players; and the folio text of King
Lear lacks a whole scene, as well as a passage of nearly fifty lines.
Not only, however, the length of a play, but also the number of
characters called for adaptation. Companies were often so thin
that one player had to act two or three parts. A clear case
of curtailment on this ground is the omission in the folio text of
the dialogue between Hamlet and a lord, who comes to urge him
to the rapier contest with Laertes. This is the only occasion on
which this character appears. The folio text of King Lear omits
the conversation between two servants after the putting out of
Gloucester's eyes, probably for the same reason. Sometimes,
speeches are put into the mouths of other characters, instead of
being omitted altogether. In Henry V, Westmoreland's wish for
ten thousand more men is transferred to Warwick.
A different reason for the omission of passages in the per-
formance of a play was political expediency. Both Elizabeth and
James I frequently witnessed stage performances, and a natural
consequence of this personal patronage was a strict censorship of
plays presented before them. Precarious as is any attempt to point
out political allusions in Shakespeare, the magnificent compliment
paid to the fair vestal throned by the west,' and 'her single
blessedness,' would suffice to show that such allusions were, on
occasion, introduced by him. The suppression of the deposition
scene in the first quarto of Richard II was doubtless made out of
deference to the queen's well known susceptibilities on the subject.
In King Lear, Edmund's allusions to the results of the prediction,'
in which James is said to have had some faith, and the reference
to nobles acting as spies in France may have been suppressed on
similar grounds. Portia's description of the Scottish' lord
contains a satirical allusion to the alliances of Scotland with
France against England. After the accession of James, the
players, instead of omitting the passage, altered 'Scottish lord'
to 'other lord,' which is the reading of the folio.
The legal restrictions with regard to the use of oaths and the
profane use of Scripture account for the excision of a great number
of passages and the modification of many expressions, especially in
Part II of Henry IV. A few seem to be omitted in both quarto and
folio on account of their lewdness. Other passages were struck out
by the players because of their inherent obscurity. The corrupt
passages in Hamlet, containing stars with trains of fire,' dram of
eale,' 'that monster custom,' omitted entirely in the folio text,
very likely owe their corruption to the tampering of the players.
## p. 263 (#287) ############################################
Reasons for Defects in Quarto Texts 263
The process of adaptation caused passages to be added as well
as omitted. The clown's duty was to afford amusement to the
spectators after the play was finished; but he was also expected
to add specimens of his own native wit to his regular part in a play.
This practice is referred to by Hamlet in a well known passage of
his address to the players, to which the first quarto adds samples,
'Cannot you stay till I eate my porridge ? and you owe me a
quarters wages, my coat wants a cullison; And your beere is
sowre. ' The fool in King Lear is no mere clown! It is probable
that for portions of this, and for poor Tom's' parts, buffoonery was
often substituted; which would account for the disturbed state of
the text both in quarto and folio in these passages. The omission
of the prologue to Troilus and Cressida in the folio may be
explicable in the same way. The omission from the folio text of
several other passages seems to confirm doubts as to their
genuineness.
The mangled state of the text in the first quartos of Parts II
and III of Henry VI, The Merry Wives, Henry V, Romeo and
Juliet and Hamlet shows another disintegrating factor at work
besides adaptation.
Publishers who could not secure a copy of a
play by any other means would employ a shorthand writer to report
it, while it was being acted. This report, naturally, would be very
imperfect; some poetaster would patch it up as best he could,
and thus it found its way into print? . The numerous mistakes due
to imperfect hearing confirm this view of the origin of these texts,
such as 'tigers of Arcadia' for 'tigers of Hyrcania,' 'Cophetua' for
• Caveto' etc.
The first quartos of these plays have been regarded as earlier
drafts subsequently revised by the poet. This theory is plausible
with regard to The Merry Wives, where the quarto contains
passages which evidently do not go back to the same original as
the corresponding passages in the folio, and to the two parts of
Henry VI, which appear under a different title. But the causes
already enumerated are sufficient to account for the state of the
quarto text; and, wherever this is admitted to be not only an
6
1 The difficulty of acting this part has been often felt on the modern stage. Cf.
Macready, W. C. , Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 97.
? Cf. the well known passage in Thomas Heywood, cited post, vol. vi, ch. iv.
A specimen of the stenographer's' work is to be found in the first quatto version of
Hamlet's famous soliloquy:
To be or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all :
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, eto.
## p. 264 (#288) ############################################
264
The Text of Shakespeare
adaptation of the supposed earlier draft, but a garbled version of
the adaptation, it is difficult to see how the question of revision
can be fruitfully discussed.
Numerous minor omissions in the quartos are due to careless-
ness in copying either on the part of the players or the printers.
In this way, a whole scene was omitted in earlier impressions
of the quarto of Part II of Henry IV, but restored in later
copies. The very numerous half-lines which still remain in the
text may be attributed to this cause. Sometimes, a passage drops
out owing to similarity of expressions at the beginning and end 1.
The text of the first folio has a more uniform value than that
of the quartos. But, in two respects, it is, on the whole, hardly any
more trustworthy. For the punctuation and metre of the plays,
we are largely dependent on the work of modern editors. In
individual cases, however, the metrical arrangement of the folio is
vastly superior. In King Lear, the verse of the folio, to a large
extent, is represented by prose in the quarto. The duplicate quarto
plays, in which the folio text was drawn from one of the quartos,
afford a test of its conjectural emendations. They are of little
importance and generally for the worse. Where real corruption
exists (eg. 'perttaunt-like,' in Love's Labour's Lost) it is usually
left alone.
Alternative readings are very common in the variant quarto
play. There is sometimes very little to choose between them;
but, in such cases, the folio text is to be preferred, as having better
authority. But, ordinarily, it is better in itself? The quarto text,
though often substituting a more usual word or phrases, occasionally
preserves the unmistakable words of Shakespeare. The in-
imitable 'Love's thrice repured nectarb' appears, in the folio,
as 'reputed'
Some critics have held that Shakespeare was responsible for
6
.
· For an example see Othello, act iv, sc. 2, 74–7.
Thus, the pregnant line in King Lear (act 11, sc. 4, 119) 'O me, my heart, my
rising heart! But down' is, in the quarto, the commonplace 'O my heart, my heart! '
Come unbutton here' (act III, s. 4, 107—8) is, in the quarto, the nonsensical, Come
on, be true,
3 Thus, Othello's striking words (act. v, sc. 2, 13),
I know not where is that Promethean beat
That can thy light relume,
are robbed of their force by the substitution of return' for 'relame. ' Lear's no less
striking epithet, 'cadent' tears, becomes the meaningless'accent' tears.
* Othello's 'She gave me for my pains a world of sighs' (act 1, sc. 3, 159) is, for
instance, turned by the folio into the hackneyed a world of kisses. '
5 Troilus and Cressida, act III, sc. 2, 21.
## p. 265 (#289) ############################################
à
The First and the Later Folios 265
corrections and additions in the folio text of these plays. This
assumption leaves out of account two important facts. In certain
cases, it is unquestionably the quarto text which has been altered,
and which has received additions. Moreover, it is obvious that
these changes could not have been made for stage purposes. They
must, therefore, have been made with a view to printing the plays ;
but it is surely inconceivable that Shakespeare should have made
these minute corrections without also authorising an edition of the
revised plays.
In the case of the doublet quarto plays, the folio text, as we
have seen, is subordinate to that of the second quarto. The first
quarto of Romeo and Juliet is a valuable corrective. In spite of
its lacunae, it was evidently made by a skilful reporter, for it
contains many unquestionably genuine readings, where all the
rest have gone astray! In Hamlet, when the readings of the first
quarto and folio coincide, they are to be preferred. The intrinsic
value of the first folio lies in the fact that it contains the only
extant text of eighteen plays; but its merits are unequal. The
text of some of the plays is as good as that of the duplicate
quartos; that of the rest recalls the characteristics of the text of
the variant quartos. Measure for Measure, All : Well, Cymbeline,
Coriolanus and Macbeth are among the worst texts in the folio.
It is practically hopeless to determine the metre of Timon, in large
portions of which it is impossible to tell whether verse or prose is
intended. Julius Caesar holds the same position among the folio
plays which A Midsummer Night's Dream has among the quartos.
