interesting is the 'Chandos' portrait, now in the National Portrait
Gallery. Its pedigree suggests that it was intended to represent the
poet, but numerous and conspicuous divergences from the authenticated
likenesses show that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of him
some years after his death. The face is bearded, and rings adorn the
ears. Oldys reported that it was from the brush of Burbage,
Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who had some reputation as a limner, {292}
and that it had belonged to Joseph Taylor, an actor contemporary with
Shakespeare. These rumours are not corroborated; but there is no doubt
that it was at one time the property of D'Avenant, and that it
subsequently belonged successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs.
Barry the actress. In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller made a copy as a gift for
Dryden. After Mrs Barry's death in 1713 it was purchased for forty
guineas by Robert Keck, a barrister of the Inner Temple. At length it
reached the hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter married James
Brydges, third duke of Chandos. In due time the Duke became the owner of
the picture, and it subsequently passed, through Chandos's daughter, to
her husband, the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, whose son, the
second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his
effects at Stowe in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere.
The latter presented it to the nation. Edward Capell many years before
presented a copy by Ranelagh Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and
other copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias Humphrey
(1783). It was engraved by George Vertue in 1719 for Pope's edition
(1725), and often later, one of the best engravings being by Vandergucht.
A good lithograph from a tracing by Sir George Scharf was published by
the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1864. The Baroness
Burdett-Coutts purchased in 1875 a portrait of similar type, which is
said, somewhat doubtfully, to have belonged to John lord Lumley, who died
in 1609, and to have formed part of a collection of portraits of the
great men of his day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham. Its early
history is not positively authenticated, and it may well be an early copy
of the Chandos portrait. The 'Lumley' painting was finely
chromo-lithographed in 1863 by Vincent Brooks.
The 'Jansen' portrait.
The so-called 'Jansen' or Janssens portrait, which belongs to Lady
Guendolen Ramsden, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and is now at her
residence at Bulstrode, was first doubtfully identified about 1770, when
in the possession of Charles Jennens. Janssens did not come to England
before Shakespeare's death. It is a fine portrait, but is unlike any
other that has been associated with the dramatist. An admirable
mezzotint by Richard Earlom was issued in 1811.
The 'Felton' portrait.
The 'Felton' portrait, a small head on a panel, with a high and very bald
forehead (belonging since 1873 to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts), was
purchased by S. Felton of Drayton, Shropshire, in 1792 of J. Wilson, the
owner of the Shakespeare Museum in Pall Mall; it bears a late
inscription, 'Gul. Shakespear 1597, R. B.' [_i.e._ Richard Burbage]. It
was engraved by Josiah Boydell for George Steevens in 1797, and by James
Neagle for Isaac Reed's edition in 1803. Fuseli declared it to be the
work of a Dutch artist, but the painters Romney and Lawrence regarded it
as of English workmanship of the sixteenth century. Steevens held that
it was the original picture whence both Droeshout and Marshall made their
engravings, but there are practically no points of resemblance between it
and the prints.
[Picture: Plaster-cast of bust of William Shakespeare]
The 'Soest' portrait.
The 'Soest' or 'Zoust' portrait--in the possession of Sir John
Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield--was in the collection of Thomas
Wright, painter, of Covent Garden in 1725, when John Simon engraved it.
Soest was born twenty-one years after Shakespeare's death, and the
portrait is only on fanciful grounds identified with the poet. A chalk
drawing by John Michael Wright, obviously inspired by the Soest portrait,
is the property of Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton House, and is on loan at
the Memorial Gallery, Stratford.
Miniatures.
A well-executed miniature by Hilliard, at one time in the possession of
William Somerville the poet, and now the property Of Sir Stafford
Northcote, bart., was engraved by Agar for vol. ii. of the 'Variorum
Shakespeare' of 1821, and in Wivell's 'Inquiry,' 1827. It has little
claim to attention as a portrait of the dramatist. Another miniature
(called the 'Auriol' portrait), of doubtful authenticity, formerly
belonged to Mr. Lumsden Propert, and a third is at Warwick Castle.
