The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 1 of 9]

We have arranged the names both of Editors and of Commentators (as far as was possible) in order of time. It has frequently happened that several persons have hit on the same conjecture independently. In such cases we have assigned it to the earliest, determining the priority by the date of publication.

The metrical arrangement of each passage is marked in the notes by printing each word which commences a line with an initial capital letter. In the Folios, many substantives, other than proper names or titles, are printed with initial capitals; but, in order to avoid ambiguity, we have generally made our quotations conform, in this respect, to the modern usage.

We had originally intended to give in our Preface a catalogue raisonné of all the editions of our author and other books used by us in the preparation of the present work, but this labour has been fortunately spared us by Mr Bohn’s reissue of Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual, the eighth part of which contains a full and accurate account of Shakespearian literature. To that work we refer our readers for more complete bibliographical details, and propose to confine ourselves to some remarks on the critical value of the principal editions and commentaries. We have, of course, confined our collation to those editions which seemed to possess an independent value of their own. Mr Bohn enumerates two hundred and sixty-two different editions of Shakespeare. It was therefore a matter of necessity to make a selection. In the following remarks we pass briefly in review the editions which we have habitually consulted.

Whenever any commentary was known to us to exist in a separate form, we have always, if possible, procured it. In some few instances, we have been obliged to take the references at second-hand.

The first Folio (F1), 1623, contains all the plays usually found in modern editions of Shakespeare, except Pericles. It was ‘published according to the True Originall Copies,’ and ‘set forth’ by his ‘friends’ and ‘fellows,’ John Heminge and Henry Condell, the author ‘not having the fate common with some to be exequutor to his own writings.’

In an address ‘To the great variety of Readers’ following the dedication to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, the following passage occurs:

‘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 where (before) you were abus’d with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, 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 mind 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.’

The natural inference to be drawn from this statement is, that all the separate editions of Shakespeare’s plays were ‘stolen,’ ‘surreptitious,’ and ‘imperfect,’ and that all those published in the Folio were printed from the author’s own manuscripts. But it can be proved to demonstration that several of the plays in the Folio were printed from earlier Quarto editions, and that in other cases the Quarto is more correctly printed or from a better MS. than the Folio text, and therefore of higher authority. For example, in Midsummer Night’s Dream, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and in Richard the Second, the reading of the Quarto is almost always preferable to that of the Folio, and in Hamlet we have computed that the Folio, when it differs from the Quartos, differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while it differs for the better in twenty at most.

As the ‘setters forth’ are thus convicted of a ‘suggestio falsi’ in one point, it is not improbable that they may have been guilty of the like in another. Some of the plays may have been printed not from Shakespeare’s own manuscript, but from transcripts made from them for the use of the theatre. And this hypothesis will account for strange errors found in some of the plays – errors too gross to be accounted for by the negligence of a printer, especially if the original MS. was as unblotted as Heminge and Condell describe it to have been. Thus too we may explain the great difference in the state of the text as found in different plays. It is probable that this deception arose not from deliberate design on the part of Heminge and Condell, – whom as having been Shakespeare’s friends and fellows we like to think of as honourable men, – but partly at least from want of practice in composition, and from the wish rather to write a smart preface in praise of the book than to state the facts clearly and simply. Or the preface may have been written by some literary man in the employment of the publishers, and merely signed by the two players.

Be this as it may, their duties as editors were probably limited to correcting and arranging the manuscripts and sending them to the press. The ‘overseeing’ of which they speak, probably meant a revision of the MSS., not a correction of the press, for it does not appear that there were any proof sheets in those days sent either to author or editor. Indeed we consider it as certain that, after a MS. had been sent to press, it was seen only by the printers and one or more correctors of the press, regularly employed by the publishers for that purpose3.

The opinions of critics have varied very much as to the merits of the first Folio, some praising it as among the most correct, and others blaming it as one of the most incorrect editions of its time. The truth seems to be that it is of very varied excellence, differing from time to time according to the state of the MS. from which it was printed, the skill of the compositor, and the diligence of the corrector. There is the widest difference, for instance, between the text of the Two Gentlemen of Verona and that of All’s well that ends well.

As is the case with most books of that time4, different copies of the first Folio are found to vary here and there; generally, however, in a single letter only. It is probable that no one copy exactly corresponds with any other copy. We have indicated these variations, wherever they were known to us, in a note either at the foot of the page or at the end of each play.

A reprint of the first Folio, not free from inaccuracies, was published in 1807. A second reprint is now in course of publication by Mr Lionel Booth. The first part, containing the Comedies, has already appeared. It is probably the most correct reprint ever issued.