The text is free from any serious error and might well have been
printed from the original manuscript.
The value of the later folios is comparatively small. They take
great liberties with the text, though, it must be admitted, not
beyond those taken by some of the later editors. When the second
folio makes an alteration, this is, as a rule, perpetuated in the third
and fourth. Where the second or third stands alone, it is nearly
always wrong. The fourth folio is not so free in making altera-
tions, except in order to modernise the spelling. Were it not
for the legacy of errors inherited from the second and third, the
1 Thus, Romeo's wisb (act 1, 86. 4, 113),
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail,
is preserved by it, when the other quartos and the folio read 'sate' for sail. '
Thus, the • fretful porpentine' of the ghost's speech (act I, 80. 5, 20) has greater
textual authority than the fearfull porpentine' of the later quartos, because it is
supported by two independent copies.
## p. 266 (#290) ############################################
266
The Text of Shakespeare
fourth would often be nearer a modern text than either. The
later folios, however, have all made some happy restorations of
the text'. In the case of the variant quarto plays, where a later
folio agrees with the quarto against the first, we have a better
attested reading. There are some remarkable cases of this co-
incidence?
One cause of variation between the different quarto and folio
texts remains to be noted. It is the most prolific and the most
modern of all the mistakes of editor and printer.
Special causes for these mistakes are to be found, first, in
differences of spelling in vogue in the Elizabethan age, e. g. 'antique’
and 'antick,' rights' and 'rites,' 'symboles' and 'cymbals. ' Again,
an uncommon word sometimes caused the substitution of one more
usual: ‘moe' and 'more'; 'intentively' and 'instinctively'; 'foy-
sons' and 'poisons'; 'prescience and patience”; “unprevented'
and 'unprepared. ' This practice was a thoroughly characteristic
licence at a time when an editor had no hesitation in substituting
a word which he considered more suitable to the context—'unprofit-
able' for 'improbable'; 'the way to study death' for 'the way to
dusty death'; 'phlegmatick' for 'choleric. ' Thirdly, contractions
commonly used in manuscripts often caused variations in the endings
of words : 'h'as’and 'hath'; wº=which ; yº=the; y'= that; y'=thou
or you; I = ay; 'ignomie' and 'ignominy'; 'conster' and 'con-
strue. ' The abbreviation 'L' doubtless accounts for such variations
as 'liege' and 'lord. ' Finally, there were the ordinary misprints
with which everyone is familiar-due to the dropping out of
letters (“contradict' and 'contract'; 'remuneration' and remura-
tion'); to the omission of words (“his trusty Thisby's' Qq, ‘his
Thisby's' F. , ‘his gentle Thisby's' F, F, F. ); to wrong letters ('Loue'
Q. (Duke of Devonshire's copy), 'Ioue' Qı, 'Ioane' F, F. , 'Joan'
F, F. ); to wrong punctuation (the first folio reads Dispatch
Enobarbus. ' As Enobarbus is not present, the second, third and
fourth read 'Dispatch Eros. ' The right punctuation solves the
‘
difficulty: 'Dispatch. Enobarbus! '); to permutation of letters
(‘Athica' for 'Ithaca'); to repetition of letters ('involverable' Fi,
>
6
1)
>
2,
1 One of the best is to be found in Coriolanus (act 11, sc. 3, 18). The third citizen
says: 'not that our heads are, some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but
that our wits are so diversely coloured. ' The fourth folio was the first to suggest
'auburn' for · Abram,' which is read by the first three.
Thus, an uncommon word 'renege' is restored by the second folio in King Lear,
act 11, sc. 2, 73, where the first folio reads Revenge' and the quartos bave 'Reneag. '
In Othello, act v, sc. 2, 350, ‘base Indian,' the reading of the quartos and later folios,
has greater textual authority than the base Judean' of the first folio.
2
4
7
## p. 267 (#291) ############################################
4
Early Editors: Rowe 267
'invaluerable' F, F, F. , for 'invulnerable'). Such is the process by
which the text of Shakespeare has been evolved—a process pre-
cisely similar to that undergone by any classical text. The
quartos and folios represent the work of copyists—that of editing
follows.
The subsequent history of Shakespeare's text falls, naturally,
into two divisions—a period of conjecture, during which the great
bulk of accepted emendations were made, and a period of con-
solidation, in which a fuller knowledge of the old copies and a
firmer grasp of textual principles combined to produce the received
text of today.
It was fitting that a poet laureate should be the first to give to
the world an edition of Shakespeare—whether or not poetic gifts
are an advantage to an editor. At all events, Nicholas Rowe
(1709)' was engaged on a more profitable task when he attempted
to edit the works, than when he endeavoured to emulate the style,
of Shakespeare. Rowe's main object, as Johnson says, was to
publish an edition of Shakespeare, 'like those of his fraternity,
with the appendages of a life and a recommendatory preface. ”
Therefore, it is not surprising that his work shows little critical
method. He based his text on the latest and worst copy-the
fourth folio. This error affected all editions before Capell, for
each of the succeeding editors was as uncritical as Rowe in basing
his text on the edition immediately preceding his own. Although
Rowe says, 'I have taken some care to redeem him from the
injuries of former impressions, and speaks of comparing the
several editions,' he can hardly have possessed any acquaintance
with old copies. His corrections of the fourth folio, sometimes,
coincide with the readings of the first, as where he reads 'dread
trident' for 'dead trident' of the later folios. In general, however,
he follows the fourth, even where the first obviously contains the
genuine reading. He occasionally consulted a late quarto: textual
evidence shows that he used the quarto of 1676 for the additions
in Hamlet. His alterations were made simply with a view to
.
rendering the plays more intelligible, and he did much useful
pioneer work to this end. His knowledge of the stage enabled
him to add lists of dramatis personae to each play, to supply
stage directions and to make divisions into acts and scenes,
which, to a large extent, have been followed by modern editors.
Many proper names were restored by him (as 'Plutus' for Platus ').
· The date mentioned, in each case, is that of the first edition.
6
## p. 268 (#292) ############################################
268
The Text of Shakespeare
<
Others, which had been manufactured by his predecessors, were
unmasked (thus 'Cyprus' grove becomes 'cypress'). Thanks to
his linguistic attainments, he was able to make sense of a good
deal of nonsense, which did duty in the folios for French or Italian.
Dr Caius's 'green-a-box' of ointment appears in the folios as
‘unboyteene' instead of 'un boitier,' as in Rowe. But his work
for the text rises above that of a proof corrector. Some of his
conjectures deserve a place beside those of his more eminent
successors. Few quotations are more firmly established than
'Some are born great. ' (The folios have are become. ') And the
temple-haunting martlet’ in Macbeth is not likely to be ousted
from the place occupied in the folios by 'Barlet. '
No one will dispute Rowe's modest claim that he has rendered
many places intelligible that were not so before. It is his unique
distinction that he did not stir up any controversy. His emenda-
tions were silently introduced into his text, and as silently
appropriated by his successors.
To Pope belongs the unenviable distinction of having intro-
duced into the study of Shakespeare's text that controversial
acrimony of which echoes were heard far on into the nineteenth
century. But his edition (1723—5) is quite free from this blemish.
Instead of expanding his notes, which are models of brevity, he
curtailed the text to suit his 'private sense,' and filled his margin
with rejected passages. Some of these, it is true, were no great
loss, though Pope was hardly qualified for expurgating Shakespeare.
Others, however, seriously interfere not only with the sense, but
with the conceptions of the dramatist. Mercutio is robbed whole-
sale of his jests. Much of Caesar's distinctive braggadocio is
struck out. Again, the porter's soliloquy in Macbeth is dispensed
with, and so are several lines of Richard's soliloquy before
the battle. Romeo and Juliet fares worst of all; many passages
being omitted on the pretext that they do not occur in the
defective first quarto, while others are inserted because they
appear in the second, and others, again, are struck out simply
because they are ‘nonsense' or 'trash' or 'ridiculous. It is difficult
to understand how a poet could deliberately reject such a line as
'Sleep that knits up the ravelld sleave of care. ' Occasionally, a
line is dropped out altogether, without warning or comment.
