"And if by chaunce thou light of some speache that seemeth dark, consider of it with judgment, before thou condemne the worke: for in many places he is driven both to praise and blame with one breath, which in readinge wil seeme hard, and in action appeare plaine.” Promos and Cassandra. [The Printer to the Reader. Nor what Shakespeare might, could, would, or should have written, but what, according to the best evidence, he did write, is the only admissible or defensible object of the labours of his editors and verbal critics. Obviously true as this is, its binding force has been regarded by but a very few of the many who have undertaken the supervision or correction of Shakespeare's text. They have not simply sought the word, the expression, or the line which the authentic copy gives in this or that passage; but each has undertaken to decide what it should be, by exercising his own taste in choosing from the text of the various ancient copies which accident or fraud gave to the world, or by substituting that which, in his judgment, the poet should have written. With the labours of such critics I have no sympathy; for such labours I can imagine. no excuse. To me they are folly, presumption, desecration-literary crimes which should be remorselessly denounced, let them be perpetrated by whom they may. During the patient study of years, I have day by day become more and more convinced that the authentic text of Shakespeare cannot be held in too great veneration or modified with too great caution. A passage there may seem obscure through a thousand painful perusals, and yet upon the next, a meaning may flash upon us so apposite, so brilliant, as to mingle with the pleasure of discovery some shame at the perversity which delayed the enjoyment, and the presumption which proposed a feeble substitute in place of it. "Let no man," said Schlegel, "lay hand on Shakespeare's works to change anything essential in them; he will be sure to punish himself." Yes, let no man do it, whatever his learning or his ability. How different the opinion of the literary celebrities of the past age was from that of Schlegel, the following pages will bear evidence; and that the exposures which they make are not superfluous, may be justly concluded from the fact, that the London Quarterly Review but recently expressed the opinion that Dr. Johnson's notes commanded the deference of his readers, and that a competent editor would be contented with reproducing them in their integrity! Such an assertion, by a sane man, can only be accounted for on the supposition that he had either not read Shakespeare, or had not seen Johnson's notes. The 'great moralist,' however, is among the best of a class under the infliction of whose treatment Shakespeare's text is still suffering, and on account of the perverse and unsympathizing nature of whose criticisms even his VOL. I. 4 E wondrous creations are still misapprehended or partially comprehended by a great number of his readers. What a fine thing would it be for Shakespeare and the public if, with the exception of such copies as are necessary for public libraries and the critical students of the text, all the editions issued during the two hundred years subsequent to the publication of the first folio, could be piled in one great heap and set on fire! Round such a pyre the true lovers of Shakespeare might dance and sing with joy. In the subsequent Notes and Comments, most of which were written merely as a part of the author's Shakespearian studies, and with no thought of publication, or in the course of daily criticism in the various departments of Art, it will be observed that his constant aim has been to preserve at first for himself and now for his readers—the simple and obvious signification of the authentic text. Reckless and remorseless have been the inroads upon that text, under the sanction of great names; and so disastrous are the consequences of these ravages, that it cannot be too often asserted, that the only guaranty for the integrity of those works which are the glory of our race and of the world, consists in the preservation of the words of the only authentic edition, when those words are understood by minds of ordinary, intelligence, or supported by comparison with the language and manners of the author's day, or those of the immediately antecedent age. And not only so, the learned and ingenious distortions and perversions of the signification of those words, which have been handed down for the last two or three generations, must be set at nought and utterly contemned,-in fact, forgotten, before the bright, broad, genial, all-penetrating light of Shakespeare's thought can reach the general mind in undimmed purity and splendour. Upon the Dramatist of all time even more than upon the father of the Epic, has the ambitious desire of his commentators to see more than he saw, and understand more than he meant, inflicted that wrong which Rabelais thus satirizes with pitiless and truthful pen in the Prologue to his "Pleasant and Joyous History:"-" Croyez vous en vostre foy, qu'oncques Homere escripuant l'Ilyade, & Odyssee pensast és allegories lesquelles de luy ont beluté Plutarche, Heraclides Ponticque, Eustatie, & Phornute: & ce que d'iceulx Politian à desrobé? Si le croyez, vous n'aprochez ne de pieds, ny de mains à mon opinion, qui decrete icelles aussi peu auoir esté songées d'Homere, que d'Ouide en ses Metamorphoses les sacrements de l'Euangile, lesquelz vng frere Lubin, vray croquelardon, s'est efforcé de monstrer, si d'aduenture il rencontroit gens aussi fols que luy, & (comme diet le prouerbe) couuercle digne du chaudron." Well may it be said, that if we listen to the learned folly of these notemongers we will approach Shakespeare's meaning "ni de pieds, ni de mains." They, like the Homerian commentators, put that into his mouth which