The second Folio (F2) is a reprint of the first, preserving the same pagination. It differs, however, from the first in many passages, sometimes widely, sometimes slightly, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. The emendations are evidently conjectural, and though occasionally right, appear more frequently to be wrong. They deserve no more respect than those of other guessers, except such as is due to their author’s familiar acquaintance with the language and customs of Shakespeare’s day, and possible knowledge of the acted plays.

Capell’s copy of the second Folio has been of great use to us in our collations. He has annotated the margin with a multitude of marks in red ink, – conventional symbols indicating where and how it differs from the first. We have hardly in a single instance found his accuracy at fault.

The third Folio (F3) was first published in 1663, and reissued in the following year with a new title-page5, and with seven additional plays, viz.: Pericles, Prince of Tyre: The London Prodigal: The History of the Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell: The History of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham: The Puritan Widow: A Yorkshire Tragedy: and The Tragedy of Locrine. With regard to the plays which it contains in common with the former Folios, it is on the whole a tolerably faithful reprint of the second, correcting, however, some obvious errors, making now and then an uncalled-for alteration, and occasionally modernizing the spelling of a word. The printer of course has committed some errors of his own.

The fourth Folio (F4) was printed from the third, but with a different pagination, in 1685. The spelling is very much modernized, but we have not been able to detect any other evidence of editorial care.

The first octavo edition was that of Nicholas Rowe, published in 1709, dedicated to the Duke of Somerset, in words which we take pleasure in recording: ‘’Tis the best security a poet can ask for to be sheltered under that great name which presides over one of the most famous Universities of Europe.’ It contained all the plays in the fourth Folio in the same order, except that the seven spurious plays were transferred from the beginning to the end. The poems were added also.

It is evident that Rowe took the fourth Folio as the text from which his edition was printed, and it is almost certain that he did not take the trouble to refer to, much less to collate, any of the previous Folios or Quartos. It seems, however, while the volume containing Romeo and Juliet was in the press he learned the existence of a Quarto edition, for he has printed the prologue given in the Quartos and omitted in the Folios, at the end of the play. He did not take the trouble to compare the text of the Quarto with that of F4. When any emendation introduced by him in the text coincides with the reading of F1, as sometimes happens, we are convinced that it is an accidental coincidence. Being, however, a man of natural ability and taste he improved the text by some happy guesses, while, from overhaste and negligence, he left it still deformed by many palpable errors. The best part of the work is that with which his experience of the stage as a dramatic poet had made him familiar. In many cases he first prefixed to the play a list of dramatis personæ, he supplied the defects of the Folios in the division and numbering of Acts and Scenes, and in the entrances and exits of characters. He also corrected and further modernized the spelling, the punctuation, and the grammar.

A characteristic specimen of blunders and corrections occurs in the Comedy of Errors, V. 1. 138.

important] F1 impoteant F2. impotent F3 F4. all-potent Rowe.

A second Edition, 9 Volumes 12mo, was published in 1714.

Pope’s edition in six volumes, 4to, was completed in 1715. On the title-page we read, ‘The Works of Shakespeare, in six volumes.’ The six volumes, however, included only the plays contained in the first and second Folios. The poems, with an Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Stage, and a Glossary, were contained in a seventh volume edited by Dr Sewell.

Pope, unlike his predecessor, had at least seen the first Folio and some of the Quartos of separate plays, and from the following passage of his preface it might have been inferred that he had diligently collated them all:

‘This is the state in which Shakespeare’s writings be at present; for since the above-mentioned folio edition [i. e. F4], all the rest have implicitly followed it without having recourse to any of the former, or ever making the comparison between them. It is impossible to repair the injuries already done him; too much time has elaps’d, and the materials are too few. In what I have done I have rather given a proof of my willingness and desire, than of my ability, to do him justice. I have discharg’d the dull duty of an editor, to my best judgment, with more labour than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture. The method taken in this edition will show itself. The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare ’em, and those I prefer’d into the text are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority.’

This passage, as any one may see who examines the text, is much more like a description of what the editor did not do than of what he did. Although in many instances he restored, from some Quarto, passages which had been omitted in the Folio, it is very rarely indeed that we find any evidence of his having collated either the first Folio or any Quarto, with proper care. The ‘innovations’ which he made, according to his own ‘private sense and conjecture,’ are extremely numerous. Not one in twenty of the various readings is put in the margin, and the readings in his text very frequently rest upon no authority whatever. The glaring inconsistency between the promise in the preface and the performance in the book may well account for its failure with the public.

It would, however, be ungrateful not to acknowledge that Pope’s emendations are always ingenious and plausible, and sometimes unquestionably true. He never seems to nod over that ‘dull labour’ of which he complains. His acuteness of perception is never at fault.

What is said of him in the preface to Theobald’s edition is, in this point, very unjust6.

‘They have both (i. e. Pope and Rymer7) shown themselves in an equal impuissance of suspecting or amending the corrupted passages, &c.’