Pope's text is further marred by hundreds of verbal alterations
for which no justification is even attempted. A small proportion
of these may be regarded as legitimate conjectures; but the great
majority are arbitrary corrections, not of copyists' errors, but of
>
## p. 269 (#293) ############################################
6
Pope's Merits and Shortcomings 269
Shakespeare's own composition. We are left to guess the reasons
for his changes. In many instances, they are obviously made to
harmonise the metre with the ideal of rigid uniformity which
dominated the Augustan age (“brest' for 'bosom,' lady' for
'gentlewoman,' 'foes' for 'enemies'). Monosyllables are omitted
or inserted with the utmost licence to produce a regular line.
Uncommon forms of expression, or words employed in an unusual
sense, are rarely allowed to stand. (The ‘untented woundings of
a father's curse' become 'untender'; 'I owe you no subscription
;
is altered to submission'; 'to keep at utterance,' that is, to the
last extremity, has to make way for 'to keep at variance. ') Such
reckless alterations have obscured Pope's real contribution to the
study of Shakespeare's text. Compared with the work of Rowe,
his services may justly be called great. That he thoroughly under-
stood the nature of his task is abundantly clear. His preface-the
only part of his work which he brought to perfection-contains a
careful and accurate characterisation of the quarto and folio texts.
The theory that 'the original copies,' referred to by the editors of
the first folio, were 'those which had lain ever since the author's
day in the play-house, and had from time to time been cut or added
to arbitrarily,' is there found for the first time. Pope evinces an
acquaintance with all the most important quarto texts. If he was
too ready to suspect interpolations, nevertheless he was respon-
sible for the insertion of most of the passages in the variant quarto
plays, which were omitted in the first folio. Although he made
havoc of the text of Romeo and Juliet by his excisions, he
instinctively introduced a number of undoubtedly genuine readings
from the first quarto. He has often unravelled Shakespeare's verse
from the prose of the old copies, and in almost every play the
metrical arrangement of the lines owes something to him. Many
of his conjectures have been generally accepted. He restored a
realistic touch in "Tarquin's ravishing strides' where the first folio
has 'sides, and he recovered Falstaff's 'oeillades' from the 'illiads'
of all the folios. On the other hand, the cause of Pope's failure is
revealed in his own phrase : 'the dull duty of an editor. ' He had
been invited to undertake the work as the first man of letters of
his day; and he deals with the text in the spirit of a dictator. But
the laborious task of collating texts could not be accomplished by
the sheer force of poetic genius. Had he possessed an army of
collaborators for doing the drudgery, Pope's edition of Shakespeare
might have achieved as great a success as his translation of Homer.
As it was, the work was only half done.
a
## p. 270 (#294) ############################################
270
The Text of Shakespeare
Yet it might still have brought him some fame, had it not been
doomed to pass through the ordeal of criticism at the hands of one
who has few rivals as a textual critic. All its defects were laid
bare by Lewis Theobald in his Shakespeare Restored (1726). No
one could read this work-monumental in the history of Shake-
speare's text—without acknowledging that here, at any rate, Pope
had met more than his match. Pope was too wise to attempt to
defend himself against criticism, which he, better than anyone else,
knew to be unanswerable. In his second edition, he calmly adopted
many of Theobald's corrections; and, then, he began a campaign of
misrepresentation and abuse which culminated in his making
Theobald the hero of The Dunciad. The power of satire, wielded by
genius, has never been more strikingly displayed. Pope's caricature
of the foremost of all textual critics of Shakespeare as a dull,
meddling pedant without salt or savour not only led astray the
judgment of the sanest critics of the eighteenth century, but
infected the clear reason of Coleridge, and has remained the current
estimate to this day. Theobald's method of retaliation was un-
fortunate. He remained silent while Pope was exhausting every
mean device to ruin his projected edition. But, when that edition
(1733) became a triumphant fact, he emptied the vials of his wrath
into his notes. Those who are aware of the unprecedented provoca-
tion which he received and of the superiority of which he must
have been conscious find no difficulty in acquitting him; but the
majority who read only Theobald's notes must perforce join with
Johnson in condemning his 'contemptible ostentation. ' Every
correction adopted by Pope from Shakespeare Restored in his
second edition is carefully noted, although Theobald himself ap-
propriated many of Pope's conjectures without acknowledgment.
Every correction of Theobald's own, if but a comma, is accompanied
by shouts of exultation and volleys of impotent sarcasm. But
he overreached himself. Though smarting under the 'flagrant
civilities' which he received from Pope, he paid him the un-
intentional compliment of taking his text as the basis of his own.
Had he been as anxious to adhere faithfully to his authorities as
he was eager to dilate on the faithlessness of Pope, he would
hardly have fallen into the error of following the edition which he
himself classed as of no authority. ' It has sometimes been stated
'
that Theobald based his text on the first folio. But the very
numerous instances in which he has perpetuated Pope's arbitrary
alterations in his own text show that this was not the case. Yet
the multitude of readings which he restored both from the quartos
6
## p. 271 (#295) ############################################
Theobala.
Hanmer
271
and from the first folio largely neutralised the effect of this error! It
is in dealing with real corruption that Theobald is seen at his best,
and remains without a rival.
is strongly against the theory that Shakespeare had anything to do
with their composition.
Faire Em is the work of some member of that early school
of dramatists who, under the leadership of Greene, delighted in
the union of fictitious English history with love romance. There
are two distinct plots in this play, and they have almost nothing
in common. That which furnishes the title is the story of the
.
courtship by three knights of Fair Em, the daughter of an English
noble who, robbed of his lands at the Norman conquest, is now
plying the trade of a miller at Manchester. A ballad, entered
on the Stationers' register on 2 March 1581, and entitled The
## p. 252 (#276) ############################################
252 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
6
Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is the probable source of this
portion of the play. The second plot is taken from Henry Wotton's
Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels (1578), a collection of five
stories translated from Jacques Yver's Le Printemps d'Iver. This
relates the unhistoric adventures of William the Conqueror, who, in
order to win the hand of the Danish king's daughter, visits his
court disguised as a knight and pursues his amours there under
strange changes of fortune. The workmanship of the play is very
poor, but certain allowances must be made for its early date. It
seems to have been in existence in 1587, for, in Greene's intro-
duction to his Farewell to Folly, registered in that year, he makes
a satiric reference to Faire Em, and quotes, in a slightly altered
form, two lines from the closing scene of the play.
The Merry Devill of Edmonton, although the earliest known
edition of it is dated 1608, was certainly written by 1604, when
T. M. (? Thomas Middleton) alludes to it, in company with A Woman
Kilde with Kindnesse, in his Blacke Book; twelve years later, in
the prologue to The Divill is an Asse, Jonson describes it as the
'dear delight' of the theatre-going public. The popularity which
the play enjoyed was not unmerited; in the words of Charles
Lamb, it'seems written to make the reader happy. ' In its blend-
ing of scenes of magic and the black art with a romantic love
comedy, standing out against a pleasant background of English
rural life, The Merry Devill recalls Frier Bacon and Frier
Bongay. But the magic element in the play is little more than
& sop to the popular taste of the day. After an induction,
which is a serio-comic imitation of the famous closing scene in
Dr Faustus, we hear little more of the doings of Peter Fabell,
the Edmonton magician, and give ourselves up to the main story,
which shows by what devices youth and true love overcome the
treasonable counsels of age and prudence. The lovers are lightly
conceived; but in their veins there flows the youthful spirit and
romantic ardour of the early school of Elizabethan comedy, and
Millicent, the heroine, who is willing to dare much lest love be
‘smothered in foggy gain,' is worthy of a place not far below the
early heroines of Shakespeare. The play is not Shakespeare's;
but its author, alike in his love romance and in the humorous and
realistic scenes in which Blague the host, Smug the smith and
Sir John the priest appear, is one of Shakespeare's imitators.
