copies of the book belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy
is known as the Sheldon Folio, having formed in the seventeenth century
part of the library of Ralph Sheldon of Weston Manor in the parish of
Long Compton, Warwickshire. {309b} In the Sheldon Folio the opening page
of 'Troilus and Cressida,' of which the recto or front is occupied by the
prologue and the verso or back by the opening lines of the text of the
play, is followed by a superfluous leaf. On the recto or front of the
unnecessary leaf {309c} are printed the concluding lines of 'Romeo and
Juliet' in place of the prologue to 'Troilus and Cressida.' At the back
or verso are the opening lines of 'Troilus and Cressida' repeated from
the preceding page. The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on
each page proves that the two are not taken from the same setting of the
type. At a later page in the Sheldon copy the concluding lines of 'Romeo
and Juliet' are duly reprinted at the close of the play, and on the verso
or back of the leaf, which supplies them in their right place, is the
opening passage, as in other copies, of 'Timon of Athens.' These curious
confusions attest that while the work was in course of composition the
printers or editors of the volume at one time intended to place 'Troilus
and Cressida,' with the prologue omitted, after 'Romeo and Juliet.' The
last page of 'Romeo and Juliet' is in all copies numbered 79, an obvious
misprint for 77; the first leaf of 'Troilus' is paged 78; the second and
third pages of 'Troilus' are numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless
suddenly determined while the volume was in the press to transfer
'Troilus and Cressida' to the head of the tragedies from a place near the
end, but the numbers on the opening pages which indicated its first
position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the extensive typographical
corrections that were required by the play's change of position, its
remaining pages were allowed to go forth unnumbered. {310}
Estimated number of extant copies.
It is difficult to estimate how many copies survive of the First Folio,
which is intrinsically the most valuable volume in the whole range of
English literature, and extrinsically is only exceeded in value by some
half-dozen volumes of far earlier date and of exceptional typographical
interest. It seems that about 140 copies have been traced within the
past century. Of these fewer than twenty are in a perfect state, that
is, with the portrait _printed_ (_not inlaid_) _on_ the title-page, and
the flyleaf facing it, with all the pages succeeding it, intact and
uninjured. (The flyleaf contains Ben Jonson's verses attesting the
truthfulness of the portrait.) Excellent copies in this enviable state
are in the Grenville Library at the British Museum, and in the libraries
of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Crawford, the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, and Mr. A. H. Huth. Of these probably the finest and
cleanest is the 'Daniel' copy belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
It measures 13 inches by 8.25, and was purchased by its present owner for
716 pounds 2s. at the sale of George Daniel's library in 1864. Some
twenty more copies are defective in the preliminary pages, but are
unimpaired in other respects. There remain about a hundred copies which
have sustained serious damage at various points.
Reprints of the First Folio.
A reprint of the First Folio unwarrantably purporting to be exact was
published in 1807-8. {311} The best reprint was issued in three parts by
Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, and 1864. The valuable photo-zincographic
reproduction undertaken by Sir Henry James, under the direction of Howard
Staunton, was issued in sixteen folio parts between February 1864 and
October 1865. A reduced photographic facsimile, too small to be legible,
appeared in 1876, with a preface by Halliwell-Phillipps.
The Second Folio. The Third Folio. The Fourth Folio.
The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by Thomas Cotes for Robert
Allot and William Aspley, each of whose names figures as publisher on
different copies. To Allot Blount had transferred, on November 16, 1630,
his rights in the sixteen plays which were first licensed for publication
in 1623. {312a} The Second Folio was reprinted from the First; a few
corrections were made in the text, but most of the changes were arbitrary
and needless. Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and Charles II's at the
British Museum. The 'Perkins Folio,' now in the Duke of Devonshire's
possession, in which John Payne Collier introduced forged emendations,
was a copy of that of 1632. {312b} The Third Folio--for the most part a
faithful reprint of the Second--was first published in 1663 by Peter
Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with the addition of seven plays,
six of which have no claim to admission among Shakespeare's works. 'Unto
this impression,' runs the title-page of 1664, 'is added seven Playes
never before printed in folio, viz.: Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The
London Prodigall. The History of Thomas Ld. Cromwell. Sir John
Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The
Tragedy of Locrine.' The six spurious pieces which open the volume were
attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare in his lifetime.
