ration, many new comedies fitted to the taste of the times were produced, so that Shakspere was not for a period in so much request; but after the eighteenth century was well begun, the leading plays of our great dramatist again prevailed, and from Garrick's day to Macready's all our actors gave themselves to their study. The alterations made to fit them, as it was said, for the stage, and the editions "as acted" at Drury Lane or Covent Garden have now disappeared, and those carefully edited by Knight, Dyce, Collier, and others, embodying all previous suggestions, will never be superseded, and we hope but little modified. In the history of Shaksperian investigation by far the most important incident is the finding of a copy of the second folio, that of 1632, with manuscript corrections apparently of a date not very much later, by Mr. J. Payne Collier, and his consequent publication of these "Notes and Emendations," in 1853. The wrathful spite of numerous Shaksperian critics, vainly spending their days in the attempt to distinguish themselves, aided by the horror of some of the abler men, who were shocked by the daring innovations brought forward in that volume, has made Mr. Collier the subject of an amount of abuse shameful to the literary character. From that day to this, every means has been used to invalidate the story of this corrected copy of the 1632 folio, and to discredit Mr. Collier, whose general character and previous labours ought to have made him respected. And yet if any corrections are ever again to find their way into future texts of Shakspere, and become accepted as the original readings, they will be some of those published by Mr. Collier in 1853. The copy with its marginal writing was honourably and fearlessly deposited in the British Museum, whereon the custodians and their allies set to work by every means to invalidate the antiquity or authenticity of the MS. notes. But had any one of these investigators possessed enough cool insight to understand the importance of the Emendations in question they would have known that not even Mr. Collier, able as he is, and although he had been aided by Mr. Halliwell and all the other Shaksperian critics of the day, could have thrown out so many brilliant suggestions. In fact no one but a poet of extraordinary imaginative suggestiveness could have done the work. We have already said the text of our present edition is the standard one, and even yet men's minds are not sufficiently cool to judge without prejudice, but by far the greater part of the changes made in Mr. Collier's folio are selfevident, and must be ultimately adopted. To prove this let us take a few from the first play that presents itself—Henry VI. Part II., as it happens, one of the weakest in MS. corrections. "Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage, And purchase friends and give to courtesans, Still revelling like lords till all is gone : While as the silly owner of the goods Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands, And shakes his head," &c.-ACT I. Scene I. The Perkins folio suggests, "and wrings his helpless hands." Where Clifford addresses Jack Cade's "Rabblement" again, trying to seduce them from their chief— "What say ye, Countrymen? will ye relent, Or let a rabble lead you to your deaths ?" The MS. has it, "will ye repent. . . . or let a rebel lead you to your deaths?" The messenger bringing news of the Duke of York who is newly come from Ireland-— “And with a puissant and a mighty power, Of Gallowglasses and stout Kernes, Is marching hitherward." The Emendator says "a puissant and united power." Again, in Act V. Scene I., when the Duke of York is bringing in his adherents, Warwick and Salisbury, vii Mr. Collier's MS. has, "They may astonish these fell-looking curs ;" and, "Who, having suffered with the bear's fell paw." We might go on with similar quotations, all manifestly right, and innocent of any obtrusive or detrimental character. If we turn to the most important passages, or to some of the best known and admired lines in the leading dramas we find the same simplicity commend the changes made. In Dame Quickley's account of Falstaff's death, it may be remembered that the first folio, that of Hemings and Condall of 1623 has the passage, much admired as it now stands, making the dying tavern-haunting knight "babble of green fields," so obscure that Pope was driven to suppose a stage direction-for the property-man, Greenfields, to bring in a table-had been printed in the text. "After I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields. How now, Sir John? quoth I. What, man! be of good cheer. So'a cried out, God! three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet: So 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone. Nym. They say he cried out for sack. Quick. Ay, that 'a did." Theobald made the correction which has been admired ever since, altering the words a table into 'a babbled; but it still remains a question whether the old debauchee would characteristically do so, and that at the moment, or the moment before, he is crying out both on the name of God and for his much-loved beverage. If we import sentiment into the argument, farewell criticism. To apprehend Mr. Collier's Emendator we must remember Mrs. Quickley's loquacious circumstantiality of description, and we must know that every scrivener's table was then covered with cloth, as every committee table might still be called a "board of green cloth." If we