The character of the host of the George tavern at Edmonton
is modelled, as Hazlitt pointed out, on that of the host of The
Merry Wives of Windsor; and this fact furnishes us with a clue as
6
## p. 253 (#277) ############################################
Mucedorus
253
to the period at which the play was written. The source of the
story is unknown, but the adventures of Peter Fabell, who, in
the district round about Enfield Chase, enjoyed something of the
reputation of a Dr Faustus, had been already recorded. There
was a poem, now lost but known to Warton, entitled Fabyl's
Ghoste, written in octave stanzas and printed by John Rastell
in 1533, which may be the same as The Merry Pranks of
Fabyl mentioned by Weever; and, in the same year as that in
which the play was published, Thomas Brewer's prose tract, The
Life and Death of the Merry Devill of Edmonton, with the
Pleasant Pranks of Smug the Smith, Sir John and mine Host
of the George about the stealing of Venison, was entered at
Stationers' Hall. These Fabell stories, doubtless, furnished the
dramatist with some of the materials for the comic by-plot, but
not for the romantic love story.
The popularity of The Merry Devill of Edmonton was as
nothing compared with that of A Most pleasant Comedie of
Mucedorus, the kings sonne of Valentia and Amadine the kings
daughter of Arragon, with the merie conceites of Mouse. The
earliest known edition of this play is dated 1598; but the words,
'newly set foorth,' on the title-page, indicate that it was first
produced at some earlier date; numerous reprints followed, and
W. W. Greg has succeeded in tracing no less than seventeen quarto
editions of the play up to the year 1700. This popularity is the
more remarkable since, as the epilogue makes clear, it was not
written for popular representation, but for a performance at
court. And, having delighted queen Elizabeth, it was revived,
with numerous additions and an altered epilogue, for a Shrovetide
performance at Whitehall early in the reign of James I. The text,
thus enlarged and amended, was first published in 1610. The
vogue of this 'very delectable' comedy, while it illustrates the
uncritical temper of the age, is somewhat hard to understand;
for the play, though doing credit to the infancy of Elizabethan
romantic comedy, is, in respect of plot construction, characterisa-
tion and metric art, a very primitive piece of work. It teems,
however, with action and romantic adventure, and these, with the
crude wit and cruder folly of Mouse the clown, seem to have been
deemed sufficient by courtier and groundling alike. A Spanish
prince, who, in the prosecution of his love, disguises himself first
as a shepherd and then as a hermit; a wild man of the woods, who
combines cannibal instincts with a nice taste for romance; a rustic
clown; and a bear that instructs the princess Amadine how to
## p. 254 (#278) ############################################
254
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
distinguish between the hero lover and the coward—these are the
most notable ingredients of the play. The appearance of such
morality figures as Envy and Comedy in the induction and epilogue
is a sign of an early date of production, and it is hard to believe
that the drama, in its original form, is later than 1590. The name
Mucedorus, and the disguise of that prince as a shepherd, recall
one of the two heroes of Sidney's Arcadia, and the probability is
that the plot is taken from some half chivalrous and half pastoral
romance of Spanish or Italian literature.
The London Prodigall and The Puritane, as already stated,
are examples of realistic city comedy. At the hands of Heywood
and Dekker, realism associated itself with romance; but, with
Middleton and his successors, the romantic element was purged
away, and nothing was allowed to interfere with the realistic, and
often satirical, representation of contemporary manners. The
authorship of these two plays is not easy to determine; but it can
be stated without hesitation that neither is the work of Shake-
speare, who, while interested in bourgeois comedy, rarely allowed
it to force its way into the foreground. Both plays, probably,
were written early in the seventeenth century, when Heywood and
Middleton were making this type of drama acceptable to popular
taste, and when Ben Jonson was also engaged in a close inspec-
tion of the social types of London life and in the discovery of
humours.
The London Prodigall was first published in 1605, and the
title-page of this edition informs us that the play was acted by
the Kings Majesties servants' and that its author was William
Shakespeare. It is full of bustling life, but is wholly wanting in
the higher elements of dramatic art, and, also, in poetic beauty.
The most striking feature in the plot is the resemblance,
pointed out by A. W. Ward, which it bears to the Charles Surface
story of Sheridan's School for Scandal. The wealthy father,
Flowerdale senior, who has just returned to England after long
years of absence, and who, under the disguise of a servant, attaches
himself to his prodigal son and, in the end, pardons his excesses,
is a crude prototype of uncle Oliver. But the author of the
Elizabethan play fails, where Sheridan succeeds, in winning the
reader's sympathy for the prodigal. Flowerdale junior's career
of riot and neglect has no redeeming feature in it, and his final
repentance, so far from convincing us of its reality and endurance,
only deepens our pity for the outraged and extravagantly patient
wife, Luce, who takes the repentant sinner to her bosom. The
## p. 255 (#279) ############################################
The Puritane
255
humour of the play is chiefly to be sought among the serving-
men of the wealthy city knight, and in the persons of Sir Launcelot
Spurcock, Weathercock the parasite and the Devonshire clothier
Oliver, whose west country talk and manners have the homely
honesty of the rough kersey cloth which he makes and wears.
The disguise of Luce as a Dutchwoman, and the pigeon English
by which, when thus disguised, she conceals her identity, may,
very possibly, have been suggested by the similar disguise of
Lacy in Dekker's highly popular play, The Shoemaker's Holiday.
The Puritane Or The Widdow of Watling-streete was one of the
plays acted by the choristers of St Paul's, and it was published in
1607 as 'written by W. S. ' It is a realistic comedy of intrigue,
bordering, at times, upon farce, and its main object is ridicule
of the puritan party and of London citizens. The scenes are
mainly in prose, and the few passages in verse are wholly wanting
in poetic feeling. The five acts are constructed out of a number
a
of episodes of shrewd knavery, which follow one another in swift
succession, but hardly form a plot. The moving spirit in these
knavish tricks is a certain George Pyeboard, who makes the
puritan family in Watling street his dupes up to the very last scene
of the play, when the intervention of the nobleman as a deus ex
machina exposes the chain of fraud. At least one of Pyeboard's
knaveries is taken from the so-called Merrie Conceited Jests
of George Peele', and it has long since been pointed out that,
under the name of George Pyeboard, George Peele was intended?
There is no reason whatever for associating the play with
Shakespeare; but its author, doubtless, was familiar with that
dramatist's work, and refers in act iv, sc. 3 to the appearance
of Banquo's ghost in Macbeth. It has been argued, with con-
siderable show of reason, that it was written either by an Oxford
student, or by a dramatist newly come from that university. The
hero of the play is a student adventurer, who is acquainted with
the academic phraseology of his university, while the author
exhibits a fondness for Latin phrases, and lays much stress on the
fact that a university scholar is a gentleman. Tucker Brooke
ascribes the play to Middleton, and compares it with Eastward
Hoe.
The only other play which calls for notice in this chapter is
The Two Noble Kinsmen, the question of Shakespeare's share
a
· See Dyce's introduction to Peele's Works, p. viii.
? • Peel' and 'pieboard' are synonymous terms for the flat wooden shovel used in
taking pies out of a brick oven.
## p. 256 (#280) ############################################
256 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
in which has evoked more discussion than all the remaining
doubtful plays together. It was first published in 1634 as the
work of 'the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher
and Mr William Shakespeare, Gent,' and the title-page of this
edition also informs us that it had been performed by the king's
players at the Blackfriars theatre. The famous Palamon and Arcite
story which it reproduces had been dramatised before. Richard
Edwards had written a Palamon and Arcyte as early as 1566,
which was performed before Elizabeth by Oxford students on the
occasion of the queen's visit to the university in that year; but
the account of this lost academic comedy, preserved in Anthony
à Wood's manuscripts and published in Nichols's Progresses of
Elizabeth, suggests that it was very different in character from
The Two Noble Kinsmen. Nothing is known of the Palamon
and Arsett mentioned by Henslowe as having been acted at the
Newington theatre in 1594.
The Two Noble Kinsmen follows Chaucer's Knight's Tale
as closely as an Elizabethan play can be expected to follow a
fourteenth century verse romance; but the dramatists, deferring
to the seventeenth century taste for a realistic underplot to a
romantic theme, have added the story of the gaoler's daughter,
of which there is but the faintest hint in The Knight's Tale.
