LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 458.-26 FEBRUARY, 1853.

From the Athenæum.

Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakspeare's
Plays, from Early Manuscript Corrections in a
Copy of the Folio, 1632, in the Possession of
J. Payne Collier, Esq., F. S. A.; forming a
Supplemental Volume to the Works of Shaks-
peare by the same Editor, in Eight Volumes,

Octavo. Whittaker & Co.

Johnson

ourselves and printed in our last volume, pp. 142 and 171. From the first mention of the subject we saw the importance of many of the alterations received corroborated our opinion. The volume -and the numerous communications which we before us is one result of the attention thus excited. In it, Mr. Collier gives, by way of supplement to his edition of "Shakspeare's Works," about one thousand substantial emendations of Ir has been the good fortune of Mr. Payne Col- Shakspeare's text derived from his despised and lier during that study of Shakspeare's works for shabby old second folio; a book in some places half a century, to which he alludes at the close incomplete, and in others defiled with stains of of the preface of the book before us, to add con- wine and viler liquors," with the droppings of siderably to our little knowledge of the great candles, and the ashes of tobacco. dramatist. To him we are indebted for valuable The state of the text of Shakspeare has been illustrations of the personal history of Shak-long a well-known theme of regret. speare and also for much important information described the faults as "numerous and gross ;" respecting his contemporaries, and concerning the and asserted that they had "not only corrupted growth and progress of dramatic literature. We have now to thank him for certainly the most important addition to this branch of English literature that has been made by any one in our days. Personally, Mr. Collier, as he himself states, has really little to do with this result:-he has been merely the agent in bringing it about. The story of Mr. Collier's discovery is well known to our readers our columns having been made his medium for originally communicating it to the world, and also for illustrating its value by a number of examples of the new Shakspeare readings which it yielded. It may, nevertheless, be convenient to bring the facts, as they reappear in the now published volume, into direct juxtaposition with the comment which we have to bestow on them and on this book.

Early in 1849, Mr. Collier bought, at Mr. Rodd's, a dirty copy of the second folio edition of the "Works of Shakspeare," printed in 1632. It was full of manuscript notes-but he paid no attention to them. He bought the book, hoping (by means of it) to supply the imperfections of a better copy. It turned out that his new purchase did not answer his expectations. He repented of his bargain, and the book was laid aside-disregarded and out of favor.

many passages, perhaps beyond recovery, but had
brought others into suspicion which are only ob-
scured by obsolete phraseology, or by the writer's
Such was the way
unskilfulness and affectation."
in which too many of the critics of the last cen-
tury were accustomed to write about Shakspeare.
What they could in their own judgment amend by
conjecture-often most ridiculous and ignorant-
they altered without scruple. What they fancied
obsolete, they "illustrated," that is, they overlaid
it with quotations from contemporary literature,
which are too often, either mere wearisome proofs
of things which no one can deny, or accuinula-
tions of antiquarian pedantry the most contempti-
ble and absurd. What they could neither alter nor
"illustrate," they pronounced to be "unskilful-
ness and affectation."

Far be it from us to assert that the labors of

men like Rowe, Pope, Johnson, Warburton, and their successors down to our own days, were either valueless or ineffective. Considered as a body, much was done by them, although each one, taken individually, added comparatively little to the common stock. But still, after the lapse of two centuries, and the labors of successive generations of learned and distinguished men, we are obliged to admit, as was done by the earliest of After the lapse of about three years, Mr. Col- those who gave attention to the subject, that the lier had occasion to make a reference to the second text of Shakspeare is eminently and perversely corfolio. He took down the book in question from rupt. And yet, it is certainly true, that so marthe top shelf on which it had been put away; vellous is the power of Shakspeare over his reader's and then noticed, for the first time, that there was fancy and attention, that they who enjoy his inscribed on the cover "Thomas Perkins, his writings most are the least disturbed by these imBooke." There had been a Perkins a player-perfections. The true lover of Shakspeare defies could this be he? Inquiry was made, and it was the critics. With heart on fire, and interest found that the player's name was "Richard." excited to the highest pitch by the action before But attention, once directed to the book, went fur- him; enchanted by the magic of the scene, and ther; and "I then discovered," says Mr. Collier, thoroughly acquainted with the main bent and "to my surprise, that there was hardly a page which did not present, in a handwriting of the time, some emendations in the pointing, or in the text-while on most of them they were frequent, and on many numerous." Of emendations of all kinds there are not less in the whole volume than twenty thousand.