The Garrick Club bust.
A bust, said to be of Shakespeare, was discovered in 1845 bricked up in a
wall in Spode and Copeland's china warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
The warehouse had been erected on the site of the Duke's Theatre, which
was built by D'Avenant in 1660. The bust, which is of black terra cotta,
and bears traces of Italian workmanship, is believed to have adorned the
proscenium of the Duke's Theatre. It was acquired by the surgeon William
Clift, from whom it passed to Clift's son-in-law, Richard (afterwards Sir
Richard) Owen the naturalist. The latter sold it to the Duke of
Devonshire, who presented it in 1851 to the Garrick Club, after having
two copies made in plaster. One of these copies is now in the
Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford, and from it an engraving has
been made for reproduction in this volume.
Alleged death-mask.
The Kesselstadt death-mask was discovered by Dr. Ludwig Becker, librarian
at the ducal palace at Darmstadt, in a rag-shop at Mayence in 1849. The
features resemble those of an alleged portrait of Shakespeare (dated
1637) which Dr. Becker purchased in 1847. This picture had long been in
the possession of the family of Count Francis von Kesselstadt of Mayence,
who died in 1843. Dr. Becker brought the mask and the picture to England
in 1849, and Richard Owen supported the theory that the mask was taken
from Shakespeare's face after death, and was the foundation of the bust
in Stratford Church. The mask was for a long time in Dr. Becker's
private apartments at the ducal palace, Darmstadt. {296a} The features
are singularly attractive; but the chain of evidence which would identify
them with Shakespeare is incomplete. {296b}
Memorials in sculpture.
A monument, the expenses of which were defrayed by public subscription,
was set up in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1741. Pope and
the Earl of Burlington were among the promoters. The design was by
William Kent, and the statue of Shakespeare was executed by Peter
Scheemakers. {297} Another statue was executed by Roubiliac for Garrick,
who bequeathed it to the British Museum in 1779. A third statue, freely
adapted from the works of Scheemakers and Roubiliac, was executed for
Baron Albert Grant and was set up by him as a gift to the metropolis in
Leicester Square, London, in 1879. A fourth statue (by Mr. J. A. Q.
Ward) was placed in 1882 in the Central Park, New York. A fifth in
bronze, by M. Paul Fournier, which was erected in Paris in 1888 at the
expense of an English resident, Mr. W. Knighton, stands at the point
where the Avenue de Messine meets the Boulevard Haussmann. A sixth
memorial in sculpture, by Lord Ronald Gower, the most elaborate and
ambitious of all, stands in the garden of the Shakespeare Memorial
buildings at Stratford-on-Avon, and was unveiled in 1888; Shakespeare is
seated on a high pedestal; below, at each side of the pedestal, stand
figures of four of Shakespeare's principal characters: Lady Macbeth,
Hamlet, Prince Hal, and Sir John Falstaff.
At Stratford, the Birthplace, which was acquired by the public in 1846
and converted into a museum, is with Anne Hathaway's cottage (which was
acquired by the Birthplace Trustees in 1892), a place of pilgrimage for
visitors from all parts of the globe. The 27,038 persons who visited it
in 1896 and the 26,510 persons who visited it in 1897 represented over
forty nationalities. The site of the demolished New Place, with the
gardens, was also purchased by public subscription in 1861, and now forms
a public garden. Of a new memorial building on the river-bank at
Stratford, consisting of a theatre, picture-gallery, and library, the
foundation-stone was laid on April 23, 1877. The theatre was opened
exactly two years later, when 'Much Ado about Nothing' was performed,
with Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) as Beatrice and Barry Sullivan as
Benedick. Performances of Shakespeare's plays have since been given
annually during April. The library and picture-gallery were opened in
1881. {298} A memorial Shakespeare library was opened at Birmingham on
April 23, 1868, to commemorate the tercentenary of 1864, and, although
destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored in 1882; it now possesses nearly
ten thousand volumes relating to Shakespeare.