Fewer copies of the Third Folio are reputed to be extant than of the
Second or Fourth, owing to the destruction of many unsold impressions in
the Fire of London in 1666. The Fourth Folio, printed in 1685 'for H.
Herringman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,' reprints the folio
of 1664 without change except in the way of modernising the spelling; it
repeats the spurious pieces.
Eighteenth-century editors.
Since 1685 some two hundred independent editions of the collected works
have been published in Great Britain and Ireland, and many thousand
editions of separate plays. The eighteenth-century editors of the
collected works endeavoured with varying degrees of success to purge the
text of the numerous incoherences of the folios, and to restore, where
good taste or good sense required it, the lost text of the contemporary
quartos. It is largely owing to a due co-ordination of the results of
the efforts of the eighteenth-century editors by their successors in the
present century that Shakespeare's work has become intelligible to
general readers unversed in textual criticism, and has won from them the
veneration that it merits. {314}
Nicholas Rowe, 1674-1718.
Nicholas Rowe, a popular dramatist of Queen Anne's reign, and poet
laureate to George I., was the first critical editor of Shakespeare. He
produced an edition of his plays in six octavo volumes in 1709. A new
edition in eight volumes followed in 1714, and another hand added a ninth
volume which included the poems. Rowe prefixed a valuable life of the
poet embodying traditions which were in danger of perishing without a
record. His text followed that of the Fourth Folio. The plays were
printed in the same order, except that he transferred the spurious pieces
from the beginning to the end. Rowe did not compare his text with that
of the First Folio or of the quartos, but in the case of 'Romeo and
Juliet' he met with an early quarto while his edition was passing through
the press, and inserted at the end of the play the prologue which is met
with only in the quartos. He made a few happy emendations, some of which
coincide accidentally with the readings of the First Folio; but his text
is deformed by many palpable errors. His practical experience as a
playwright induced him, however, to prefix for the first time a list of
_dramatis personae_ to each play, to divide and number acts and scenes on
rational principles, and to mark the entrances and exits of the
characters. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar he corrected and
modernised.
Alexander Pope, 1688-1744.
The poet Pope was Shakespeare's second editor. His edition in six quarto
volumes was completed in 1725. The poems, edited by Dr. George Sewell,
with an essay on the rise and progress of the stage, and a glossary,
appeared in a seventh volume. Pope had few qualifications for the task,
and the venture was a commercial failure. In his preface Pope, while he
fully recognised Shakespeare's native genius, deemed his achievement
deficient in artistic quality. Pope claimed to have collated the text of
the Fourth Folio with that of all preceding editions, and although his
work indicates that he had access to the First Folio and some of the
quartos, it is clear that his text was based on that of Rowe. His
innovations are numerous, and are derived from 'his private sense and
conjecture,' but they are often plausible and ingenious. He was the
first to indicate the place of each new scene, and he improved on Rowe's
subdivision of the scenes. A second edition of Pope's version in ten
duodecimo volumes appeared in 1728 with Sewell's name on the title-page
as well as Pope's. There were few alterations in the text, though a
preliminary table supplied a list of twenty-eight quartos. Other
editions followed in 1735 and 1768. The last was printed at Garrick's
suggestion at Birmingham from Baskerville's types.
Lewis Theobald, 1688-1744.
Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who, although
contemptible as a writer of original verse and prose, proved himself the
most inspired of all the textual critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely
avenged himself on his censor by holding him up to ridicule as the hero
of the 'Dunciad.' Theobald first displayed his critical skill in 1726 in
a volume which deserves to rank as a classic in English literature. The
title runs 'Shakespeare Restored, or a specimen of the many errors as
well committed as unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this poet,
designed not only to correct the said edition but to restore the true
reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet publish'd.' There at
page 137 appears Theobald's great emendation in Shakespeare's account of
Falstaff's death (Henry V, II. iii. 17): 'His nose was as sharp as a pen
and a' babbled of green fields,' in place of the reading in the old
copies, 'His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields.' In
1733 Theobald brought out his edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes.
In 1740 it reached a second issue. A third edition was published in
1752. Others are dated 1772 and 1773. It is stated that 12,860 copies
in all were sold. Theobald made the First Folio the basis of his text,
although he failed to adopt all the correct readings of that version, but
over 300 corrections or emendations which he made in his edition have
become part and parcel of the authorised canon. Theobald's principles of
textual criticism were as enlightened as his practice was triumphant. 'I
ever labour,' he wrote to Warburton, 'to make the smallest deviation that
I possibly can from the text; never to alter at all where I can by any
means explain a passage with sense; nor ever by any emendation to make
the author better when it is probable the text came from his own hands.'