The element of divine caprice which lurks in Chaucer's romance
is by no means eliminated from the play. In the closing speech
of the last scene, Theseus would fain convince us that, of the two
rival kinsmen, Palamon has the better right to the lady-because
he saw her first ! --but the enduring impression which the play
leaves upon the reader's mind is that man is but the puppet of
fortune. And if the dénouement of the play is unsatisfactory,
so, also, are the characters. Palamon and Arcite, except in the
scene in which they first appear, are not well distinguished from
each other; Theseus, though he discourses fine poetry, is a stilted
and a vacillating figure, and Emilia, a poor faded copy of Chaucer's
Emelye the sheene,' would be more in her place as Hotspur's
comfit-maker's wife than as a warrior's bride. Finally, the under-
plot, the author of which endeavours to make up for his lack of in-
vention by imitating familiar incidents in the plays of Shakespeare,
is both unskilful and indelicate. Yet, with all these shortcomings
-shortcomings which are largely due to the fact of double author.
ship—The Two Noble Kinsmen abounds in elements of greatness.
It is a play which needs to be seen in order that the masque-like
splendour of some of its scenes may be fully realised; bụt a mere
## p. 257 (#281) ############################################
The Two Noble Kinsmen
257
perusal of it suffices to reveal its imaginative power, the ripeness
and energy of the thought and the luminous colour of high
romance in which it is steeped. Into it are poured the riches
of classic legend, medieval romance, Elizabethan comedy and
Jacobean masque, and, in the union of these varying elements,
we recognise the genius of a dramatist who could subdue all
things to harmony.
The problem of authorship is beset with difficulties, for, while
it is certain that the play is the work of more than one author,
it seems also probable that the workmanship of the two men is
not sharply sundered, but that, in places, the hand of the one has
been engaged in revising what the other had written. With the
exception of Delius, who propounded the fanciful theory that
The Two Noble Kinsmen is the work of an anonymous dramatist
who deliberately set himself to imitate now the manner of
Shakespeare and now that of Fletcher, critics are agreed that
one of the two authors was Fletcher, and that to him may be
allotted most of acts II, III and iv, including the whole of the
underplot, with the possible exception of the two prose scenes',
but only a small, and comparatively unimportant, part of the
main story.
The whole of the first act, the first scene in
act II, and almost the whole of the last act are clearly not by
Fletcher in the first instance, and in the determination of the
authorship of these scenes lies the chief problem of the play.
The choice seems to lie between Massinger and Shakespeare;
it has been argued by Robert Boyle that the handling of the
characters in these scenes is singularly unlike that of Shakespeare
and singularly like that of Massinger, and that the frequent
medical allusions, and the echoes of passages in Shakespeare's
authentic works, furnish further evidence in favour of Massinger
and against Shakespeare. Arguments such as these, though not
without force, are outweighed by others on the opposite side.
A comparison of the play with Massinger's scenes in The Lover's
Progress, & play which introduces the similar theme of the
love of two friends for one woman, shows the greatest variance
in the application of the principles of dramatic art. The resem-
blance, too, between the verse of Massinger and that of the non-
Fletcherian portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, on which Boyle
lays considerable stress, is only superficial. In the mechanical
elements of poetic rhythm, Massinger comes very near to Shake-
speare; but, when we look deeper, and come to the consideration
1 Act u, sc. 1 and act iv, so. 3.
17
R. L. v.
CA. X.
## p. 258 (#282) ############################################
258 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
of those features of style which do not admit of tabular analysis,
we find the widest difference. The diction of Massinger is, above
all things, orderly and lucid. He shows, at times, passion and
imagination; but he never allows these to check the stately decorum
and even flow of his verse. Now, the diction of The Two Noble
Kinsmen is of a peculiar nature, and Spalding, in his famous
Letter, with others after him, naturally directed his attention to
this, above all other things, in attributing these non-Fletcherian
scenes to Shakespeare. In the profusion of striking metaphors,
the copious outpouring of profound thoughts and the extreme
concision, often involving harshness and obscurity, of the utterance,
these scenes bear a marked resemblance to the plays of Shake-
speare's final period, and to nothing else in literature. Moreover,
the very defects of these scenes are the same defects which we
meet with in Shakespeare's so-called romances. The sacrifice of
dramatic probability to the attainment of magnificent spectacular
effects, the intrusion of the deus ex machina to cut the Gordian
knot which human effort cannot disentangle and the triumph of the
poetic and intellectual interests over the strictly dramatic-these
are all features common to The Two Noble Kinsmen and the
products of Shakespeare's genius in the last phase of his dramatic
career.
## p. 259 (#283) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE
THE text of Shakespeare is as uncertain as are the facts of his
life. In neither case are we in possession of any real authori-
ties. But, while there is evidence to establish the certainty of
some of the incidents in his career, we cannot be sure of the
accuracy of a single line in his plays. Not only are we without
Shakespeare's manuscript, but we do not even possess an authorised
edition of any play, such as we have of Venus and Adonis and
Lucrece. The conditions under which plays were produced in the
Elizabethan age supply us with two reasons for this, at first sight,
extraordinary fact. Shakespeare, like his fellow dramatists, wrote
for the stage and not for publication. The playwright's sole
ambition was to see his play on the stage. Hardly any play was
published by its author without some apology. Marston, in his
preface to The Malcontent (1604), actually complains that he is
detracting from the value of his work by publishing it; and he goes
on to state that his reason for consenting to this is that, if he did
not publish it, others would, thus inflicting upon him still greater
injury. All rights in a play were tacitly, if not legally, sur-
rendered to the acting company, and the author's interest in it
ceased. No more striking proof of this attitude could be desired
than the fact that Shakespeare himself described Venus and
Adonis as 'the first heire of my invention,' at a time when he had
certainly written several plays.
On the other hand, companies refrained from publication.
They sought by this means to increase the profit from their per-
formances. Thus, Thomas Heywood speaks of some of his plays
being 'still retained in the hands oi some actors, who think it
against their peculiar profit to have them come in print. ' But
a
1 The references throughout are to The Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Wright, W. Aldis,
1894.
17-2
## p. 260 (#284) ############################################
260
Text of Shakespeare
The
this shortsighted policy on the part of the companies did not
prevent others from supplying the demand for printed copies
which naturally existed. In the absence of any strict laws of
copyright? , it is not surprising that publishers were found ready
to snatch a profit by the surreptitious publication of the more
popular plays of so favourite a writer as Shakespeare.
This explains the origin of the quartos, in which form the text
of nineteen plays? first saw the light. As all these plays appear
again in the folio edition (Pericles for the first time in the third
folio), the relative value of the quarto and folio texts becomes
the fundamental question for textual discussion. No generalisa-
tion is possible with regard to the quarto text, owing to its
unequal character. But, for textual purposes, the quarto plays
may be classified as duplicate, variant and doublet. The duplicate
quarto plays are those in which the text of the first folio has been
derived from that of one of the quartos. The first quarto, there-
fore, is entitled to rank as the only authoritative text for these
eight plays. The printing of some of these plays is equal to any-
thing in the first folio; that of A Midsummer Night's Dream is
excellent. Their comparative freedom from corruption and their
adoption by the editors of the first folio suggest that they were
drawn from copies not far removed in date from Shakespeare's
manuscript. The spelling of the quarto text is more archaic than
that of the first folio. In many cases, it resembles that of the first
quarto of the Poems, which may fairly be taken to represent
Shakespeare's own spelling.
The text of the remaining quarto plays diverges to a very large
extent from that of the folio, not only in respect of verbal
differences, but by the addition or omission of passages amounting,
in some cases, to thirty or forty lines, and even to whole scenes. In
Parts II and III of Henry VI, Henry V and The Merry Wives,
the omissions are all made by the quarto, as are also the most
1 Companies gradually had their rights acknowledged, and, in 1637, the lord
chamberlain issued an injunction to the Stationers' company, prohibiting the publica-
tion of plays without consent of the players.
