first editors? From one or other of these considerations, I am verily persuaded that the greatest and the grossest part of what are thought his errors would vanish, and leave his character in a light very different from that disadvantageous one in which it now appears to us.

This is the state in which Shakespeare's writings lie at present; for, since the above-mentioned Folio edition, 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 elapsed, 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 discharged 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 shew itself. The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare them; and those I have preferred into the text are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority. The alterations or additions which Shakespeare himself made are taken notice of as they occur. Some suspected passages, which are excessively bad (and which seem interpolations, by being so inserted that one can entirely omit them without any chasm or deficience in the context), are degraded to the bottom of the page, with an asterisk referring to the places of their insertion. The scenes are marked so distinctly that every removal of place is specified; which is more necessary in this author than any other, since he shifts

them more frequently; and sometimes, without attending to this particular, the reader would have met with obscurities. The more obsolete or unusual words are explained. Some of the most shining passages are distinguished by commas in the margin; and where the beauty lay not in particulars but in the whole, a star is prefixed to the scene. This seems to me a shorter and less ostentatious method of performing the better half of criticism (namely the pointing out an author's excellencies) than to fill a whole paper with citations of fine passages, with general applauses, or empty exclamations at the tail of them. There is also subjoined a catalogue of those first editions, by which the greater part of the various readings and of the corrected passages are authorised (most of which are such as carry their own evidences along with them). These editions now hold the place of originals, and are the only materials left to repair the deficiencies, or restore the corrupted sense of the author. I can only wish that a greater number of them (if a greater were ever published) may yet be found, by a search more successful than mine, for the better accomplishment of this end.

I will conclude by saying of Shakespeare, that with all his faults, and with all the irregularity of his drama, one may look upon his works, in comparison with those that are more finished and regular, as upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with a neat modern building: the latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more solemn. It must be allowed that in one of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much

9

The reference is to the Quarto copies of single plays.

the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed, and unequal to its grandeur.

LEWIS THEOBALD

1688-1744

EWIS THEOBALD was born April, 1688, and died September, 1744, exactly contem

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porary with Pope. He was educated in an attorney's office, but chose literature as a profession. His first literary work was the translation of various Greek plays. He became a dramatist of very ordinary ability. His name holds its place in English literature because of his critical work in Shakespeare's plays. He reviewed Pope's edition (in 1726) under the title of "Shakespeare restored, or Specimens of the many errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr. Pope in his edition of this Poet, designed not only to correct the same edition, but to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet published."

Pope bitterly denounced Theobald for this "impertinence," and pilloried him in the "Dunciad." Theobald, with many faults, was a real critic, and his edition of the plays in seven volumes (1733) took the place of Pope's among students, as the latter had superseded

Rowe's.

Theobald was unfortunate both in his financial affairs and his intellectual ambitions. He just failed of the Poet Laureateship in 1732, and passed most of his life in poverty. At the time of his death he was engaged in editing the collected works of Beaumont and Fletcher.

In Hogarth's plate of "The Distressed Poet," the artist is supposed to have been inspired by the wretched fortunes of poor Theobald. George Steevens suggested that the picture was a satire upon the poet's reward.

The poet in the caricature is the only suggestion of a portrait of Theobald extant.

LEWIS THEOBALD'S PREFACE

[To his second edition of Shakespeare's Works published 1740, abridged from the first edition of 1733.]

THE attempt to write upon Shakespeare is like going into a large, a spacious, and a splendid dome, through the conveyance of a narrow and obscure entry. A glare of light suddenly breaks upon you, beyond what the avenue at first promised, and a thousand beauties of genius and character, like so many gaudy. apartments pouring at once upon the eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the mind. The prospect is too wide to come within the compass of a single view; it is a gay confusion of pleasing objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general admiration, and they must be separated and eyed distinctly in order to give the proper enter

tainment.

And as, in great piles of building, some parts are often furnished up to hit the taste of the connoisseur; others more negligently put together, to strike the fancy of a common and unlearned beholder; some parts are made stupendously magnificent and grand, to surprise with the vast design and execution of the architect; others are contracted, to amuse you with his neatness and elegance in little; so, in Shakespeare, we may