qld editions, and the methods that they have taken to amend them, are fully lay'd open, which is the first business of this Introduction. Of thirty-six plays which Shakspeare has left us, and which compose the collection that was afterwards set out in folio, thirteen only were publish'd in his life-time, that have much resemblance to those in the folio; these thirteen are-" Hamlet, First and Second Henry IV, King Lear, Love's Labour's Lost, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Richard II, and III, Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida." Some others, that came out in the same period, bear indeed the titles of “Henry V. King John, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Taming of the Shrew;" but are no other than either first draughts, or mutilated and perhaps surreptitious impressions of those plays, but whether of the two is not easy to determine: King John is certainly a first draught, and in two parts; and so much another play, that only one line of it is retain'd in the second: there is also a first draught of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI, published in his life-time under the following title,-" The whole Contention betweene the two famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke" and to these plays, six in number, may be added-the first impression of Romeo and Juliet, being a play of the same stamp: The date of all these quarto's, and that of their several re-impressions, may be seen in a table that follows the Introduction. Othello came out only one year before the folio; and is, in the main, the same play that we have there: and this too is the case of the first-mention'd thirteen; notwithstanding there are in many of them great variations, and particularly in Hamlet, King Lear, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet. As for the plays, which, we say, are either the poet's first draughts, or else imperfect and stolen copies, it will be thought, perhaps, they might as well have been left out of the account: but they are not wholly useless: some lucune, that are in all the other editions have been judiciously fill'd up in modern impressions by the authority of these copies; and in some particular passages of them, where there happens to be a greater conformity than usual between them and the more perfect edi * This is meant of the first quarto edition of The Taming of the Shrew; for the second was printed from the folio. But the play in this first edition appears certainly to have been a spurious one, from Mr. POPE's account of it, who seems to have been the only editor whom it was ever seen by: great pains has been taken to trace who he had it of, (for it was not in his collection) but without success. [Mr. Capell afterwards procured a sight of this desideratum, a circumstance which he has quaintly recorded in the note annexed to the MS. catalogue of his Shaksperiana: “— lent by Mr. Malone, an Irish gentleman, living in Queen Ann Street East."] Steevens. tions, there is here and there a various reading that does honour to the poet's judgment, and should upon that account be presum❜d the true one; in other respects, they have neither use nor merit, but are merely curiosities. Proceed we then to a description of the other fourteen. They all abound in faults, though not in equal degree; and those faults are so numerous, and of so many different natures, that nothing but a perusal of the pieces themselves can give an adequate conception of them; but amongst them are these that follow. Division of acts and scenes, they have none; Othello only excepted, which is divided into acts: entries of persons are extremely imperfect in them, (sometimes more, sometimes fewer than the scene requires) and their Exits are very of ten omitted; or, when mark'd, not always in the right place; and few scenical directions are to be met with throughout the whole: speeches are frequently confounded, and given to wrong persons, either whole, or in part; and sometimes, instead of the person speaking, you have the actor who presented him: and in two of the plays, (Love's Labour's Lost, and Troilus and Cressida,) the same matter, and in nearly the same words, is set down twice in some passages; which who sees not to be only a negligence of the poet, and that but one of them ought to have been printed? But the reigning fault of all is in the measure: prose is very often printed as verse, and verse as prose; or, where rightly printed verse, that verse is not always right divided: and in all these pieces, the songs are in every particular still more corrupt than the other parts of them. These are the general and principal defects: to which if you add-transposition of words, sentences, lines, and even speeches; words omitted, and others added without reason; and a punctuation so deficient, and so often wrong, that it hardly deserves regard; you have, upon the whole, a true but melancholy picture of the condition of these first printed plays: which bad as it is, is yet better than that of those which came after; or than that of the subsequent folio impression of some of these which we are now speaking of. This folio impression was sent into the world seven years after the author's death, by two of his fellow-players; and con. tains, besides the last-mention'd fourteen, the true and ge. nuine copies of the other six plays, and sixteen that were never publish'd before:* the editors make great professions of fide. * There is yet extant in the books of the Stationers' Company, an entry bearing date-Feb. 12, 1624, to Messrs. Jaggard and Blount, the proprietors of this first folio, which is thus worded: "Mr. Wm. Shakspear's Comedy's History's & Tragedy's so many of the said Copy's as bee not enter'd to other men: and this entry is follow'd by the titles of all those sixteen plays that were first printed in the folio: The other twenty plays (Othello, and King John, excepted; which the person who furnished this transcript, thinks he may have overlook'd,) are enter'd too in lity, and some complaint of injury done to them and the author by stolen and maim'd copies; giving withal an advantageous, if just, idea of the copies which they have follow'd: but see the terms they make use of. "It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; but since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as were (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious imposters, that expos'd them: even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His minde and hand went together: and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers." Who now does not feel himself inclin❜d to expect an accurate and good performance in the edition of these prefacers? But alas, it is nothing less: for (if we except the six spurious ones, whose places were then supply'd by true and genuine copies) the editions of plays preceding the folio, are the very basis of those we have there; which are either printed from those editions, or from the copies which they made use of: and this is principally evident in-"First and Second Henry IV, Love's Labour's Lost, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Richard II, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida;" for in the others we see somewhat a greater latitude, as was observ'd a little above: but in these plays, there is an almost strict conformity between the two impressions: some additions are in the second, and some omissions; but the faults and errors of the quarto's are all preserv'd in the folio, and others added to them; and what difference there is, is generally for the worse on the side of the folio editors; which should give us but faint hopes of meeting with greater accuracy in the plays which they first publish'd; and, accordingly, we find them subject to all the imperfections that have been noted in the former: nor is their edition in general distinguish'd by any mark of preference above the earliest quarto's, but that some of their plays are divided inte acts, and some others into acts and scenes; and that with due precision, and agreeable to the author's idea of the nature of such divisions. The order of printing these plays, the way in which they are class'd, and the titles given them, being matters of some curiosity, the table that is before the first folio is here reprinted: and to it are added marks, put between crotchets, shewing the plays that are divided; a signifying-acts, a & s acts and scenes. these books, under their respective years; but to whom the transcript says not. Q 2 TABLE of Plays in the folio. COMEDIES. The Tempest. [a & s.] The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. [a & s.] Loves Labour lost.* The Merchant of Venice.* [a.] The Winters Tale. [a & s.] HISTORIES. The Life and Death of King [Troylus and Cressida] from the second folio, omitted in the first. The Life and death of Julius Cæ- The Tragedy of Macbeth. [a & s.] Antony and Cleopater. The plays, mark'd with asterisks, are spoken of by name, in a book, call'd-Wit's Treasury, being the Second Part of Wit's Commonwealth, written by Francis Meres, at p. 282: who, in the same paragraph, mentions another play as being Shakspeare's, under the title of Loves Labours Wonne; a title that seems well adapted to All's Well that Ends Well, and under which it might be first acted. In the paragraph immediately preceding, he speaks of his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, and his Sonnets: this book was printed in 1598, by P. Short, for Cuthbert Burbie; octavo, small. The same author, at p. 283, mentions too a Richard the Third, written by Doctor Leg, author of another play, called The Destruction of Jerusalem. And there is in the Museum, a manuscript Latin play upon the same subject, written by one Henry Lacy in 1586: which Latin play is but a weak performance; and yet seemeth to be the play spoken of by Sir John Harrington, (for the author was a Cambridge man, and of St. John's,) in this passage of his Apologie of Poetrie, prefix'd to his Having premis'd thus much about the state and condition of these first copies, it may not be improper, nor will it be absolutely a digression, to add something concerning their authenti city: in doing which, it will be greatly for the reader's ease,and our own, to confine ourselves to the quarto's: which, it is hop'd, he will allow of; especially, as our intended vindication of them will also include in it (to the eye of a good observer) that of the plays that appear'd first in the folio: which therefore omitting, we now turn ourselves to the quarto's. We have seen the slur that is endeavour'd to be thrown upon them indiscriminately by the player editors, and we see it too wip'd off by their having themselves follow'd the copies that they condemn. A modern editor, who is not without his followers, is pleas'd to assert confidently in his preface, that they are printed from "piece-meal parts, and copies of prompters;" but his arguments for it are some of them without foundation, and the others not conclusive; and it is to be doubted, that the opinion is only thrown out to countenance an abuse that has been carry'd to much too great lengths by himself and another editor,-that of putting out of the text passages that they did not like. These censures then, and this opinion being set aside, is it criminal to try another conjecture, and see what can be made of it? It is known, that Shakspeare liv'd to no great age, being taken off in his fifty-third year; and yet his works are so numerous, that, when we take a survey of them, they seem the productions of a life of twice that length: for to the thirty-six plays in this collection, we must add seven, (one of which is in two parts) perhaps written over again;* seven others that were publish'd some of them in his life-time, and all with his name; and another seven, that are upon good grounds imputed to him; making in all, fifty-eight plays; besides the part that he may reasonably be thought to have had in other men's labours, being himself a player and a manager of theatres: what his prose productions were, we know not: but it can hardly be suppos'd, that he, who had so considerable a share in the confidence of the Earls of Essex and Southampton, could be a mute spectator only of controversies in which they were so much interested; and his other poetical works, that are known, will fill a volume the size of these that we have here. When the number and bulk of these pieces, the shortness of his life, and the other busy employments translation of Ariosto's Orlando, edit. 1591, fol: “. and for tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies; that, that was played at S. Johns in Cambridge of Richard the 3. would move (I thinke) Phalaris the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrānous minded men, frð following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how his ambition made him kill his brother, his nephews, his wife, beside infinit others; and last of all after a short and troublesome raigne, to end his miserable life, and to have his body harried after his death." * Vide, this Introduction, p. 171. |