Theobald has every right to the title of the Porson of Shakespearean
criticism. {317a} The following are favourable specimens of his insight.
In 'Macbeth' (I. vii. 6) for 'this bank and school of time,' he
substituted the familiar 'bank and shoal of time.' In 'Antony and
Cleopatra' the old copies (v. ii. 87) made Cleopatra say of Antony:
For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an Anthony it was
That grew the more by reaping.
For the gibberish 'an Anthony it was,' Theobald read 'an autumn 'twas,'
and thus gave the lines true point and poetry. A third notable instance,
somewhat more recondite, is found in 'Coriolanus' (II. i. 59-60) where
Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio version 'what harm can your
besom conspectuities [_i.e._ vision or eyes] glean out of this
character?' Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet 'besom' by
'bisson' (_i.e._ purblind), a recognised Elizabethan word which
Shakespeare had already employed in 'Hamlet' (II. ii. 529). {317b}
Sir Thomas Hanmer, 1677-1746.
The fourth editor was Sir Thomas Hammer, a country gentleman without much
literary culture, but possessing a large measure of mother wit. He was
speaker in the House of Commons for a few months in 1714, and retiring
soon afterwards from public life devoted his leisure to a thorough-going
scrutiny of Shakespeare's plays. His edition, which was the earliest to
pretend to typographical beauty, was printed at the Oxford University
Press in 1744 in six quarto volumes. It contained a number of good
engravings by Gravelot after designs by Francis Hayman, and was long
highly valued by book collectors. No editor's name was given. In
forming his text, Hanmer depended exclusively on his own ingenuity. He
made no recourse to the old copies. The result was a mass of
common-sense emendations, some of which have been permanently accepted.
{318} Hanmer's edition was reprinted in 1770-1.
Bishop Warburton, 1698-1779.
In 1747 Bishop Warburton produced a revised version of Pope's edition in
eight volumes. Warburton was hardly better qualified for the task than
Pope, and such improvements as he introduced are mainly borrowed from
Theobald and Hanmer. On both these critics he arrogantly and unjustly
heaped abuse in his preface. The Bishop was consequently criticised with
appropriate severity for his pretentious incompetence by many writers;
among them, by Thomas Edwards, whose 'Supplement to Warburton's Edition
of Shakespeare' first appeared in 1747, and, having been renamed 'The
Canons of Criticism' next year in the third edition, passed through as
many as seven editions by 1765.
Dr. Johnson, 1709-1783.
Dr. Johnson, the sixth editor, completed his edition in eight volumes in
1765, and a second issue followed three years later. Although he made
some independent collation of the quartos, his textual labours were
slight, and his verbal notes show little close knowledge of sixteenth and
seventeenth century literature. But in his preface and elsewhere he
displays a genuine, if occasionally sluggish, sense of Shakespeare's
greatness, and his massive sagacity enabled him to indicate convincingly
Shakespeare's triumphs of characterisation.
Edward Capell, 1713-1781.
The seventh editor, Edward Capell, advanced on his predecessors in many
respects. He was a clumsy writer, and Johnson declared, with some
justice, that he 'gabbled monstrously,' but his collation of the quartos
and the First and Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and
scholarly methods than those of any of his predecessors not excepting
Theobald. His industry was untiring, and he is said to have transcribed
the whole of Shakespeare ten times. Capell's edition appeared in ten
small octavo volumes in 1768. He showed himself well versed in
Elizabethan literature in a volume of notes which appeared in 1774, and
in three further volumes, entitled 'Notes, Various Readings, and the
School of Shakespeare,' which were not published till 1783, two years
after his death. The last volume, 'The School of Shakespeare,' consisted
of 'authentic extracts from divers English books that were in print in
that author's time,' to which was appended 'Notitia Dramatica; or, Tables
of Ancient Plays (from their beginning to the Restoration of Charles
II).'
George Steevens, 1736-1800.