XIX--BIBLIOGRAPHY
Quartos of the poems in the poet's lifetime.
Only two of Shakespeare's works--his narrative poems 'Venus and Adonis'
and 'Lucrece'--were published with his sanction and co-operation. These
poems were the first specimens of his work to appear in print, and they
passed in his lifetime through a greater number of editions than any of
his plays. At the time of his death in 1616 there had been printed in
quarto seven editions of his 'Venus and Adonis' (1593, 1594, 1596, 1599,
1600, and two in 1602), and five editions of his 'Lucrece' (1594, 1598,
1600, 1607, 1616). There was only one lifetime edition of the 'Sonnets,'
Thorpe's surreptitious venture of 1609; {299} but three editions were
issued of the piratical 'Passionate Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently
assigned to Shakespeare by the publisher William Jaggard, although it
contained only a few occasional poems by him (1599, 1600 no copy known,
and 1612).
Posthumous quartos of the poems.
Of posthumous editions in quarto of the two narrative poems in the
seventeenth century, there were two of 'Lucrece'--viz. in 1624 ('the
sixth edition') and in 1655 (with John Quarles's 'Banishment of
Tarquin')--and there were as many as six editions of 'Venus' (1617, 1620,
1627, two in 1630, and 1636), making thirteen editions in all in
forty-three years. No later editions of these two poems were issued in
the seventeenth century. They were next reprinted together with 'The
Passionate Pilgrim' in 1707, and thenceforth they usually figured, with
the addition of the 'Sonnets,' in collected editions of Shakespeare's
works.
The 'Poems' of 1640.
A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 'Poems' in 1640
(London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) was mainly a reissue of the
'Sonnets,' but it omitted six (Nos. xviii., xix., xliii., lvi., lxxv.,
and lxxvi.) and it included the twenty poems of 'The Passionate Pilgrim,'
with some other pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the
Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. There were
prefatory poems by Leonard Digges and John Warren, as well as an address
'to the reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' were described as 'serene, clear, and elegantly
plain; such gentle strains as shall re-create and not perplex your brain.
No intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise
your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of interest in the volume
of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a
different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus
the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and
what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty-second place in 1640.
In most cases a more or less fanciful general title is placed in the
second edition at the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a
single title serves for short sequences of two or three sonnets which are
printed as independent poems continuously without spacing. The poems
drawn from 'The Passionate Pilgrim' are intermingled with the 'Sonnets,'
together with extracts from Thomas Heywood's 'General History of Women,'
although no hint is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. The
edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shakespeare and a short section
entitled 'an addition of some excellent poems to those precedent by other
Gentlemen.' The volume is of great rarity. An exact reprint was
published in 1885.
Quartos of the plays in the poet's lifetime.
Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 1616 only sixteen (all in
quarto), or eighteen if we include the 'Contention,' the first draft of
'2 Henry VI' (1594 and 1600), and 'The True Tragedy,' the first draft of
'3 Henry VI' (1595 and 1600). These sixteen quartos were publishers'
ventures, and were undertaken without the co-operation of the author.
Two of the plays, published thus, reached five editions before 1616, viz.
'Richard III' (1597, 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612) and '1 Henry IV' (1598,
1599, 1604, 1608, 1615).
Three reached four editions, viz. 'Richard II' (1597, 1598, 1608
supplying the deposition scene for the first time, 1615); 'Hamlet' (1603
imperfect, 1604, 1605, 1611), and 'Romeo and Juliet' (1597 imperfect,
1599, two in 1609).
Two reached three editions, viz. 'Henry V' (1600 imperfect, 1602, and
1608) and 'Pericles' (two in 1609, 1611).
Four reached two editions, viz. 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (both in 1600);
'Merchant of Venice' (both in 1600); 'Lear' (both in 1608); and 'Troilus
and Cressida' (both in 1609).
Five achieved only one edition, viz. 'Love's Labour's Lost' (1598), '2
Henry IV' (1600), 'Much Ado' (1600), 'Titus' (1600), 'Merry Wives' (1602
imperfect).