Complete examination followed; and then ensued the two papers on the subject addressed to 25

CCCCLVIII. LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXXVI.

purpose of the dialogue, he cannot give attention to minute questions of criticism. He laughs or weeps just as the Poet bids him undisturbed by imperfections which lash a Theobald into fury, and fill the pages of the twenty-one volumes of our Variorum edition with unparalleled antiquarian Still, we must, after all, admit, that often incomplete and often corrupt; * See Living Age, No. 414.

nonsense.

the text is

one

Another circumstance of considerable curiosity is, that alterations in words and stops occur in passages struck through with a view to curtailment. This seems to prove that the verbal or literary alterations were inade before those which may be termed the dramatic or scenic. Another circumstance which may point to a difference of time in making several of the alterations is, that some of them are made upon erasures.

and that, however little the rapt and excited | tony and Cleopatra-apparently with a view to reader may care about minute accuracy, to rescue shortening the plays for representation. This is a Shakspeare from the combined imbecilities which very important circumstance-and cannot, we have been fathered on him by short-hand writers, think, be explained in any probable way except printers, and antiquarian commentators, and give as having reference to representation. as his words as he really wrote them, is an object If, then, many of these alterations were made worthy of the ambition of literary men. It is be- with a direct view to the stage, it may fairly be cause we consider the book before us to be a real concluded that they were the work, not of a printer advance towards such a desirable end, that we or person desirous of putting the plays to a literwelcome it heartily. Men have acquired reputa-ary use, but of some manager or actor. tion by a single emendation of Shakspeare; learned editors have exceedingly plumed themselves upon a few successful hits; the best critics have done but little here we have a book that "at one fell swoop" knocks out a thousand errors, for the most part so palpable, when once pointed out, that no can deny their existence-and substitutes emendations so clear that we cannot hesitate to accept them. In our judgment this is a result which may well be esteemed fortunate and happy The question remains-whether, in making -a subject of congratulation to every one con- these alterations of so many different kinds, and cerned in it. some of them perhaps written at different periods, But, it will be asked, who is the great emen- the writer had access to any authority-or, dator before whose authority we are all to bow-whether he relied solely on his own critical sathe critic whose marginal scribblings are to be gacity and ingenuity, and occasionally merely accepted as a restoration of Shakspeare's language? guessed at arbitrary emendations. On this subThe question cannot be answered. There is some ject we think the evidence would have warranted reason to think that Mr. Rodd received the book what our northern neighbors would call "a .out. of Bedfordshire:" the notice which it will stronger deliverance" than is given by Mr. Colnow. attract will probably lead to some discovery lier. "I am inclined to think," he says, "that of the seller and of its previous history. Some the last [that the annotator merely guessed at bookseller. may be able to tell us of a sale of books arbitrary emendations] must have been the fact as in that county in the spring of 1849, in which regards some of his changes; and, so far, his sug-such a volume appeared. gestions are only to be taken as those of an indiThe internal evidence afforded by the emenda-vidual who lived, we may suppose, not very long tions themselves seems to point to the stage, and to indicate that they were made with some view to dramatic representation. Three facts bear especially upon this point-First: Hundreds of stage directions are inserted-many of them of very great minuteness-far more minute than ordinarily occurs in the printing of plays. For example; after