George Steevens, whose saturnine humour involved him in a lifelong series
of literary quarrels with rival students of Shakespeare, made invaluable
contributions to Shakespearean study. In 1766 he reprinted twenty of the
plays from the quartos. Soon afterwards he revised Johnson's edition
without much assistance from the Doctor, and his revision, which embodied
numerous improvements, appeared in ten volumes in 1773. It was long
regarded as the standard version. Steevens's antiquarian knowledge alike
of Elizabethan history and literature was greater than that of any
previous editor; his citations of parallel passages from the writings of
Shakespeare's contemporaries, in elucidation of obscure words and
phrases, have not been exceeded in number or excelled in aptness by any
of his successors. All commentators of recent times are more deeply
indebted in this department of their labours to Steevens than to any
other critic. But he lacked taste as well as temper, and excluded from
his edition Shakespeare's sonnets and poems, because, he wrote, 'the
strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel
readers into their service.' {320} The second edition of Johnson and
Steevens's version appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third edition,
published in ten volumes in 1785, was revised by Steevens's friend, Isaac
Reed (1742-1807), a scholar of his own type. The fourth and last
edition, published in Steevens's lifetime, was prepared by himself in
fifteen volumes in 1793. As he grew older, he made some reckless changes
in the text, chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying those
engaged in the same field. With a malignity that was not without humour,
he supplied, too, many obscene notes to coarse expressions, and he
pretended that he owed his indecencies to one or other of two highly
respectable clergymen, Richard Amner and John Collins, whose surnames
were in each instance appended. He had known and quarrelled with both.
Such proofs of his perversity justified the title which Gifford applied
to him of 'the Puck of Commentators.'
Edmund Malone, 1741-1812.
Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit and incisive style, was a
laborious and amiable archaeologist, without much ear for poetry or
delicate literary taste. He threw abundance of new light on
Shakespeare's biography, and on the chronology and sources of his works,
while his researches into the beginnings of the English stage added a new
chapter of first-rate importance to English literary history. To Malone
is due the first rational 'attempt to ascertain the order in which the
plays attributed to Shakespeare were written.' His earliest results on
the topic were contributed to Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years
later he published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two volumes
containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, with reprints of Arthur
Brooke's 'Romeus and Juliet,' Shakespeare's Poems, and the plays falsely
ascribed to him in the Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel with Steevens
followed, and was never closed. In 1787 Malone issued 'A Dissertation on
the Three Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to show that those plays were
not originally written by Shakespeare. In 1790 appeared his edition of
Shakespeare in ten volumes, the first in two parts.
Variorum editions.
What is known among booksellers as the 'First Variorum' edition of
Shakespeare was prepared by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed, after
Steevens's death. It was based on a copy of Steevens's work of 1793,
which had been enriched with numerous manuscript additions, and it
embodied the published notes and prefaces of preceding editors. It was
published in twenty-one volumes in 1803. The 'Second Variorum' edition,
which was mainly a reprint of the first, was published in twenty-one
volumes in 1813. The 'Third Variorum' was prepared for the press by
James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's biographer. It was
based on Malone's edition of 1790, but included massive accumulations of
notes left in manuscript by Malone at his death. Malone had been long
engaged on a revision of his edition, but died in 1812, before it was
completed. Boswell's 'Malone,' as the new work is often called, appeared
in twenty-one volumes in 1821. It is the most valuable of all collective
editions of Shakespeare's works, but the three volumes of preliminary
essays on Shakespeare's biography and writings, and the illustrative
notes brought together in the final volume, are confusedly arranged and
are unindexed; many of the essays and notes break off abruptly at the
point at which they were left at Malone's death. A new 'Variorum'
edition, on an exhaustive scale, was undertaken by Mr. H. Howard Furness
of Philadelphia, and eleven volumes have appeared since 1871 ('Romeo and
Juliet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 2 vols., 'King Lear,' 'Othello,' 'Merchant
of Venice,' 'As You Like It,' 'Tempest,' 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and
'Winter's Tale').
Nineteenth-century editors.
Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared collective editions of
Shakespeare's work with original annotations those who have most
successfully pursued the great traditions of the eighteenth century are
Alexander Dyce, Howard Staunton, Nikolaus Delius, and the Cambridge
editors William George Clark (1821-1878) and Dr. Aldis Wright.
