So that Shakespeare in working over the tragedy, plainly retained both the idea and the word of his first conception. KING LEAR.-ACT I. SCENE 4. "Lear.--Hear, nature, hear! dear goddess hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful." "Two words added to the malediction of Lear," says the editor, "serve to complete a line." "Hear nature, hear! dear goddess hear a father!" They do serve to complete a line of five feet; but they serve for nothing else, except to weaken the invocation by adding to it, and to destroy a fine dramatic effect by filling up a pause. "The figures placed against these lines by the corrector, indicate that their order should be reversed. If this is done, it destroys the emendation in Mr. Collier's folio, where the wolf is made to howl, 'necessity's sharp pinch.""-P. 38. It is said that there is nothing without its use; and here at last appears a use to which Mr. Collier's folio can be put. The fear of destroying one villainous emendation, can deter us from perpetrating another. Truly nothing is made in vain! "Sweet are the uses of adversity." ACT III. SCENE 7. "Gloster-The sea with such a storm as his bare head In hell black night endured, would have buoy'd up And quenched the stilled fires." The corrector for "buoy'd up" reads "boil'd up," which is certainly a very clever guess; and we confess that there seems good reason for taking the suggestion into consideration. The change, for a wonder, is not from poetry to prose: the idea of the sea boiling up to and quenching the stars being quite in Shakespeare's bold manner, and not unlike that in the lines in the Tempest: "The sky it seems would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek, Dashes the fire out." or that in this passage in Pericles : "But sea room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not." Is it quite sense to make the sea at once buoy up and quench "the stilled fires"? Does not the quenching them, the putting them out of existence, preclude altogether the idea of buoying them up? -for buoying is not a momentary act, but is in its essence, more or less prolonged. And is it at all natural to connect the idea of a violent storm at sea with that of the buoying power of the angry waters? One thing is certain,-that if the word be not "buoy'd," it must be boil'd. The mistake of printing one for the other might be easily made. OTHELLO.-ACT IV. SCENE 2. "Desdemona.-If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love, Either in discourse of thought, or actual deed; &c. plainer and stronger, if we read with "The line," says the editor, "is certainly Pope and the corrector, 'Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed!'" Beyond a question; and let us also, in "A beast that wants discourse of reason read, "A beast that wants discourse or reason," &c. SCENE 8. "Desdemona's song is described as an 'old thing;' this the corrector alters to 'odd thing.' 'Mo women' and 'mo men' in the last line of the song are changed to 'no women' and 'no men.'-P. 46." Hamlet again comes to our aid, and in the words of the Ghost we exclaim, "O horrible! O horrible! most horrible !" ACT V. SOENE 2. "Othello.-Put out the light, and then, put out the light! If I quench thee, thou flaming minister," &c. "It is possible," says the editor, "that the line should read,” "Put out the light, and then put out thy light!" A legal Shakesperian writes to us upon this passage, that he thinks that Othello designed to damage 'the ancient lights' of Desdemona; which we were at loss to understand, until Yankee Sullivan, having fallen in with the fashion of Shakesperian annotation, informed us, that Othello evidently meant to shut up her peepers :' while a nautical friend of his reads, "Put out the light, or rather douse the glim!" All of which, together with the emendation of the corrector, we commend to the serious consideration of the next editor of Shakespeare. "The corrector substitutes 'Egyptian' for 'base Judean. "" 'Like the Egyptian, threw a pearl away.' At the bottom of the page he writes this note: Alluding to the story of the Egyptian thief. It will be remembered that a reference to this story occurs in the Twelfth Night. "Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, In the names of Shaeffer, Guttenberg and Dr. Faustus, how could Egyptian have been mistaken for "base Indian," or "base Judean?" The allusion to throwing away a pearl, and to the baseness and the tribe of the reckless thrower, make it plain to us that the poet had in his mind the murder of Marianne by Herod, as many others have supposed before us; but whether this opinion be correct or not, Egyptian is as much out of the question as Kamschatkan or Californian. We are aware that we have devoted more attention to these emendations than their intrinsic importance justifies; but as we went over them, they seemed to offer eligible opportunities to show into what absurdities these attempts to mend the authentic text of Shakespeare are almost sure to lead those who make them. If we have done this effectually, our time and that of our readers has not been thown away. MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO OF 1632. It may interest our readers to know that since the appearance of our last article upon Mr. Collier's folio, we have, by the kindness of Mr. Collier and through the courtesy of the Earl of Ellesmere, had the opportunity of examining impressions of some private plates of facsimiles from several pages of that volume. They contain brief