do so, the changes he makes of on instead of and, frieze instead of fields, by which the sentence becomes "for his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze," are an exceedingly characteristic emphasizing of the comparison. This is such a change as no one would think of risking without some original warranty. The last movement in Shaksperian criticism has been the formation of a Shakspere Society," principally through the agitation of Mr. Fred. J. Furnival, who had "New installed himself as "Director," and, unhappily, in that capacity he has taken an opportunity to insult in a quasi-facetious manner a number of the best scholars in Shaksperian lore; and has already got up a sort of dispute with the gentleman who has, as yet, made the greatest effort to aid the Society. We hope, however, Mr. Fleay will continue to investigate, and to publish his investigations into the peculiarities of metrical constructions of all the dramatists of the Elizabethan age by which he proposes to determine the share of each in joint works, and in some measure by the same tests to assign the successive dates to Shakspere's dramas. Not, as we said at first, that such analytical arguments add one iota to the pleasure we derive from the poetry of the author; nay, rather must be kept wholly apart, as the dissecting knife must be kept away from the feast; but they have in themselves a scientific interest, and a sterling value, throwing light on the history of English poetry, on the ways of poets in the great age of our drama, and on the personal habits of Shakspere himself. By comparing plays known by the separate publications mentioned already, and by the list given in Francis Meres' "Wit's Treasury," published in 1598, with those known to have been done at the end of his career, Mr. Fleay finds that the great dramatist gradually introduced more frequently double endings, Alexandrines, and short lines, and gave up the rhymed lines for blank verse. He also defines the verse peculiar to Fletcher, Greene, Beaumont, Massenger, and Rowley, and his result, which we give here as that of the latest investigator, although it is entirely hypothetic, and we fear, will not even stand the testing of the Tests, is as follows: 1. Taming of the Shrew, Henry VI., and Titus Andronicus are in the main not Shakspere's. 2. Henry VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen are partly Fletcher's. This last statement is no news certainly. 3. Pericles and Timon of Athens are only partially Shakspere's. 4. The chronological succession of the plays is as follows: 1. Rhyming Period. Love's Labour's Lost; Love's Labour's Won (the old 2. Comedy and History Period. Two Gentlemen of Verona; Richard III.; 3. Tragedy Period. Henry VIII. in part; Troilus and Cressida; Measure 4. Roman Period. Julius Cæsar; Antony and Cleopatra; Coriolanus ; Tempest; The Two Noble Kinsmen in part; Winter's Tale. A few words on the representations of the face of Shakspere will end this preface. It is clear from the lines by Ben Jonson on the page opposite to the Droeshout engraving in the first folio, that of 1623, and from the fact that the volume was edited by his fellowplayers at the "Blackfriars " and the "Globe," that the engraving must have been like the much beloved and respected original. It bears, moreover, a general resemblance to the bust on his monument at Stratford by Gerard Johnson. Its contours are round, large, strong, heavy, with something of impassivity, and an absence of all peculiarity and limitation. The bust at Stratford, indeed, has these qualities as largely as the ideal head of the Greek sculptors, but it is at the same time poor in art, and as if intended to represent an original becoming obese. The engraving was done within seven years after the death of Shakspere, the bust still nearer the demise. Both must have had some authority, and it is impossible to suppose, with Shakspere's many friends, that no portrait on canvas existed. On the contrary many must have been done, and that now at the National Portrait Gallery has great claims to be considered an original of a few years earlier, before the stoutness of his latter period. There is, however, at the British Museum, a posthumous cast which deserves the highest regard and admiration, whether it be the veritable pressure of the dead features of our greatest intellectual Master, or only the mask of some unknown lord among men who has left no mark. It is a truly beautiful and subtle and noble face, worn thin and with a tired expression, as disease and death produce, and also deeply pathetic. It bears, moreover, a striking and refined resemblance to that set of portraits to which the name of Jansen has been given. The history of this invaluable mask is as follows. On the back of the cast is the inscription "A.D. 1616.," the year of the poet's death, in letters apparently contemporary, and is accompanied by a miniature of the same person having a wreath round the head. These objects were preserved as representations of Shakspere in the family of Kesselstadt, till the last of the race, Count von Kesselstadt, a canon of Cologne Cathedral, died in 1843, when they were purchased by Dr. Becker, who very shortly brought them with him to this country, and on his leaving for Australia deposited them with Professor Owen in the British Museum. Dr. Becker never returned, having died after his botanical expedition, during the Overland journey, and the mask remains as national property. W. B. S. |