These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of
Shakespeare than many suspect. "Who knows," exclaimed the acute
Gifford, "whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in
the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon
mere _errors of the press_?" Not long after this was said, an actual
experiment of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person,
during the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found
his most constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience
of the blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we
may add also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text.
His new readings were accompanied by an explanation of those
mechanical accidents which had caused these particular errata. The
practical printer mortified the haughty commentator by several
felicitous and obvious emendations. The grave brotherhood of
black-letter looked askance on such humble ingenuity, and turned
against the simple printer. Unluckily for ZACHARY JACKSON, he had the
temerity, in the flush of success, of abandoning his type-work to err
in "the dalliance of fancy" into an ambitious Commentary of "seven
hundred passages," when seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The
commentating printer therefore met with the fate of the immortalised
cobbler who ventured to criticise beyond the right measure of his
last.
* So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the
persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a
Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by
the French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary
stalls.
[12] Collier's "Poetical Decameron," i. 52. STEEVENS thought _The
Yorkshire Tragedy_ to be Shakespearian; and the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE,
struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that "it
contains passages worthy of his pen."--_Dyce's Mem. of Shakespeare_,
xxxi.
[13] That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is
confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he
has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the
volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is
preserved, it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.
[14] Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics;
when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage in _Richard the
Third_ which displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds--"_Other stuff of
this sort_ may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet
used not much license in departing from the truth of history." Pye,
in his "Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle," is indignant at the
language of Milton. He takes the term "stuff" in its modern
depreciating sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely
signified _matter_. Pye exclaims--"Could Milton have imagined that
_the stuff_ of Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to 'Comus'
and the 'Samson Agonistes?'"--212.
[15] I derive my knowledge from the "Roscius Anglicanus" of DOWNES,
the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate;
but the edition by F. WALDRON, 1784, is an addition to our literary
history. Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret
history. Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious
literary antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement
impeded his proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that
critic was busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute
emendations.
By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen
stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of
Jonson, and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays
there are _five_ of Jonson, and but _one_ of Shakespeare and that
_Titus Andronicus_.
[16] Butler's "Genuine Remains," ii. 494.
[17] _Rollo, King and no King_, and _The Maid's Tragedy_.
[18] We may listen to Pope:--S. "Rymer is a learned and strict
critic!"--P. "Ay, that's exactly his character. He is generally
right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular
plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we
ever had."--Spence's "Anecdotes," 172.
[19] "Edinburgh Review," Sept. 1831.
[20] The fate of Rymer's Tragedy has been illustrated by the
inimitable humour of Addison in No. 592 of "The Spectator."
Describing different theatrical properties, he says--"They are
provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed,
are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and
shredded for that use. Mr. Rymer's _Edgar_ is to fall in snow at the
next acting of _King Lear_, in order to heighten, or rather to
alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince, and to serve by
way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written
against."
[21] On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas of
_Cato_, _The Conscious Lovers_, and Cibber's and Farquhar's plays are
simply announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying
epithets, which show the degree of their celebrity according, at
least, to the director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the
necessity he was under to remind the public, who were not familiar
with the titles of these old plays. Thus appear "_The Silent Woman_,
a Comedy by the _famous_ Ben Jonson;" "_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_,
written by the _immortal_ Shakespeare;" "_The Soldier's Fortune_,
written by the late _ingenious_ Mr. Otway." Though Shakespeare bears
away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that his
_immortality_--here positively assigned to him--was owing to the
honour of the recent edition by Rowe.
In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of
Shakespeare for the variety of their _historical subjects_. On one of
these bills _Richard the Third_ is described as "containing the
distresses of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward
the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of
Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of
Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York
and Lancaster; with many other true historical passages."
[22] "Tatler"--42.
[23] "Spectator"--39, 285.
[24] V. iv. 186.
[25] Pope said that "it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play
now, professedly in Shakespeare's style, that is, the style of a bad
age!" He relished as little Milton's "high style," as he called it.
"The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his
subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it
does." Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days
of Pope, when the "Gothic model" was proscribed by such high
authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the
stately but classical "Ferrex and Porrex," and occasioned Spence to
reprint it;--a tragedy in the unimpassioned style and short
breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.