Pope was the first to indicate the place of each new scene; as, for instance, Tempest, I. 1. ‘On a ship at sea.’ He also subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making a fresh scene whenever a new character entered – an arrangement followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of reference to these editions, we have always recorded the commencement of Pope’s scenes.

By a minute comparison of the two texts we find that Pope printed his edition from Rowe, not from any of the Folios.

A second edition, 10 volumes, 12mo, was published in 1728, ‘by Mr Pope and Dr Sewell.’ In this edition, after Pope’s preface, reprinted, comes: ‘A table of the several editions of Shakespeare’s plays, made use of and compared in this impression.’ Then follows a list containing the first and second Folios, and twenty-eight Quarto editions of separate plays. It does not, however, appear that even the first Folio was compared with any care, for the changes made in this second edition are very few.

Lewis Theobald had the misfortune to incur the enmity of one who was both the most popular poet, and, if not the first, at least the second, satirist of his time. The main cause of offence was Theobald’s Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors committed as well as unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this Poet, 1726. Theobald was also in the habit of communicating notes on passages of Shakespeare to Mist’s Journal, a weekly Tory paper. Hence he was made the hero of the Dunciad till dethroned in the fourth edition to make way for Cibber; hence, too, the allusions in that poem:

‘There hapless Shakespear, yet of Theobald sore,Wish’d he had blotted for himself before;’

and, in the earlier editions,

‘Here studious I unlucky moderns save,Nor sleeps one error in its father’s grave;Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek,And crucify poor Shakespear once a week.’

Pope’s editors and commentators, adopting their author’s quarrel, have spoken of Theobald as ‘Tibbald, a cold, plodding, and tasteless writer and critic.’ These are Warton’s words. A more unjust sentence was never penned. Theobald, as an Editor, is incomparably superior to his predecessors, and to his immediate successor, Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his materials. He was the first to recal a multitude of readings of the first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors. Many most brilliant emendations, such as could not have suggested themselves to a mere ‘cold, plodding, and tasteless critic,’ are due to him. If he sometimes erred – ‘humanum est.’ It is remarkable that with all his minute diligence8, (which even his enemies conceded to him, or rather of which they accused him) he left a goodly number of genuine readings from the first Folio to be gleaned by the still more minutely diligent Capell. It is to be regretted that he gave up numbering the scenes, which makes his edition difficult to refer to. It was first published in 1733, in seven volumes, 8vo. A second, 8 volumes, 12mo, appeared in 1740.

In 1744, a new edition of Shakespeare’s Works, in six volumes, 4to, was published at Oxford. It appeared with a kind of sanction from the University, as it was printed at the Theatre, with the Imprimatur of the Vice-Chancellor, and had no publisher’s name on the title-page. The Editor is not named – hence he is frequently referred to by subsequent critics as ‘the Oxford Editor’; – but as he was well known to be Sir Thomas Hanmer, we have always referred to the book under his name. We read in the preface: ‘What the Publick is here to expect is a true and correct Edition of Shakespear’s Works, cleared from the corruptions with which they have hitherto abounded. One of the great admirers of this incomparable author hath made it the amusement of his leisure hours for many years past to look over his writings with a careful eye, to note the obscurities and absurdities introduced into the text, and according to the best of his judgment to restore the genuine sense and purity of it. In this he proposed nothing to himself but his private satisfaction in making his own copy as perfect as he could; but as the emendations multiplied upon his hands, other Gentlemen equally fond of the Author, desired to see them, and some were so kind as to give their assistance by communicating their observations and conjectures upon difficult passages which had occurred to them.’

From this passage the character of the edition may be inferred. A country gentleman of great ingenuity and lively fancy, but with no knowledge of older literature, no taste for research, and no ear for the rhythm of earlier English verse, amused his leisure hours by scribbling down his own and his friends’ guesses in Pope’s Shakespeare, and with this apparatus criticus, if we may believe Warburton, ‘when that illustrious body, the University of Oxford, in their public capacity, undertook an edition of Shakespeare by subscription,’ Sir T. Hanmer ‘thrust himself into the employment.’

Whether from the sanction thus given, or from its typographical beauty, or from the plausibility of its new readings, this edition continued in favour, and even ‘rose to the price of 10l. 10s. before it was reprinted in 1770-1, while Pope’s, in quarto, at the same period sold off at Tonson’s sale for 16s. per copy.’ Bohn, p. 2260.

In 1747, three years after Pope’s death, another edition of Shakespeare based upon his appeared, edited by Mr Warburton.

On the title-page are these words: ‘The Genuine Text (collated with all the former Editions, and then corrected and emended) is here settled: Being restored from the Blunders of the first Editors, and the Interpolations of the two Last: with a Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By Mr Pope and Mr Warburton9.’