66

Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Hamlet is directed to "pause" after "Man delights not me," Rosenerantz is bidden to "smile." Others are of no less value, as exhibiting the way in which the poet's meaning is dependent on the proper performance of the business of the stage. Of this kind is a direction in the explanatory scene between Prospero and Miranda at the beginning of the Tempest. Prospero takes off his magic.garment," with the aid of his daughter, at the commencement of his explanation, Just at its close, when he says, " Now I arise," the corrector inserts the direction "Put on robe again." (Clothed in his mantle of power, which he had not needed during his disclosure of his previous history to Miranda, Prospero now exercises his authority by sending her to sleep, in order that he may confer with Ariel. The sudden somnolency which seizes Miranda during the disclosure of events of such vital interest is thus deprived of the strangeness which the critics, not having had the benefit of this stage direction, have properly found in it.

after the period when the dramas he elucidated were written, and who might have had intercourse with the actors of Shakspeare's day."

We cannot, of course, deny the possibility of conjecture in some cases; but when we consider the multitude of the alterations-their very great importance, far exceeding all that has been done in that way by the whole of the successive editors and emendators, from the days of Heminge and Condell to our own-when we consider also the overwhelming fact, that a whole omitted line, never before dreamt of as being wanting, has been supplied in at least nine different instanceswe cannot hesitate to infer that there must have been something more than mere conjecture-some authority from which they were derived. And if the incontestable facts lead us directly to an authority, how are we to limit it, or why should we hesitate to apply it universally? On what grounds may we infer that some of the corrections in a particular page are founded upon authority, and others are merely conjectural? The consideration of the nine omitted lines stirs up Mr. Collier to little greater boldness on the question of authority-but, after all, we do not think he goes the full length which the facts would warrant. The following is his conclusion:

:

To say nothing of words, sometimes two, three and four together, which are wanting in the folios, and are supplied in the manuscript, to the improvement both of meaning and measure, there are at least nine Secondly, those of the plays which in the pre-out. From what source could these have been dedifferent places where lines appear to have been left vious impression had been left undivided into acts rived, if not from some more perfect copies, or from and scenes are properly divided by the anno- more faithful recitation? However we may be willing to depreciate other emendations, and to maintain

tator.

And, thirdly, many passages not affecting the that they were only the results of bold but happy sense are struck out of all the plays, except An- speculation-the feliciter audentia of conjecture

how can we account for the recovery of nine distinct | Act iv. sc. 3. Madam, I pity much your grievances; lines, most exactly adapted to the situations where they are inserted, excepting upon the supposition that they proceeded from the pen of the Poet, and have been preserved by the curious accuracy of an individual, almost a contemporary, who, in some way, possessed the means of supplying them?

Act i. sc. 2. I have with such provision in mine art Act ii. sc. 1. Will you go, An heires?
So safely ordered that there is no soul-
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel.

Alteration. I have with such prevision in mine
art, &c.

The World! I speak of ours-the parvenuthe yester-born-the ball that has but been some five thousand eight hundred and fifty-two years a rolling. The Egyptian mummies buried three thousand years ago in the caves behind Medinet Abou, but now present amongst us in the British Museum, make Time a baby. In its face, Homer, with his paltry three thousand years of age, seems as juvenile as the veriest schoolboy who ever spouted Terence in the Westminster Dormitory. The Chinamen, the Hindoos, nay, the old Egyp tians even-Osiris, Cheops, Mummy, wheat and all-would make Time smile with pity, if the mouth of Time were not immovable like himself.

One thousand eight hundred and fifty-two years, only, have been numbered with the dead since the Shepherds saw the Star in the East. The lives of thirty-eight men, each living an average life of fifty years, would take us back to Solomon's temple in all its glory-to the pool of Bethesda, the feast by the mountain, and the Sunday cornfield. More; each century can boast of some patriarch, some centenarian, some old Parr, in some quarter or other of the globe, Acting on this calculation, we should want but the lives of eighteen men and three-quarters, to reach to more than the time of Herod of Galilee, and Caiaphas the high priest.