2 Part II of Henry VI (First Part of the Contention, Q, 1594), Part III of Henry VI
(True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, Q. 1595), Richard II (Q, 1597), Richard III
(Q 1597), Romeo and Juliet (Q. 1597), Love's Labour's Lost (Q. 1598), Part I of
Henry IV (Q, 1598), Much Ado (Q 1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Q: Q, 1600), The
Merchant of Venice (Q, Q, 1600), Part II of Henry IV (Q 1600), Henry V (Q, 1600),
Titus Andronicus (Q, 1600), The Merry Wives (Q, 1602), Hamlet (Q, 1603), King Lear
(Q, 1608), Troilus and Cressida (Q 1609), Pericles (Q, 1609), Othello (Q, 1622).
3 Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,
Part I of Henry IV, Much Ado, Pericles, Titus Andronicus (with exception of one
scene added in F,), Richard II (part of scene added in Qs).
## p. 261 (#285) ############################################
Length of Texts
261
serious omissions in Part II of Henry IV; in Troilus and
Cressida, King Lear and Othello, they are fairly evenly divided.
The greater completeness of the folio text constitutes it the chief
authority for these variant quarto plays. An exception has to be
noted in the case of Richard III. Here, the omissions in the folio
are trifling, compared with those in the quarto; but textual evidence
conclusively proves that the folio text follows two different quarto
texts and contains systematic alterations. The first quarto, there-
fore, becomes the authoritative text for all except the omitted
passages? Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are unique in possessing
doublet, quarto texts. The first quarto, in both cases, is very
defective; but, in the case of the former play, the folio text was
derived from the second quarto, while, in the case of the latter,
the folio text was taken from a copy which was considerably less
complete.
The great discrepancies in these texts demand some explanation.
There can be little doubt that they are due, in the main, to the
fact that the defective texts were based on copies which had been
adapted for the stage. From the fact that Shakespeare wrote for the
stage, it must not be inferred that he allowed himself to be bound
by the exigencies of stage performance. The need of adaptation
for stage purposes has always made itself felt in the case of the
texts of plays, even to the present day; and it is highly probable
that none of the longer plays of Shakespeare were ever pro-
duced in the theatre exactly as they were written. There is,
moreover, definite evidence that the plays of other dramatists
were shortened for the stage. It is in this sense that we are to
understand the statement made on the title-page of the second
quarto of Hamlet, 'newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much
againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie,' and
similar statements in the quartos of other plays.
The references in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet to the
two hours traffic of our stage,' and in that of Henry VIII to 'two
short hours,' fix the average length of a performance. The mere
length of such plays as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,
Troilus and Cressida, Part II of Henry IV, Henry V, necessi-
tated curtailment. Thus, of the long scene in Richard III",
numbering five hundred and forty lines in the folio, nearly eighty
are omitted (including a passage of over fifty lines); the quarto text
of Hamlet omits sixty lines of Hamlet's interview with Rosencrantz
* The genealogy of the text of Richard III is described in an appendix to this chapter,
? Act 19, 80. 4.
## p. 262 (#286) ############################################
262
The Text of Shakespeare
and Guildenstern concerning the players; and the folio text of King
Lear lacks a whole scene, as well as a passage of nearly fifty lines.
Not only, however, the length of a play, but also the number of
characters called for adaptation. Companies were often so thin
that one player had to act two or three parts. A clear case
of curtailment on this ground is the omission in the folio text of
the dialogue between Hamlet and a lord, who comes to urge him
to the rapier contest with Laertes. This is the only occasion on
which this character appears. The folio text of King Lear omits
the conversation between two servants after the putting out of
Gloucester's eyes, probably for the same reason. Sometimes,
speeches are put into the mouths of other characters, instead of
being omitted altogether. In Henry V, Westmoreland's wish for
ten thousand more men is transferred to Warwick.
A different reason for the omission of passages in the per-
formance of a play was political expediency. Both Elizabeth and
James I frequently witnessed stage performances, and a natural
consequence of this personal patronage was a strict censorship of
plays presented before them. Precarious as is any attempt to point
out political allusions in Shakespeare, the magnificent compliment
paid to the fair vestal throned by the west,' and 'her single
blessedness,' would suffice to show that such allusions were, on
occasion, introduced by him. The suppression of the deposition
scene in the first quarto of Richard II was doubtless made out of
deference to the queen's well known susceptibilities on the subject.
In King Lear, Edmund's allusions to the results of the prediction,'
in which James is said to have had some faith, and the reference
to nobles acting as spies in France may have been suppressed on
similar grounds. Portia's description of the Scottish' lord
contains a satirical allusion to the alliances of Scotland with
France against England. After the accession of James, the
players, instead of omitting the passage, altered 'Scottish lord'
to 'other lord,' which is the reading of the folio.
The legal restrictions with regard to the use of oaths and the
profane use of Scripture account for the excision of a great number
of passages and the modification of many expressions, especially in
Part II of Henry IV. A few seem to be omitted in both quarto and
folio on account of their lewdness. Other passages were struck out
by the players because of their inherent obscurity. The corrupt
passages in Hamlet, containing stars with trains of fire,' dram of
eale,' 'that monster custom,' omitted entirely in the folio text,
very likely owe their corruption to the tampering of the players.
## p. 263 (#287) ############################################
Reasons for Defects in Quarto Texts 263
The process of adaptation caused passages to be added as well
as omitted. The clown's duty was to afford amusement to the
spectators after the play was finished; but he was also expected
to add specimens of his own native wit to his regular part in a play.
This practice is referred to by Hamlet in a well known passage of
his address to the players, to which the first quarto adds samples,
'Cannot you stay till I eate my porridge ? and you owe me a
quarters wages, my coat wants a cullison; And your beere is
sowre. ' The fool in King Lear is no mere clown! It is probable
that for portions of this, and for poor Tom's' parts, buffoonery was
often substituted; which would account for the disturbed state of
the text both in quarto and folio in these passages. The omission
of the prologue to Troilus and Cressida in the folio may be
explicable in the same way. The omission from the folio text of
several other passages seems to confirm doubts as to their
genuineness.
The mangled state of the text in the first quartos of Parts II
and III of Henry VI, The Merry Wives, Henry V, Romeo and
Juliet and Hamlet shows another disintegrating factor at work
besides adaptation.
Publishers who could not secure a copy of a
play by any other means would employ a shorthand writer to report
it, while it was being acted. This report, naturally, would be very
imperfect; some poetaster would patch it up as best he could,
and thus it found its way into print? . The numerous mistakes due
to imperfect hearing confirm this view of the origin of these texts,
such as 'tigers of Arcadia' for 'tigers of Hyrcania,' 'Cophetua' for
• Caveto' etc.
The first quartos of these plays have been regarded as earlier
drafts subsequently revised by the poet. This theory is plausible
with regard to The Merry Wives, where the quarto contains
passages which evidently do not go back to the same original as
the corresponding passages in the folio, and to the two parts of
Henry VI, which appear under a different title. But the causes
already enumerated are sufficient to account for the state of the
quarto text; and, wherever this is admitted to be not only an
6
1 The difficulty of acting this part has been often felt on the modern stage. Cf.
Macready, W. C. , Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 97.
? Cf. the well known passage in Thomas Heywood, cited post, vol. vi, ch. iv.
A specimen of the stenographer's' work is to be found in the first quatto version of
Hamlet's famous soliloquy:
To be or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all :
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, eto.
## p. 264 (#288) ############################################
264
The Text of Shakespeare
adaptation of the supposed earlier draft, but a garbled version of
the adaptation, it is difficult to see how the question of revision
can be fruitfully discussed.
Numerous minor omissions in the quartos are due to careless-
ness in copying either on the part of the players or the printers.
In this way, a whole scene was omitted in earlier impressions
of the quarto of Part II of Henry IV, but restored in later
copies. The very numerous half-lines which still remain in the
text may be attributed to this cause. Sometimes, a passage drops
out owing to similarity of expressions at the beginning and end 1.
The text of the first folio has a more uniform value than that
of the quartos. But, in two respects, it is, on the whole, hardly any
more trustworthy. For the punctuation and metre of the plays,
we are largely dependent on the work of modern editors. In
individual cases, however, the metrical arrangement of the folio is
vastly superior. In King Lear, the verse of the folio, to a large
extent, is represented by prose in the quarto. The duplicate quarto
plays, in which the folio text was drawn from one of the quartos,
afford a test of its conjectural emendations. They are of little
importance and generally for the worse. Where real corruption
exists (eg. 'perttaunt-like,' in Love's Labour's Lost) it is usually
left alone.