extracts from seventeen plays: Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Henry V., Richard III., Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. A close examination of these facsimiles, has furnished us with cumulative evidence in favor of the conclusions to which we had previously arrived. In our article of October last we remarked, "The corrections appear in various colored inks, as Mr. Collier admits, and, as we shall presently see, in the writing of various hands." Mr. Collier makes this admission on p. viii. of the Introduction to his Notes and Emendations, where he says: "The ink was of various shades, differing sometimes on the same page," &c. That the emendations were in various hands, we saw, it will be remembered from a comparison of the several emendations upon the single facsimile page published by Mr. Collier. He himself was, to use his own words, " once disposed to think that two distinct hands had been employed upon them," but, as he warmed into the study and support of them, he changed his mind. The additional facsimiles from these seventeen plays show the same difference in the character of the handwriting which we previously pointed out; and it is worthy of especial remark that in those cases in which entire lines are supplied, the manuscript is in that painstaking but feebler hand in which the line "So rushing in the bowels of the French" appears upon the published facsimile page. These wholesale interpolations are evidently the contribution of one person, who perhaps did not trouble himself about the smaller changes. The want of space for a whole line will not account for this change of hand, because stage directions of much greater length than any line are inserted in the bold, free hand in which "same" appears at the top of the published facsimile page. The very look of one of these facsimiles would seem fatal to the least pretence in favor of the authority of the volume. Types can but poorly convey the effect of the changes upon the eye; but they may help the imagination to picture the appearance of the page. The passage which we refer to is the following, from Titus Andronicus, Act II. Sc. 2. "Tit-The hunt is up, the morn is bright and gay, "Tit. The hunt is up, the morn is bright and gay, Can any man in his senses believe that "green" could be misprinted for wide, "peal" for round, "noise" for sound, "as it is ours" for and so will I, "new" for brought, and "inspired" for delight; and that all these errors, with two others, could occur in ten lines? The supposition is too absurd for a moment's consideration. The words do not bear the slightest possible likeness to each other; and besides, we must remember that if Mr. Collier's folio be worth any thing as an authority, the compositor made these mistakes, which are impossible under any circumstances, even when he had rhymes to guide him, And yet we are asked to believe that this is possible; and also that the author instead of writing such sense as, "Sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours, To tend the emperor's person carefully," wrote, for the sake of rhyme, such nonsense as, "Sons, let it be your charge, and so will I, To tend the emperor's person carefully"! and that the compositor set up' " and so will I" when "as it is ours was before the rest of the play being stricken out. But if the folio have any authority, we must believe in all these impossible errors of the press, and believe that Shakespeare did not write the last part of the last scene to be played. For authority implies a right to submission, irrespective of any exercise of reason or preference on the part of the person submitting. To contend for the authority of a part only, greater or less, of the emendations in this or any other folio, is to contend for a patent, palpable absurdity; just as if a legatee were to claim that such parts of the will of the testator as accorded with his, the legatee's, views, had authority, but that those which he did not like had no authority. If we defer to a single change in Mr. Collier's or in Mr. Quincy's folio because of its authority, we must defer to all; for we have the same testimony, or rather want of testimony, to the authenticity of all the changes that we have to that of any one of them. Therefore, as the few and rapidly diminishing believers in Mr. Collier's folio, can bring themselves to contend for only a majority of its changes of the authentic text, and as Mr. Collier himself says that "it is not to be understood that he approves of all the changes in the text,' even the discoverer and the advocates of this volume exercise their individual judgment in accepting or rejecting the changes of the text in it; and, by their own confession, do not defer to its authority. Thus they yield the only essential point. There can be no objection to any man, or any number of men, amusing themselves by making needless and absurd changes in the text of any author, so long as they do not contend for the authenticity of those changes, and insist upon their usurpation of the authority of the original text. As Mr. Collier and his dwindling band of submissive followers acknowledge that they do not contend for all the changes, the only important point in dispute is gained; and they themselves, by their exercise of judgment as to which they should approve and which they should condemn, have applied Malone's unexceptionable rule to them as "arbitrary emendations, . . . made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, ... not