These are but a sample. We think we may challenge any one to look at the alterations which they suggest, and not at once perceive that they recommend themselves to adoption by that surest of all criticisms, the judgment of common sense. Like all other truths, when once put before us we are astonished how these things could so long have missed our grasp. The dogmatism of criticism and the sagacity of conjectural emendation are Talk not then of your antiquity. The lives of humbled by an anonymous corrector who at once four fifty years' men, place within our grasp Oliver gathers a whole harvest off a field which has been Cromwell in semi-sovereignty at Whitehall, Blake reaped and gleaned by many of the finest intellects scouring the seas for Dutchmen, Prince Rupert of the last two centuries. In justice to them, as buccaneering, the " young man" Charles Stuart well as on many other grounds, we must think "hard up" at the Hague, entreating the Queen that this emendator had access to an authority of Hungary to prick him down corantos and send which they and we have not. With all the advan-him a fiddler. Seven men of the like age, flaunt Peter the Hermit's cross in our eyes; pour the tages and appliances which nearness to the author and to the first representation of his works may the crafty Greeks of Byzantium against the rude refuse of Europe on the hot shores of Syria; pit have given him over ourselves, it is to us an in-half-bandit Latins; chorus in our ears the Crusacredible supposition that any man should have done so infinitely more than all others put together, Hierosolyma est perdita!" Not if he had depended solely on the same power of quite twenty half-century men, and we shall be at conjecture which those others possessed. Hastings, where, in years yet to come, the Abbey Taking, in conjunction with this circumstance, the facts of Battle is to be built-by the side of Harold the which obviously connect the emendation with last Saxon king-of Guillaume Taillefer--of Wilstage-purposes-we are of opinion, that the inter-liam of Normandy, erst called the Bastard, but nal evidence, as a whole, leads to the conclusion that the book in question was amended from some copy used by the prompter or manager of a theatre in which these plays were performed somewhere about 1632. If this conclusion be correctand to us it is irresistible-we have here, in all probability, a genuine restoration of Shakspeare's language in at least a thousand places in which he has been hitherto misunderstood.

From Household Words.

WHAT IS ANTIQUITY? "WHAT do you call Antiquity?" the Titans might ask, not in any way sneeringly but in a tone of good-humored banter. "Where are your remote ages-your land-marks of the days of old? Do you know that from the first day that you were permitted to call CHRISTMAS DAY, to the end of that year which expired on the thirty-first of December last, there have only elapsed nine hundred and odd million revolutions of the minute hand on your watch? And do you call that antiquity? Are these few minutes to count for anything considerable among the accumulated ages of the World?"

ders' war-cry,

66

soon to bear the prouder soubriquet of Conqueror.

I ever had one, which is doubtful to Your HighAntiquity! I might have had a grandfather (if ness), who might have fought at Preston Pans. My great-grandfather might have beheaded Charles talked scandal about Queen Elizabeth, when Queen the First. My great-great-grandfather might have Elizabeth was alive to cut his head off for daring to talk it-or for daring to have such a thing as a head about him, if so her royal humor ran.

ELEVATED ADDRESS TO MR. GLADSTONE, at the Carlton Club.-The exact words that were addressed to Mr. Gladstone at the Carlton Club the other evening by a gallant colonel and certain other gentlemen, after their wine, have not been reported by any of our contemporaries. We believe that the following is a tolerably correct version of the terms in which they addressed the right honorable gentleman-speaking simultaneously :

old fella! Mist' Glass-n-sir? J'up, old Gladst❜n !" "I-sh-say, Glsh-adstone-I sh-h-hs-ay! Glad-son,

Tellyowash is! Younobuisn'ss heeaw. Younorighta b'longta Conshawive clab'tall. Y'ara Rackle Hummug! Oughtobe pishowtowinda in dwectionofawmclab. Dashapwoppaplace for shadam Demoquarric fella as you."-Punch.