Alternative readings are very common in the variant quarto
play. There is sometimes very little to choose between them;
but, in such cases, the folio text is to be preferred, as having better
authority. But, ordinarily, it is better in itself? The quarto text,
though often substituting a more usual word or phrases, occasionally
preserves the unmistakable words of Shakespeare. The in-
imitable 'Love's thrice repured nectarb' appears, in the folio,
as 'reputed'
Some critics have held that Shakespeare was responsible for
6
.
· For an example see Othello, act iv, sc. 2, 74–7.
Thus, the pregnant line in King Lear (act 11, sc. 4, 119) 'O me, my heart, my
rising heart! But down' is, in the quarto, the commonplace 'O my heart, my heart! '
Come unbutton here' (act III, s. 4, 107—8) is, in the quarto, the nonsensical, Come
on, be true,
3 Thus, Othello's striking words (act. v, sc. 2, 13),
I know not where is that Promethean beat
That can thy light relume,
are robbed of their force by the substitution of return' for 'relame. ' Lear's no less
striking epithet, 'cadent' tears, becomes the meaningless'accent' tears.
* Othello's 'She gave me for my pains a world of sighs' (act 1, sc. 3, 159) is, for
instance, turned by the folio into the hackneyed a world of kisses. '
5 Troilus and Cressida, act III, sc. 2, 21.
## p. 265 (#289) ############################################
à
The First and the Later Folios 265
corrections and additions in the folio text of these plays. This
assumption leaves out of account two important facts. In certain
cases, it is unquestionably the quarto text which has been altered,
and which has received additions. Moreover, it is obvious that
these changes could not have been made for stage purposes. They
must, therefore, have been made with a view to printing the plays ;
but it is surely inconceivable that Shakespeare should have made
these minute corrections without also authorising an edition of the
revised plays.
In the case of the doublet quarto plays, the folio text, as we
have seen, is subordinate to that of the second quarto. The first
quarto of Romeo and Juliet is a valuable corrective. In spite of
its lacunae, it was evidently made by a skilful reporter, for it
contains many unquestionably genuine readings, where all the
rest have gone astray! In Hamlet, when the readings of the first
quarto and folio coincide, they are to be preferred. The intrinsic
value of the first folio lies in the fact that it contains the only
extant text of eighteen plays; but its merits are unequal. The
text of some of the plays is as good as that of the duplicate
quartos; that of the rest recalls the characteristics of the text of
the variant quartos. Measure for Measure, All : Well, Cymbeline,
Coriolanus and Macbeth are among the worst texts in the folio.
It is practically hopeless to determine the metre of Timon, in large
portions of which it is impossible to tell whether verse or prose is
intended. Julius Caesar holds the same position among the folio
plays which A Midsummer Night's Dream has among the quartos.
The text is free from any serious error and might well have been
printed from the original manuscript.
The value of the later folios is comparatively small. They take
great liberties with the text, though, it must be admitted, not
beyond those taken by some of the later editors. When the second
folio makes an alteration, this is, as a rule, perpetuated in the third
and fourth. Where the second or third stands alone, it is nearly
always wrong. The fourth folio is not so free in making altera-
tions, except in order to modernise the spelling. Were it not
for the legacy of errors inherited from the second and third, the
1 Thus, Romeo's wisb (act 1, 86. 4, 113),
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail,
is preserved by it, when the other quartos and the folio read 'sate' for sail. '
Thus, the • fretful porpentine' of the ghost's speech (act I, 80. 5, 20) has greater
textual authority than the fearfull porpentine' of the later quartos, because it is
supported by two independent copies.
## p. 266 (#290) ############################################
266
The Text of Shakespeare
fourth would often be nearer a modern text than either. The
later folios, however, have all made some happy restorations of
the text'. In the case of the variant quarto plays, where a later
folio agrees with the quarto against the first, we have a better
attested reading. There are some remarkable cases of this co-
incidence?
One cause of variation between the different quarto and folio
texts remains to be noted. It is the most prolific and the most
modern of all the mistakes of editor and printer.
Special causes for these mistakes are to be found, first, in
differences of spelling in vogue in the Elizabethan age, e. g. 'antique’
and 'antick,' rights' and 'rites,' 'symboles' and 'cymbals. ' Again,
an uncommon word sometimes caused the substitution of one more
usual: ‘moe' and 'more'; 'intentively' and 'instinctively'; 'foy-
sons' and 'poisons'; 'prescience and patience”; “unprevented'
and 'unprepared. ' This practice was a thoroughly characteristic
licence at a time when an editor had no hesitation in substituting
a word which he considered more suitable to the context—'unprofit-
able' for 'improbable'; 'the way to study death' for 'the way to
dusty death'; 'phlegmatick' for 'choleric. ' Thirdly, contractions
commonly used in manuscripts often caused variations in the endings
of words : 'h'as’and 'hath'; wº=which ; yº=the; y'= that; y'=thou
or you; I = ay; 'ignomie' and 'ignominy'; 'conster' and 'con-
strue. ' The abbreviation 'L' doubtless accounts for such variations
as 'liege' and 'lord. ' Finally, there were the ordinary misprints
with which everyone is familiar-due to the dropping out of
letters (“contradict' and 'contract'; 'remuneration' and remura-
tion'); to the omission of words (“his trusty Thisby's' Qq, ‘his
Thisby's' F. , ‘his gentle Thisby's' F, F, F. ); to wrong letters ('Loue'
Q. (Duke of Devonshire's copy), 'Ioue' Qı, 'Ioane' F, F. , 'Joan'
F, F. ); to wrong punctuation (the first folio reads Dispatch
Enobarbus. ' As Enobarbus is not present, the second, third and
fourth read 'Dispatch Eros. ' The right punctuation solves the
‘
difficulty: 'Dispatch. Enobarbus! '); to permutation of letters
(‘Athica' for 'Ithaca'); to repetition of letters ('involverable' Fi,
>
6
1)
>
2,
1 One of the best is to be found in Coriolanus (act 11, sc. 3, 18). The third citizen
says: 'not that our heads are, some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but
that our wits are so diversely coloured. ' The fourth folio was the first to suggest
'auburn' for · Abram,' which is read by the first three.
Thus, an uncommon word 'renege' is restored by the second folio in King Lear,
act 11, sc. 2, 73, where the first folio reads Revenge' and the quartos bave 'Reneag. '
In Othello, act v, sc. 2, 350, ‘base Indian,' the reading of the quartos and later folios,
has greater textual authority than the base Judean' of the first folio.
2
4
7
## p. 267 (#291) ############################################
4
Early Editors: Rowe 267
'invaluerable' F, F, F. , for 'invulnerable'). Such is the process by
which the text of Shakespeare has been evolved—a process pre-
cisely similar to that undergone by any classical text. The
quartos and folios represent the work of copyists—that of editing
follows.
The subsequent history of Shakespeare's text falls, naturally,
into two divisions—a period of conjecture, during which the great
bulk of accepted emendations were made, and a period of con-
solidation, in which a fuller knowledge of the old copies and a
firmer grasp of textual principles combined to produce the received
text of today.
It was fitting that a poet laureate should be the first to give to
the world an edition of Shakespeare—whether or not poetic gifts
are an advantage to an editor. At all events, Nicholas Rowe
(1709)' was engaged on a more profitable task when he attempted
to edit the works, than when he endeavoured to emulate the style,
of Shakespeare. Rowe's main object, as Johnson says, was to
publish an edition of Shakespeare, 'like those of his fraternity,
with the appendages of a life and a recommendatory preface. ”
Therefore, it is not surprising that his work shows little critical
method. He based his text on the latest and worst copy-the
fourth folio. This error affected all editions before Capell, for
each of the succeeding editors was as uncritical as Rowe in basing
his text on the edition immediately preceding his own. Although
Rowe says, 'I have taken some care to redeem him from the
injuries of former impressions, and speaks of comparing the
several editions,' he can hardly have possessed any acquaintance
with old copies. His corrections of the fourth folio, sometimes,
coincide with the readings of the first, as where he reads 'dread
trident' for 'dead trident' of the later folios. In general, however,
he follows the fourth, even where the first obviously contains the
genuine reading. He occasionally consulted a late quarto: textual
evidence shows that he used the quarto of 1676 for the additions
in Hamlet. His alterations were made simply with a view to
.
rendering the plays more intelligible, and he did much useful
pioneer work to this end. His knowledge of the stage enabled
him to add lists of dramatis personae to each play, to supply
stage directions and to make divisions into acts and scenes,
which, to a large extent, have been followed by modern editors.