[26] COXETER, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating
the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his
scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion
may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he
appeals to the "Gorboduc" which Spence had published by the desire of
Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of "Old Plays," Dodsley,
had used the spurious edition! Coxeter's judgment was prophetic in
the present instance. "Dodsley's Collection" turned out to be a
chance "medley;" unskilled in the language and the literature and the
choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, "by the assistance of a
little common sense set a great number of these passages right;" that
is, the dramatist of the dull "Cleone" brought down the ancient
genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was
spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the
reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.
[27] A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first
edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as
the notes--particularly those which Theobald describes as "rather
verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation." The
candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the
second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving
the _costume_ or dress of the characters at the time.
[28] This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged
on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the
decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their
warerooms, open for the sale of what are called "their effects;" but
which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed "the
ineffectual effects." At the sale of "the effects" of Tonson, the
great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope's
"Shakespeare," in six volumes quarto, for which the original
subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings
only per set.--"Gent. Mag.," lvii. 76.
[29] See "Quarrels of Authors."
[30] Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to
censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous
in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the
Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our "monster-poet" carries away the palm.
The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare
"Semiramis" to that "monster of a tragedy"--"Hamlet," the Ghost there
acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and
revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of
Ninus appears in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to
somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.--"Cours de
Litterature."
[31] Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied
information, has been alphabetically arranged in "A Glossary, or
Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs,
Proverbs, &c., which have required illustration in the _works of
English Authors_, particularly _Shakespeare and his Contemporaries_,"
by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is
useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a
substitute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an
easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.
[32] Monsieur VILLEMAIN, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our
English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed
a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article on SHAKESPEARE
in the "Biographie Universelle." The perplexities of his taste, and
the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but
it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict
candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson's preference of
Shakespeare's comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he
adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly
right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always
delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on
the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of
Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners.
Our critic has formed no conception of the poet's ideal standard and
universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply
among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic
characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which
perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the
enthusiastic critic who has decided that MOLIERE only gave "a prosaic
copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile
imitator." I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on
system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the
French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Moliere is as truly an
original genius as any dramatist of any age.
[33] This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which
had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire's
entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a
foreigner's pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of
its source. "Voltaire, like the French in general," said Dr. Young,
"showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest
contempt for us inwardly." He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in
English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set
himself very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to
censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire
could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!--_Spence._
Had Voltaire accepted the doctor's verbal corrections, or the
opinions suggested by him, something else than the "laughing in the
face" had been recollected.
[34] Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his
involuntary and his voluntary blunders:--
In _Hamlet_, when one sentinel inquires of the other--"Have you had
quiet guard?" he is answered--"Not a mouse stirring!" which Voltaire
translates literally--"Pas un souris qui trotte!" How different is
the same circumstance described by Racine--"Tout dort, et l'armee, et
le vents, et Neptune!" A verse Kaimes had condemned as mere bombast!
To every people who had not associated with the general
night-stillness of a castle the movement of a mouse, this description
would appear ludicrously puerile; while, with us, the familiar idiom
is most happily appropriate to the speaker; but this natural language
no foreigner can acquire by study or reflection; we imbibe our idioms
as we did the milk of the nurse's breast.
In _Julius Caesar_, when Voltaire translates Caesar's reply to
Metellus, who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of
his brother's banishment, the Caeesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical
expressions. He would not yield to
"That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,
Low-crooked curt'sies, and base _spaniel-fawning_.
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
_I'd spurn thee like a cur out of my way_."
This natural style was doubtless "trop familier" for the polished
Frenchman, and his version is malicious, and he delights to detail
every motion of a spaniel, even to the licking of the feet of his
master!--
"_Les airs d'un chien couchant_ peuvent toucher un sot;
Flatte, prie a genoux, et _leche-moi les pieds_--
Va, je te _rosserai_ comme un chien."
_Rosser_ can only be translated by so mean a phrase as "a sound
beating;" while to spurn is no ignoble action, and is used rather in
a poetical than familiar style.