authorized by authentic copies printed or manuscript, . . . . and to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability." The verdict of Shakesperian scholars upon their "reasonableness or probability has been unanimous, that about one thousand of the one thousand and thirteen, are unreasonable and improbable; and the good sense and instinctive perception of the intelligent readers of Shakespeare is fast leading them to the same conclusion. .... We have heard it objected to the unanimous opinion of the editors and critics against the worth of Mr. Collier's folio, though never by an intelligent and uninterested man, that the majority of the objectors were biased by the fact that they were about themselves to publish editions of Shakespeare's works. The mixture of folly and audacity in this attack upon the motives instead of the arguments of the Shakesperian editors passes understanding. Because a volume has been discovered containing changes in the text, all of which (according to Mr. Collier) should not be received, but some of which Preface to The Plays of Shakespeare; the text regulated by the old copies and by the Recently Discovered Folio of 1632, &c. Edited by John Payne Collier, Esq., F. S. A. Svo. London: 1853. are changes for the better, editors of editions about to appear are interested in decrying those changes-the very changes which would (according to Mr. Collier) give value to new editions, and in the choice of which a new and wide field is opened for the labors of editors and commentators! The absurdity of the objection is so obvious as only to need pointing out. Why there is not an editor or Shakesperian scholar in England or America who is not personally interested in the attention directed to Mr. Collier's folio; and, with the possible exception of Mr. Knight, not one who does not look upon that folio as furnishing a few happy conjectural emendations to be embodied in the text of his forthcoming edition, and as requiring from him much additional editorial labor. But because there are a dozen or even twenty happy conjectural corrections of the typographical errors in the original folio, no intelligent reader, not to say critic, of Shakespeare, will quietly submit to the wanton alteration of a thousand words and phrases which need no correction. A passage in the Stationer's address to the Reader in the first folio of Beaumont & Fletcher's Plays, published in 1647, which we have never seen noticed, has an important bearing upon Mr. Collier's folio, and adds greatly to the evidence in favor of the absolute authority of the original folio of Shakespeare's works, and against that of the early quarto editions. Here is the passage. "One thing I must answer before it bee objected; 'tis this: When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Authour's consent) as occasion led them; and when private friends desired a copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted. But now you have both All that was Acted, and all that was not; even the perfect full originalls without the least mutilation." It has been reasonably conjectured by his editors and commentators, that the early quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays were surreptitiously printed from the actors' parts, which were obtained separately, and written out in proper order to form the entire play. Here, however, we have positive and direct contemporary evidence that it was the habit of the actors in Shakespeare's time and in the succeeding generation, to give copies of the acting copy to their private friends, and that in so doing they "transcribed what they acted," omitting such scenes and passages as were omitted in the representation. Here we have the surreptitious appearance of the quartos and their disagreement with the text of the authentic folio of 1623, (published by Shakespeare's friends, fellow-actors, and business partners, from his own manuscripts, with "hardly a blot" in them,) and also a great number of the changes in Mr. Collier's folio clearly accounted for. The process, as this important passage shows, was this. The author furnished the original MS. This was copied and cut down for stage use; from this copy the actors' parts were taken; and "when their private friends desired a copy, they then transcribed what they acted," and thus their friends had for their own use and that of such printers as would pay for it, the copy of a copy of part of a mutilated copy. Such "authorities" evidently directed the labors of the first corrector who worked on Mr. Collier's folio. In the succeeding generation, (for it should be remembered that Shakespeare had been dead sixteen, and had ceased writing nearly thirty years before this famous folio was printed,) he obtained copies of copies of the mutilated stage copy of the day, and made the text of his folio conform to it. This accounts for the changes for the sake of rhyme (made by the caprice of the actors), the striking out of portions of the text, and the cutting off of all that part of the final scene of Hamlet, which occurs after the action is finished, and thereby spoils what in histrionic phrase is called the tag' of the piece. It is quite natural that such a copy should contain many acceptable corrections of the typographical errors in the original; and this does contain about two hundred such, at least one hundred and seventy-three of which, as we have seen by collation (Putnam's Magazine for October, 1853), had been made by modern editors previous