Posthumous quartos of the plays.
Three years after Shakespeare's death--in 1619--there appeared a second
edition of 'Merry Wives' (again imperfect) and a fourth of 'Pericles.'
'Othello' was first printed posthumously in 1622 (4to), and in the same
year sixth editions of 'Richard III' and 'I Henry IV' appeared. {302}
The largest collections of the original quartos--each of which survives
in only four, five, or six copies--are in the libraries of the Duke of
Devonshire, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in
the Bodleian Library. {303} All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare's
day at sixpence each.
The First Folio. The publishing syndicate.
In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the world a complete edition
of Shakespeare's plays. Two of the dramatist's intimate friends and
fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, were nominally responsible
for the venture, but it seems to have been suggested by a small syndicate
of printers and publishers, who undertook all pecuniary responsibility.
Chief of the syndicate was William Jaggard, printer since 1611 to the
City of London, who was established in business in Fleet Street at the
east end of St. Dunstan's Church. As the piratical publisher of 'The
Passionate Pilgrim' he had long known the commercial value of
Shakespeare's work. In 1613 he had extended his business by purchasing
the stock and rights of a rival pirate, James Roberts, who had printed
the quarto editions of the 'Merchant of Venice' and 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' in 1600 and the complete quarto of 'Hamlet' in 1604. Roberts had
enjoyed for nearly twenty years the right to print 'the players' bills,'
or programmes, and he made over that privilege to Jaggard with his other
literary property. It is to the close personal relations with the
playhouse managers into which the acquisition of the right of printing
'the players' bill' brought Jaggard after 1613 that the inception of the
scheme of the 'First Folio' may safely be attributed. Jaggard associated
his son Isaac with the enterprise. They alone of the members of the
syndicate were printers. Their three partners were publishers or
booksellers only. Two of these, William Aspley and John Smethwick, had
already speculated in plays of Shakespeare. Aspley had published with
another in 1600 the 'Second Part of Henry IV' and 'Much Ado about
Nothing,' and in 1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shakespeare's
'Sonnets.' Smethwick, whose shop was in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet
Street, near Jaggard's, had published in 1611 two late editions of 'Romeo
and Juliet' and one of 'Hamlet.' Edward Blount, the fifth partner, was
an interesting figure in the trade, and, unlike his companions, had a
true taste in literature. He had been a friend and admirer of
Christopher Marlowe, and had actively engaged in the posthumous
publication of two of Marlowe's poems. He had published that curious
collection of mystical verse entitled 'Love's Martyr,' one poem in which,
'a poetical essay of the Phoenix and the Turtle,' was signed 'William
Shakespeare.' {304}
The First Folio was doubtless printed in Jaggard's printing office near
St. Dunstan's Church. Upon Blount probably fell the chief labour of
seeing the work through the press. It was in progress throughout 1623,
and had so far advanced by November 8, 1623, that on that day Edward
Blount and Isaac (son of William) Jaggard obtained formal license from
the Stationers' Company to publish sixteen of the twenty hitherto
unprinted plays that it was intended to include. The pieces, whose
approaching publication for the first time was thus announced, were of
supreme literary interest. The titles ran: 'The Tempest,' 'The Two
Gentlemen,' 'Measure for Measure,' 'Comedy of Errors,' 'As you like it,'
'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's Tale,' '3 Henry VI,' 'Henry
VIII,' 'Coriolanus,' 'Timon,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Antony and
Cleopatra,' and 'Cymbeline.' Four other hitherto unprinted dramas for
which no license was sought figured in the volume, viz. 'King John,' '1
and 2 Henry VI,' and the 'Taming of the Shrew;' but each of these plays
was based by Shakespeare on a play of like title which had been published
at an earlier date, and the absence of a license was doubtless due to an
ignorant misconception on the past either of the Stationers' Company's
officers or of the editors of the volume as to the true relations
subsisting between the old pieces and the new. The only play by
Shakespeare that had been previously published and was not included in
the First Folio was 'Pericles.'