Many proper names were restored by him (as 'Plutus' for Platus ').
· The date mentioned, in each case, is that of the first edition.
6
## p. 268 (#292) ############################################
268
The Text of Shakespeare
<
Others, which had been manufactured by his predecessors, were
unmasked (thus 'Cyprus' grove becomes 'cypress'). Thanks to
his linguistic attainments, he was able to make sense of a good
deal of nonsense, which did duty in the folios for French or Italian.
Dr Caius's 'green-a-box' of ointment appears in the folios as
‘unboyteene' instead of 'un boitier,' as in Rowe. But his work
for the text rises above that of a proof corrector. Some of his
conjectures deserve a place beside those of his more eminent
successors. Few quotations are more firmly established than
'Some are born great. ' (The folios have are become. ') And the
temple-haunting martlet’ in Macbeth is not likely to be ousted
from the place occupied in the folios by 'Barlet. '
No one will dispute Rowe's modest claim that he has rendered
many places intelligible that were not so before. It is his unique
distinction that he did not stir up any controversy. His emenda-
tions were silently introduced into his text, and as silently
appropriated by his successors.
To Pope belongs the unenviable distinction of having intro-
duced into the study of Shakespeare's text that controversial
acrimony of which echoes were heard far on into the nineteenth
century. But his edition (1723—5) is quite free from this blemish.
Instead of expanding his notes, which are models of brevity, he
curtailed the text to suit his 'private sense,' and filled his margin
with rejected passages. Some of these, it is true, were no great
loss, though Pope was hardly qualified for expurgating Shakespeare.
Others, however, seriously interfere not only with the sense, but
with the conceptions of the dramatist. Mercutio is robbed whole-
sale of his jests. Much of Caesar's distinctive braggadocio is
struck out. Again, the porter's soliloquy in Macbeth is dispensed
with, and so are several lines of Richard's soliloquy before
the battle. Romeo and Juliet fares worst of all; many passages
being omitted on the pretext that they do not occur in the
defective first quarto, while others are inserted because they
appear in the second, and others, again, are struck out simply
because they are ‘nonsense' or 'trash' or 'ridiculous. It is difficult
to understand how a poet could deliberately reject such a line as
'Sleep that knits up the ravelld sleave of care. ' Occasionally, a
line is dropped out altogether, without warning or comment.
Pope's text is further marred by hundreds of verbal alterations
for which no justification is even attempted. A small proportion
of these may be regarded as legitimate conjectures; but the great
majority are arbitrary corrections, not of copyists' errors, but of
>
## p. 269 (#293) ############################################
6
Pope's Merits and Shortcomings 269
Shakespeare's own composition. We are left to guess the reasons
for his changes. In many instances, they are obviously made to
harmonise the metre with the ideal of rigid uniformity which
dominated the Augustan age (“brest' for 'bosom,' lady' for
'gentlewoman,' 'foes' for 'enemies'). Monosyllables are omitted
or inserted with the utmost licence to produce a regular line.
Uncommon forms of expression, or words employed in an unusual
sense, are rarely allowed to stand. (The ‘untented woundings of
a father's curse' become 'untender'; 'I owe you no subscription
;
is altered to submission'; 'to keep at utterance,' that is, to the
last extremity, has to make way for 'to keep at variance. ') Such
reckless alterations have obscured Pope's real contribution to the
study of Shakespeare's text. Compared with the work of Rowe,
his services may justly be called great. That he thoroughly under-
stood the nature of his task is abundantly clear. His preface-the
only part of his work which he brought to perfection-contains a
careful and accurate characterisation of the quarto and folio texts.
The theory that 'the original copies,' referred to by the editors of
the first folio, were 'those which had lain ever since the author's
day in the play-house, and had from time to time been cut or added
to arbitrarily,' is there found for the first time. Pope evinces an
acquaintance with all the most important quarto texts. If he was
too ready to suspect interpolations, nevertheless he was respon-
sible for the insertion of most of the passages in the variant quarto
plays, which were omitted in the first folio. Although he made
havoc of the text of Romeo and Juliet by his excisions, he
instinctively introduced a number of undoubtedly genuine readings
from the first quarto. He has often unravelled Shakespeare's verse
from the prose of the old copies, and in almost every play the
metrical arrangement of the lines owes something to him. Many
of his conjectures have been generally accepted. He restored a
realistic touch in "Tarquin's ravishing strides' where the first folio
has 'sides, and he recovered Falstaff's 'oeillades' from the 'illiads'
of all the folios. On the other hand, the cause of Pope's failure is
revealed in his own phrase : 'the dull duty of an editor. ' He had
been invited to undertake the work as the first man of letters of
his day; and he deals with the text in the spirit of a dictator. But
the laborious task of collating texts could not be accomplished by
the sheer force of poetic genius. Had he possessed an army of
collaborators for doing the drudgery, Pope's edition of Shakespeare
might have achieved as great a success as his translation of Homer.
As it was, the work was only half done.
a
## p. 270 (#294) ############################################
270
The Text of Shakespeare
Yet it might still have brought him some fame, had it not been
doomed to pass through the ordeal of criticism at the hands of one
who has few rivals as a textual critic. All its defects were laid
bare by Lewis Theobald in his Shakespeare Restored (1726). No
one could read this work-monumental in the history of Shake-
speare's text—without acknowledging that here, at any rate, Pope
had met more than his match. Pope was too wise to attempt to
defend himself against criticism, which he, better than anyone else,
knew to be unanswerable. In his second edition, he calmly adopted
many of Theobald's corrections; and, then, he began a campaign of
misrepresentation and abuse which culminated in his making
Theobald the hero of The Dunciad. The power of satire, wielded by
genius, has never been more strikingly displayed. Pope's caricature
of the foremost of all textual critics of Shakespeare as a dull,
meddling pedant without salt or savour not only led astray the
judgment of the sanest critics of the eighteenth century, but
infected the clear reason of Coleridge, and has remained the current
estimate to this day. Theobald's method of retaliation was un-
fortunate. He remained silent while Pope was exhausting every
mean device to ruin his projected edition. But, when that edition
(1733) became a triumphant fact, he emptied the vials of his wrath
into his notes. Those who are aware of the unprecedented provoca-
tion which he received and of the superiority of which he must
have been conscious find no difficulty in acquitting him; but the
majority who read only Theobald's notes must perforce join with
Johnson in condemning his 'contemptible ostentation. ' Every
correction adopted by Pope from Shakespeare Restored in his
second edition is carefully noted, although Theobald himself ap-
propriated many of Pope's conjectures without acknowledgment.
Every correction of Theobald's own, if but a comma, is accompanied
by shouts of exultation and volleys of impotent sarcasm. But
he overreached himself. Though smarting under the 'flagrant
civilities' which he received from Pope, he paid him the un-
intentional compliment of taking his text as the basis of his own.
Had he been as anxious to adhere faithfully to his authorities as
he was eager to dilate on the faithlessness of Pope, he would
hardly have fallen into the error of following the edition which he
himself classed as of no authority. ' It has sometimes been stated
'
that Theobald based his text on the first folio. But the very
numerous instances in which he has perpetuated Pope's arbitrary
alterations in his own text show that this was not the case. Yet
the multitude of readings which he restored both from the quartos
6
## p. 271 (#295) ############################################
Theobala.
Hanmer
271
and from the first folio largely neutralised the effect of this error! It
is in dealing with real corruption that Theobald is seen at his best,
and remains without a rival.
