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SIR THOMAS HANMER

S

1677-1746

IR THOMAS HANMER, of a distinguished county family, was born at the family seat in

Hanmer, Suffolk, September 24, 1677, and died May 7, 1746.

He was a student of Christ Church, Oxford, and occupied himself during the entire years of his life with politics of the High-Church tory stamp. In spite of his aristocratic convictions, however, he was one of the keenest advocates for the Protestant Succession. He was a member of Parliament for various constituencies from 1701 to 1727. In 1714 he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons and was in that high office at the death of Queen Anne. Retiring from public life in 1727, he devoted the balance of his days to gardening and literature.

Under the auspices of Oxford University he brought out a superbly printed edition of Shakespeare's works in six volumes, quarto, in 1744. His critical powers were not conspicuous, although some of his readings were of value enough to be adopted by later editors. The Oxford edition was an elegant and ornamental piece of book-making, containing many engravings, a worthy shrine for the great poet's literary remains.

The "Dunciad" has this reference to Hanmer:

"There moved Montalto with superior air,

His stretched out arms displayed a volume fair,
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide

Through both he passed and bowed from side to side."

SIR THOMAS HANMER'S PREFACE

[Prefixed to quarto edition in six volumes, 1744.]

WHAT the public is here to expect is a true and correct edition of Shakespeare's works, cleared from the corruption 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. Thus by degrees the work growing more considerable than was at first expected, they who had the opportunity of looking into it, too partial perhaps in their judgment, thought it worth being made public; and he who hath with difficulty yielded to their persuasions is far from desiring to reflect upon the late editors for the omissions and defects which they left to be supplied by others who should follow them in the same province. On the contrary, he thinks the world much obliged to them for the progress they made in weeding out so great a number of blunders and mistakes as they have done; and probably he who hath carried on the work might never have thought of such an undertaking if he had not found a considerable part so done to his hands.

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From what causes it proceeded that the works of this author, in the first publication of them, were more injured and abused than perhaps any that ever passed the press, hath been sufficiently explained in the preface to Mr. Pope's edition, which is here subjoined, and there needs no more to be said upon that subject. This only the reader is desired to bear in mind, that as the corruptions are more numerous and of a grosser kind than can be well conceived but by those who have looked nearly into them, so in the correcting them this rule hath been most strictly observed, not to give a loose to fancy or indulge a licentious spirit of criticism, as if it were fit for any one to presume to judge what Shakespeare ought to have written, instead of endeavouring to discover truly and retrieve what he did write; and so great caution hath been used in this respect that no alterations have been made but what the sense necessarily required, what the measure of the verse often helped to point out, and what the similitude of words in the false reading and in the true, generally speaking, appeared very well to justify.

Most of these passages are here thrown to the bottom of the page and rejected as spurious, which were stigmatised as such in Mr. Pope's edition, and it were to be wished that more had then undergone the same sentence. The promoter of the present edition hath ventured to discard but few more upon his own judgment, the most considerable of which is that wretched piece of ribaldry in "King Henry the Fifth," put into the mouths of the French princess and an old gentlewoman, improper enough as it is all in French, and not intelligible to an English audience; and yet that perhaps is

1 Act III. 4.

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