The prefatory matter.
Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. The volume
consisted of nearly one thousand double-column pages and was sold at a
pound a copy. Steevens estimated that the edition numbered 250 copies.
The book was described on the title-page as published by Edward Blount
and Isaac Jaggard, and in the colophon as printed at the charges of 'W.
Jaggard, I. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley,' as well as of Blount. {306} On
the title-page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Commendatory verses
were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M.,
perhaps Jasper Maine. The dedication was addressed to the brothers
William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, the lord chamberlain, and Philip
Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and was signed by Shakespeare's friends and
fellow-actors, Heming and Condell. The same signatures were appended to
a succeeding address 'to the great variety of readers.' In both
addresses the two actors made pretension to a larger responsibility for
the enterprise than they really incurred, but their motives in
identifying themselves with the venture were doubtless irreproachable.
They disclaimed (they wrote) 'ambition either of selfe-profit or fame in
undertaking the design,' being solely moved by anxiety to 'keepe the
memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.'
'It had bene a thing we confesse worthie to haue bene wished,' they
inform the reader, 'that the author himselfe had liued to haue set forth
and ouerseen his owne writings. . . .' A list of contents follows the
address to the readers.
The value of the text.
The title-page states that all the plays were printed 'according to the
true originall copies.' The dedicators wrote to the same effect. 'As
where (before) we were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surreptitious
copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of incurious
impostors that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view
cur'd and perfect in their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their
numbers as he conceived them.' There is no doubt that the whole volume
was printed from the acting versions in the possession of the manager of
the company with which Shakespeare had been associated. But it is
doubtful if any play were printed exactly as it came from his pen. The
First Folio text is often markedly inferior to that of the sixteen
pre-existent quartos, which, although surreptitiously and imperfectly
printed, followed playhouse copies of far earlier date. From the text of
the quartos the text of the First Folio differs invariably, although in
varying degrees. The quarto texts of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'Midsummer
Night's Dream,' and 'Richard II,' for example, differ very largely and
always for the better from the folio texts. On the other hand, the folio
repairs the glaring defects of the quarto versions of 'The Merry Wives of
Windsor' and of 'Henry V.' In the case of twenty of the plays in the
First Folio no quartos exist for comparison, and of these twenty plays,
'Coriolanus,' 'All's Well,' and 'Macbeth' present a text abounding in
corrupt passages.
The order of the plays.
The plays are arranged under three headings--'Comedies,' 'Histories,' and
'Tragedies'--and each division is separately paged. The arrangement of
the plays in each division follows no principle. The comedy section
begins with the 'Tempest' and ends with the 'Winter's Tale.' The
histories more justifiably begin with 'King John' and end with 'Henry
VIII.' The tragedies begin with 'Troilus and Cressida' and end with
'Cymbeline.' This order has been usually followed in subsequent
collective editions.
The typography.
As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not to be commended.
There are a great many contemporary folios of larger bulk far more neatly
and correctly printed. It looks as though Jaggard's printing office were
undermanned. The misprints are numerous and are especially conspicuous
in the pagination. The sheets seem to have been worked off very slowly,
and corrections were made while the press was working, so that the copies
struck off later differ occasionally from the earlier copies. One mark
of carelessness on the part of the compositor or corrector of the press,
which is common to all copies, is that 'Troilus and Cressida,' though in
the body of the book it opens the section of tragedies, is not mentioned
at all in the table of contents, and the play is unpaged except on its
second and third pages, which bear the numbers 79 and 80.
Unique copies.
Three copies are known which are distinguished by more interesting
irregularities, in each case unique. The copy in the Lenox Library in
New York includes a cancel duplicate of a leaf of 'As You Like It' (sheet
R of the comedies), and the title-page bears the date 1622 instead of
1623; but it is suspected that the figures were tampered with outside the
printing office. {308} Samuel Butler, successively headmaster of
Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, possessed a copy of the
First Folio in which a proof leaf of 'Hamlet' was bound up with the
corrected leaf. {309a}
The Sheldon copy.