The latter, in his preface, vehemently attacks Theobald and Hanmer, accusing both of plagiarism and even fraud. ‘The one was recommended to me as a poor Man, the other as a poor Critic: and to each of them, at different times, I communicated a great number of Observations, which they managed as they saw fit to the Relief of their several distresses. As to Mr Theobald, who wanted Money, I allowed him to print what I gave him for his own Advantage: and he allowed himself in the Liberty of taking one Part for his own, and sequestering another for the Benefit, as I supposed, of some future Edition. But as to the Oxford Editor, who wanted nothing, but what he might very well be without, the reputation of a Critic, I could not so easily forgive him for trafficking in my Papers without my knowledge; and when that Project fail’d, for employing a number of my Conjectures in his Edition against my express Desire not to have that Honour done unto me.’

Again he says of Hanmer: ‘Having a number of my Conjectures before him, he took as many as he saw fit to work upon, and by changing them to something, he thought, synonimous or similar, he made them his own,’ &c. &c. p. xii.

Of his own performance Warburton says, ‘The Notes in this Edition take in the whole Compass of Criticism. The first sort is employed in restoring the Poet’s genuine Text; but in those places only where it labours with inextricable Nonsense. In which, how much soever I may have given scope to critical Conjecture, when the old Copies failed me, I have indulged nothing to Fancy or Imagination; but have religiously observed the severe Canons of literal Criticism, &c. &c.’ p. xiv. Yet further on he says, ‘These, such as they are, were amongst my younger amusements, when, many years ago I used to turn over these sort of Writers to unbend myself from more serious applications.’

The excellence of the edition proved to be by no means proportionate to the arrogance of the editor. His text is, indeed, better than Pope’s, inasmuch as he introduced many of Theobald’s restorations and some probable emendations both of his own and of the two editors whom he so unsparingly denounced, but there is no trace whatever, so far as we have discovered, of his having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the Quartos.

Warburton10 was, in his turn, severely criticised by Dr Zachary Grey, and Mr John Upton, in 1746, and still more severely by Mr Thomas Edwards, in his Supplement to Mr Warburton’s edition of Shakespeare, 1747. The third edition of Mr Edwards’s book, 1750, was called Canons of Criticism and Glossary, being a Supplement, &c. This title is a sarcastic allusion to two passages in Warburton’s preface: ‘I once intended to have given the Reader a body of Canons, for literal Criticism, drawn out in form,’ &c. p. xiv, and ‘I had it once, indeed, in my design, to give a general alphabetic Glossary of these terms,’ &c. p. xvi. Dr Grey’s attack was reprinted, with additions, and a new title, in 1751, and again in 1752. Warburton and his predecessors were passed in review also by Mr Benjamin Heath, in A Revisal of Shakespeare’s text, 1765.

Dr Samuel Johnson first issued proposals for a new edition of Shakespeare in 1745, but met with no encouragement. He resumed the scheme in 1756, and issued a new set of Proposals (reprinted in Malone’s preface), ‘in which,’ says Boswell, ‘he shewed that he perfectly well knew what a variety of research such an undertaking required, but his indolence prevented him from pursuing it with that diligence, which alone can collect those scattered facts that genius, however acute, penetrating, and luminous, cannot discover by its own force.’ Johnson deceived himself so far, as to the work to be done and his own energy in doing it, that he promised the publication of the whole before the end of the following year. Yet, though some volumes were printed as early as 1758 (Boswell, Vol. II. p. 84), it was not published till 1765, and might never have been published at all, but for Churchill’s stinging satire:

‘He for subscribers baits his hook,And takes your cash, but where’s the book?No matter where; wise fear, you know,Forbids the robbing of a foe,But what, to serve our private ends,Forbids the cheating of our friends?’

Not only Johnson’s constitutional indolence and desultory habits, but also the deficiency of his eye-sight, incapacitated him for the task of minute collation. Nevertheless, he did consult the older copies, and has the merit of restoring some readings which had escaped Theobald. He had not systematically studied the literature and language of the 16th and 17th centuries; he did not always appreciate the naturalness, simplicity, and humour of his author, but his preface and notes are distinguished by clearness of thought and diction and by masterly common sense. He used Warburton’s text, to print his own from. The readings and suggestions attributed to ‘Johnson,’ in our notes, are derived either from the edition of 1765, or from those which he furnished to the subsequent editions in which Steevens was his co-editor. Some few also found by the latter in Johnson’s hand on the margin of his copy of ‘Warburton,’ purchased by Steevens at Johnson’s sale, were incorporated in later editions. Johnson’s edition was attacked with great acrimony by Dr Kenrick, 1765 (Boswell, Vol. II. p. 300). It disappointed the public expectation, but reached, nevertheless, a second edition in 1768. Tyrwhitt’s Observations and Conjectures were published anonymously in 1766.