was as far from his intent as "les Sacrements de l'Evangile," from the Metamorphoses of Ovid. With regard to conjectural or arbitrary emendations, there is safety only in adhering to the decision of the generally judicious Malone, that all are arbitrary which are "made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority," and that all readings "not authorized by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability." As to the MS. corrections in Mr. Collier's copy of the second folio, an overwhelming weight of internal evidence has compelled the conclusion that they have no pretension to greater deference than that which is due to mere conjecture, and were made not carlier than about 1670, at which time speculative emendation could have no advantages which it does not possess at the present day, except in the possible survival of a few modes of expression which have since become obsolete; and even this the MS. corrections, by the numerous evidences which they furnish, that the maker or makers of them did not understand phrases and words which are perfectly understood by English scholars of the present day, prove to have been no advantage at all. But although these MS. corrections have no semblance of authority, and at least one thousand and thirteen, out of the one thousand three hundred and three, are unworthy of a moment's further consideration, because, in the words of Mr. Dyce, they are "ignorant, tasteless, and wanton;" and although, as a highly accomplished and judicious critic has beautifully and justly remarked, "they almost invariably take the fire out of the poetry, the fine tissue out of the thought, the ancient aroma and flavour out of the language;" still, as I have before observed, the discovery of this corrected folio will prove to be of some service to the text of Shakespeare Nevertheless, even its most plausible corrections are to receive only the consideration due to them as arbitrary and conjectural, and must be "judged of by their reasonableness and probability." With the thousand and thirteen, new and old, before mentioned, we have of course nothing further to do. Of the remaining two hundred and ninety, one hundred and seventy-three have been a part of the received text for more than a quarter of a century; and these obviously present no claims for present examination. But in the one hundred and seventeen still undisposed of, there are a very few which assert at once an unquestionable claim to be received into the text, and some which are at least worthy of careful consideration before they are rejected. In the course of the following pages I shall examine the inherent merits of the more important of the latter number-the one hundred and seventeen. COMEDIES. TEMPEST. "Prosp. Who having unto truth, by telling of it, The construction of this sentence is a little "Ferd. The My prime request, Mira. No wonder, Sir; But, certainly, a maid." It would seem impossible to misunderstand this passage, or perhaps it is better to say, to understand it in more than one sense. Ferdinand, struck with Miranda's wondrous beauty, asks her, as the question in which he is most interested, and just as he would have asked her in any other place if he had no other means of obtaining the momentous information, "tell me, you wonderful creature, are you maid or wife ?" and she replies, with proper modesty, that, though she has no claims to be considered "a wonder," she is certainly "a maid." But instead of this simple and obvious signification, we have divers far-fetched constructions of the passage thrust upon us by various commentators; some supposing that Ferdinand means to ask Miranda if she were made or no (such a reading has even been introduced into the text), and that Miranda replies that she is "not a celestial being, but a maiden." But if she were a celestial being on earth, she certainly would be "a wonder;" and her answer is:"No wonder, Sir; But, certainly, a maid.” Why should we seek out "fond and winnowed opinions," when there is a plain and palpable signification before us? "Gonz. I' the commonwealth, I would by contraries Execute all things. For no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate. Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service none;" &c.-Act II., Scene 1. This speech of Gonzalo's is but a poetical paraphrase of a passage in Montaigne. It has been supposed by many that this fixes the date of the writing of the Tempest after 1603, when Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays was first published. But this is to assume that Shakespeare did not read French: not the only unwarranted assumption of his editors. "Gonz. Each putter out of five for one will bring us," &c.-Act III., Scene 3. This line, which refers to the habit of adventurers by sea in Shakespeare's day, to put out a sum of money on condition of receiving five for one, if they chanced to return alive, is evidently corrupt, as was long ago discovered. The voyagers did not put out "five for one," but one for five. So the line has been changed to, "Each putter out of one for five," &c. and to, "Each putter out on five for one," &c. the former being the most common reading. But surely this is to avoid the most natural correction of the typographical error, and the most appropriate phrase for the expression of the idea. We do not put out money on five per cent., we put it out at five per cent.; and these adventurers, instead of putting it out at five for a hundred, put it out at five for one. Read, "Each putter out at five for one will bring us," &c. "Prosp. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, Upon this passage Mr. Dyce remarks,- "So this famous passage stands in all editions old and new. But I believe that Malone's objection to the reading a rack,' is unanswerable. No instance,' he observes, has yet been produced where rack is used to signify a single small fleeting cloud; in other words, though our early writers very frequently make mention of the rack,' they never say 'a rack.' Malone adds, I incline to think that rack is a misspelling for wrack, i. e., wreck ;' and I now am thoroughly convinced that such is the case. In authors of the age of Elizabeth and James, I have repeatedly met with rack put for wrack; and in all the early editions of Milton's Paradise Lost which I possess, -viz., the first, 1667; the second, 1674; the third, 1678; the fourth, 1688; and the eighth, 1707-I find, "Now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to rack [i. e., wrack=wreck],' &c. B. iv. 990. "A world devote to universal rack [i. e., wrack= wreck]." B. xi. 821.' A Few Notes, &c. 13. p. The wonder is, that another opinion should have been entertained by any reader. The dissolution of towers, palaces, temples, and the great globe itself, might be said with propriety not to leave "a wreck" behind; but it would be very strange indeed, if it should leave a small fleeting cloud behind; neither does that object furnish a simile at all appropriate to what would remain after such an all-devouring catastrophe. It is indeed surprising that any one who had ever heard the old phrase "gone to rack and ruin," should have had a doubt about the word in question. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. Speed. When you look'd sadly, it was for want of money. And now you are metamorphos'd with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master."-Act II., Scene 1. The MS. correction in Mr. Collier's folio, "And now you are so Metamorphos'd with a Mistris that when," &c., seems very plausible; but still, with the sentence punctuated as it is above, I am not sure that the so is necessary. Speed's meaning is, 'you are metamorphosed with a mistress, so that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master;' and the particle is dropped by a not uncommon, and, it appears to me, rather elegant elision. "Launce. This hat is Nan, our maid; I am the dog-no, the dog is himself and I am the dog,oh! the dog is me, and I am myself."-Act II., Scene 3. Will it be believed by those who have not scen it for themselves,-the exquisite confusion of poor Launce's feeble ideas is not appreciated by Dr. Johnson and Sir Thomas Hanmer! How delightful is the complacence with which, after doubting whether he is the dog or the dog is himself and he is the dog, he triumphantly extricates himself from his dilemma, by exclaiming: "Oh! the dog is me, and I am myself." And yet Dr. Johnson is not certain "how much reason the author intended to bestow on Launce's soliloquy," and Sir Thomas Hanmer actually printed the passage, "I am the dog: :-no, the dog is himself and I am me; the dog is the dog, and I am myself." This it was to edit Shakespeare in the "Augustan age" of English literature! Augustan in what? Its looseness, its servility, its maliciousness, its marrowless thought, its inability to make its philosophy more than an iteration of trite orthodoxy or triter scepticism, or its poetry more than an oily flow of pretty epigrams? "Proteus. Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love."-Act III., Scene 1. The commentators remark upon this passage, "that the lady of the 16th century had a pocket in the front of her stays;" and they suppose this fashion again referred to when Valentine says, "My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them;" and also in Hamlet's fancy, "These to her excellent white bosom." What need, what need of all this mantua making lore! Where have Eve's daughters put their lover's letters and their own nameless little knick-knacks ever since their mother's apron of fig leaves was first accommodated with a boddice? Do lovers send their thoughts to the "pure" pockets, the "excellent white" stays of their mistresses? What absurd misconstruction of beautiful and appropriate thoughts, for the purpose of displaying a little knowledge of antiquated man-millinery! The Earl of Surrey, who wrote his poetry to a "lady of the sixteenth century" (1557), in one of his sonnets thus predicts its happy fate: "When she hath read and seen the grief wherein I serve, Between her brests she shall thee put, there shall she thee reserve." Stays and pockets, forscoth! [This was written before I saw the Variorum edition; and there I find that Malone has quoted this very passage from Surrey; and yet a gentleman of Mr. Charles Knight's taste and sympathetic appreciation of Shakespeare, editing his works in the middle of the nineteenth century, can perpetuate the Mantalini-ism of the tic-wig editors!] "Launce. He lives not now, that knows me to be in love; yet I am in love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor who it is I love; and yet 'tis a woman."-Act III., Scene 1. Upon this characteristic exhibition of simplicity, Dr. Johnson remarks that Launce is thinking, "I see now Valentine is suffering for telling his love secrets, therefore I will keep mine close." But Steevens comes to the rescue, and adds, "Perhaps Launce was not intended to show so much sense; but here indulges himself in talking contradictory nonsense." Perhaps, indeed! I notice such platitudes as these, that it may be seen and known of all those who cannot or will not wade through the rubbish of the commentators, what thick-headedness seems to have taken possession of men of the last century, when they came to the reading of Shakespeare, although they were, in other respects, able and learned; and also that we may all be warned of the utter folly of relying upon the mere authority of any name for the justification of a change in the text as the original folio gives it to us. If that can be understood by men of ordinary common sense, it must be changed at no man's bidding, even for the better. |