Where the Folios are all obviously wrong, and the Quartos also fail us,
we have introduced into the text several conjectural emendations;
especially we have often had recourse to Theobald's ingenuity. But it
must be confessed that a study of errors detracts very much from the
apparent certainty of conjectures, the causelessness of the blunders
warning us off the hope of restoring, by general principles or by
discovery of causes of error.
For example: in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, I. 1,
Or else it stood upon the choice of merit,
the reading of the Folios, is certainly wrong; but if we compare the
true reading preserved in the Quartos, 'the choice of friends,' we can
perceive no way to account for the change of 'friends' to 'merit,' by
which we might have retraced the error from 'merit' to 'friends.'
Nothing like the 'ductus literarum,' or attraction of the eye to a
neighbouring word, can be alleged here.
Hence though we have admitted conjectures sometimes, we have not done so
as often as perhaps will be expected. For, in the first place, we admit
none because we think it better rhythm or grammar or sense, unless we
feel sure that the reading of the Folio is altogether impossible. In the
second place, the conjecture must appear to us to be the only probable
one. If the defect can be made good in more ways than one equally
plausible, or, at least, equally possible, we have registered but not
adopted these improvements, and the reader is intended to make his own
selection out of the notes.
For example, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, II. 3. 80, we have assumed
Mr Dyce's conjecture, 'Cried I aim?' to be the only satisfactory reading
of a passage decidedly wrong; but in the same play, IV. 1. 63, 'Woman,
art thou lunaties?' as the error may equally possibly be evaded by
reading 'lunacies' with Rowe, and 'lunatics' with Capell, we have
retained the error.
The well-known canon of criticism, that of two readings 'ceteris
paribus' the more difficult is to be preferred, is not always to be
applied in comparing the readings of the Folios. For very frequently an
anomaly which would have been plausible on account of its apparent
archaism proves to be more archaic than Shakespeare, if the earlier
Quartos give the language of Shakespeare with more correctness. Ex.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, III. 2: 'Scorn and derision never come in
tears' Qq; 'comes' Ff; and in the same play, IV. 1: 'O how mine eyes do
loath' Q1, altered to 'doth loath' in Q2 F1, and restored, evidently by
a grammatical reviser, to 'do loath' in F2 F3 F4. Again, I. 1: 'what all
but he do know,' Qq, is altered to 'doth know' in Ff.
This last error points to a very common anomaly in grammar; one which
seems almost to have become a rule, or, at any rate, a license in
Shakespeare's own time, that a verb shall agree in number with the
nominative intervening between the true governing noun and the verb.