Alexander Dyce, 1798-1869. Howard Staunton, 1810-1874. The Cambridge
edition, 1863-6.
Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as Steevens in Elizabethan
literature, and especially in the drama of the period, and his edition of
Shakespeare in nine volumes, which was first published in 1857, has many
new and valuable illustrative notes and a few good textual emendations,
as well as a useful glossary; but Dyce's annotations are not always
adequate, and often tantalise the reader by their brevity. Howard
Staunton's edition first appeared in three volumes between 1868 and 1870.
He also was well read in contemporary literature and was an acute textual
critic. His introductions bring together much interesting stage history.
Nikolaus Delius's edition was issued at Elberfeld in seven volumes
between 1854 and 1861. Delius's text is formed on sound critical
principles and is to be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two
volumes appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which first appeared in
nine volumes between 1863 and 1866, exhaustively notes the textual
variations of all preceding editions, and supplies the best and fullest
_apparatus criticus_. (Of new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine
volumes, and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.)
Other nineteenth-century editions.
Other editors of the complete works of Shakespeare of the nineteenth
century whose labours, although of some value, present fewer distinctive
characteristics are:--William Harness (1825, 8 vols.); Samuel Weller
Singer (1826, 10 vols., printed at the Chiswick Press for William
Pickering, illustrated by Stothard and others; reissued in 1856 with
essays by William Watkiss Lloyd); Charles Knight, with discursive notes
and pictorial illustrations by F. W. Fairholt and others ('Pictorial
edition,' 8 vols., including biography and the doubtful plays, 1838-43,
often reissued under different designations); Bryan Waller Procter,
_i.e._ Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.); John Payne Collier (1841-4, 8
vols.; another edition, 8 vols., privately printed, 1878, 4to); Samuel
Phelps, the actor (1852-4, 2 vols.; another edition, 1882-4); J. O.
Halliwell (1853-61, 15 vols. folio, with an encyclopaedic collection of
annotations of earlier editors and pictorial illustrations); Richard
Grant White (Boston, U.S.A., 1857-65, 12 vols.); W. J. Rolfe (New York,
1871-96, 40 vols.); the Rev. H. N. Hudson (the Harvard edition, Boston,
1881, 20 vols.) The latest complete annotated editions published in this
country are 'The Henry Irving Shakespeare,' edited by F. A. Marshall and
others--especially useful for notes on stage history (8 vols.
1888-90)--and 'The Temple Shakespeare,' concisely edited by Mr. Israel
Gollancz (38 vols. 12mo, 1894-6).
Of one-volume editions of the unannotated text, the best are the Globe,
edited by W. G. Clark and Dr. Aldis Wright (1864, and constantly
reprinted--since 1891 with a new and useful glossary); the Leopold (1876,
from the text of Delius, with preface by Dr. Furnivall); and the Oxford,
edited by Mr. W. J. Craig (1894).
XX--POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION
Shakespeare defied at every stage in his career the laws of the classical
drama. He rode roughshod over the unities of time, place, and action.
There were critics in his day who zealously championed the ancient rules,
and viewed with distrust any infringement of them. But the force of
Shakespeare's genius--its revelation of new methods of dramatic art--was
not lost on the lovers of the ancient ways; and even those who, to
assuage their consciences, entered a formal protest against his
innovations, soon swelled the chorus of praise with which his work was
welcomed by contemporary playgoers, cultured and uncultured alike. The
unauthorised publishers of 'Troilus and Cressida' in 1608 faithfully
echoed public opinion when they prefaced the work with the note: 'This
author's comedies are so framed to the life that they serve for the most
common commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity
and power of wit that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his
comedies. . . . So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies
that they seem for their height of pleasure to be born in the sea that
brought forth Venus.'
Ben Jonson's tribute.
Anticipating the final verdict, the editors of the First Folio wrote,
seven years after Shakespeare's death: 'These plays have had their trial
already and stood out all appeals.' {327a} Ben Jonson, the staunchest
champion of classical canons, noted that Shakespeare 'wanted art,' but he
allowed him, in verses prefixed to the First Folio, the first place among
all dramatists, including those of Greece and Rome, and claimed that all
Europe owed him homage:
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes [_i.e._ stages] of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time.
In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 'the great heir of
fame:'