to Mr. Collier's discovery of the volume. It is also quite natural that a volume so corrected in the beginning, and which afterward was evidently subjected to the conjectural manipulation which the many copies still existing in the possession of Mr. Halliwell, Mr. Singer and Mr. Quincy prove to have been the common lot of folios in the latter part of the seventeenth century -it is natural that such a volume should contain the thousand needless and insuffer able mutilations which, embodied in the text which Mr. Collier, in spite of his admission that he cannot approve of all the changes, has presumed to publish as "The Plays of Shakespeare," make that edition incomparably the worst of the many bad editions which have been published. ORTHOGRAPHY OF SHAKESPEARE'S NAME. Those who have read with attention the previous Shakesperian papers in this Magazine, and are paying the same compliment to this, will observe that we now spell the poet's name Shakespeare, though heretofore we have spelled it Shakspere. For such a change it is right to render a reason. quartos and the original folio, and also of the list of actors given in the latter, shows, beyond a question, that the name was pronounced and written Shake-speare in Shakespeare's day, and by those who were in habits of constant intercourse with him who made it illustrious. For it is impossible to pronounce Shake-speare, Shak-s We used the latter orthography, -Shakspere,-on the ground that it is but proper to spell a man's name as he himself spells it; and Sir Francis Madden has shown, beyond a question, that in four of the six genuine signatures of Shakespeare which have come down to us, the name is written by the poet himself, Shakspere. The remaining two, though most illegibly written, evidently contain eleven or twelve letters. More than this, it is very evident that the name was originally, and, indeed, as late as the earlier years of William Shakespeare himself, pronounced Shak-sper. The manner in which it is spelled in the old records in which it is found, varies almost to the extreme capacity of letters to change places and produce a sound approximating to that of the name as we pronounce it. It appears as Chacksper-ShaxpurShaxper-Schaksper-Schakesper Schakespeyr Shagspere Saxpere Shaxpere-Shaxpeare-Shaxsper-Shaxspere-Shaxespere-Shakspere — Shak spear Shakspeere-Shackspeare Shackespeare-Shackespere-Shakspeyr -Shaksper-Shakespere Shakyspere Shakespire-Shakespeire-ShakespearShakaspeare; and there are even other varieties of its orthography. It is remarkable that the older the record, the more the spelling conforms to the pronunciation, Shak-sper or Shax-pur. But it is equally remarkable that on the title-pages of all the editions of Shakespeare's plays published during his life, almost without exception, as well as upon that of the original folio, his name is spelled Shakespeare. More than this: in the first folio edition of Ben Jonson's works, published in 1616, and carefully edited by Jonson himself, Shakespeare's name occurs twice in the lists of principal actors, and is in both instances spelled with the e in the first syllable and the a in the second; and not only so, but in the second list, that appended to Sejanus, the syllables are separated with a hyphen, and the second begins with a capital letter, thus-SHAKE-SPEARE. This, when taken in connection with the evidence of the title-pages of the -sper. It is also important to notice that in all the lists of actors given in Jonson's folio of 1616, nine in number, the several names, which are frequently repeated, are always spelled in the same way, -a rare, in fact, an unparalleled coincidence in any book of the time. This shows how carefully Jonson corrected his proof; and also that the spelling Shakespeare was not the result of capricious orthography. But, it may be asked, did not Shakespeare know how to write his own name? and must we not conform to his mode of spelling it? To the last query we answer no; not of necessity. For, as Mr. Hunter asks, shall Lady Jane Grey become Lady Duddeleys, or the Cromwells, Crumwells, Jane Graye? shall the Dudleys become &c., &c., &c., because it is certain that they spelled their names thus? This is a decisive question. As to Shakespeare's knowledge of the mode of writing his own name, it must be remembered that, in his lifetime, there arose a necessity for a change in the spelling. When Robert Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms, because John Shaksper had become a man of substance and consideration, and had married into the gentle blood of the Ardens, gave him armorial bearings, he saw and seized the opportunity which the name afforded for punning blazonry; and giving the worthy high bailiff the right to bear a spear or on a bend sable, he changed him and his descendants from Shakspers to Shake-speares from that time forward. But old customs change with difficulty, and endured longer then than now; and thus it was that something of the old style of spelling the name clung to the Shakespeares in Stratford; and even that William Shakespeare himself when he went to London did not entirely lay aside the habit of his early youth; though all those to whom his name then was new wrote it, as they and he pronounced it,-Shakespeare. These reasons, and the explicit testimony of Jonson, the printers of the quartos, and the editors of the original folio, have convinced us almost against our will, that Shakespeare, not Shakspere is the better mode of writing the name. |
