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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

THE eternal charm of Shakespeare to the English-speaking peoples is not that of an exotic forced into bloom by the nourishing of the commentators. There were other playwrights and poets in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, whose puppets passed across the stage of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, as popular in their day perhaps as the great dramatist. The play-going world of the twentieth century knows them not at all, and even to students of literature they are hardly more than lists of names. A few stray bits of flotsam and jetsam from the vessels of Marlowe, Jonson and others of that day, have floated down the stream of time. But stately and fair swept on the precious bark of Shakespeare's lading, breasting the rude waves of the Puritan tempest, and riding the shallows of the French reaction, reaching safely the ports of a new world, its bulk undiminished and its value unharmed.

There was no criticism properly so called in the seventeenth century. So far from any attempt to purify the text of Shakespeare, every actor on the stage felt himself authorised to corrupt it by his own additions or emendations. In printing the Folio of 1623, the first complete edition of the dramatist's works, John Heminge and Henry Condell rendered the most precious service to English literature.

The originals, from which more than one-half of the plays were printed in that volume, have never seen the

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light. Perhaps they were destroyed as useless after the Folio went to press, or were worn out in service in the greenroom.

How much or how little revision was performed by the joint editors no one can say. The text of this Folio has become the foundation for all succeeding texts, and I am inclined to think that the actor-managers performed their task with fidelity, however imperfectly, and that they were really editors, not merely reprinters of blotted manuscripts.

The Folio of 1623 is prefaced, among other tributes in prose and verse to the poet's honour, by the first of these famous Introductions by which the spirit of Shakespeare's dramatic work has been interpreted to readers and students.

From this brief foreword "To the Great Variety of Readers," we extract some valuable information as to the condition of the dramatic stage during the Elizabethan cycle, as well as concerning the plays of Shakespeare himself. The semi-humorous opening paragraphs show no shyness on the editor's part at standing in the market place with wares to sell.

"Read, and censure. Doe so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a Book, the Stationer saies."

From this preface we learn that Shakespeare had not edited the plays for a collected edition. "A thing worthy to have been wished." Nevertheless there is abundant evidence that they were edited after a fashion, as many of them that had appeared in single quartos before and after Shakespeare's death up to the year 1623, show changes and alterations in the Folio which presuppose an editor's hand. We argue, therefore, that the other plays received the same attention. Indeed the players

declare as much. They speak of former publications as "maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors ""now offered to your view cured and perfect of their limbes."

To speak thus confidently the players must have had in their possession the manuscripts in original or authenticated copies. "His mind and hand went together," continues the preface," and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

The judgment of his fellow-players that "His wit can no more be hid than it can be lost," registered a few years after his death, has since been adopted in the high court of letters.

With this word of prophecy the thirty-six plays were committed to posterity. Three times in the seventeenth century they were reprinted, 1632, 1664, 1685, with the addition of seven doubtful plays, only one of which ("Pericles," and that not without dispute) holds place in the modern Shakespearean canon.

The Puritan reaction and the Royalist restoration alike acted against the frequent production of the Shakespearean drama; the one by closing the theatres, the other by debauching them. A revival of hybrid adaptations by poets who sought to improve or revamp the dramas to suit the public taste characterised the early part of the eighteenth century. In the first decade of that century, however, arose the beginnings of that school of Shakespearean criticism to which modern students and readers are so deeply indebted.

To Nicholas Rowe, under-Secretary of State and poet laureate, belongs the honour of introducing Shakespeare to the world, by means of a formal biography and handy

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volume edition of the plays. Rowe's "Life," which prefaces the seven octavo volumes (1709), I esteem as the most important of all contributions to Shakespearean literature, next to the plays printed from the lost manuscripts which Heminge and Condell included in their Folio. He took great pains to gather all available material for a story of the poet's life, most of which would surely have been lost to posterity had it not been for his research. Later editors refer in scornful or complaining tones to the "meagre account" given by Rowe. As a matter of fact, however, pretty much all we know of Shakespeare even to this day is contained in that same meagre account. Very few additional facts have been discovered by later students. Documents have been unearthed, leases, wills, and stationers' registers have been exploited, but within those few octavo pages of Rowe are included all of the essential story that will ever be known of the career of William Shakespeare.

The textual value of Rowe's edition is not great. He merely reprinted the fourth Folio, which was itself a reprint that had gathered errors through the careless typographical work of the seventeenth century. But his dramatic instinct and experience led him to perform. a great service for the host of editors and readers who were to follow him, in dividing all of the plays into acts and scenes, prefixing lists of dramatis persona, and so preparing them for intelligent study.

Not until the last great edition of the eighteenth century appeared, that of Edmond Malone with his chronological order of the composition of the plays, and a history of the English stage, was there a contribution to Shakespeare study as notable for its intrinsic value, as this of Rowe.

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How little the first commentator presaged what was to come on the Rialto of criticism, we learn from his deprecatory statement-" And though the works of Mr. Shakespeare may seem to many not to want a commentary, yet I fancy some little account of the man himself may not be thought improper to go along with them."

It is not within the scope of this essay to meddle with questions of textual criticism, but with the contents and value of those introductions, prefaces, and advertisements of the eighteenth century editors which occupy themselves partly with estimates of their predecessors, and partly with setting forth and defending the canons of criticism by which the editors' own contentions are to be judged.

No one editor seems ever to have been satisfied with any other's practice of editorial discrimination. The eighteenth century welkin rang in the most approved fashion with cries of the contestants in the arena of criticism. It must be admitted that a great mass of comment was directed towards the critics rather than fixed upon the Shakespeare text.

Alexander Pope led the way in this battle of the thumbbiters. With his edition (1725) we open the pages of that enormous library of emendations, omissions, notes, comments, and new readings which has gained in bulk, if not always in value, ever since.

His introduction is one of the best, as it was the first, of the all-round critical reviews of Shakespeare's work. He neither worshipped with bespattering praise, nor defiled with superficial censure. His mental attitude is much like that of Richard Grant White among modern editors. Grant White is cantankerous but honest, and

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