The Four Periods.—Such was Shakespeare's development in meter, in taste, in conception of character, and in dramatic technique. In line with this development, it has been customary to divide his literary career into four periods and his plays into four corresponding groups. These groups or periods are characterized partly by their different degrees of maturity, but more by the difference in the character of the plays during these intervals.
The First Period includes all plays which there is good reason for dating before 1595. In this the great dramatist was serving his literary apprenticeship, learning the difficult art of play writing, and learning it by experiments and mistakes. In the course of his experiments, he tried many different types, tragedies, histories, comedies, and rewrote old plays either alone or with a more experienced playwright to help him. Nearly all of this work is full of promise; most of it is also full of faults. Here belong the early comedies mentioned above—Love's Labour's LostandThe Two Gentlemen of Verona. Here is the crude but powerfulRichard III, andRomeo and Juliet, the early faults of which are redeemed by such a wealth of youthful poetic fire.
The Second Period extends roughly from 1595 to 1600. The poet has learned his profession now, is no longer a beginner but a master, though hardly yet at the summit of his powers. Here are included three chronicle plays, the two parts ofKing Henry IVandKing Henry V, and six comedies. One of the earliest of these comedies wasThe Merchant of Venice, already mentioned. Three others, a little later,—Much Ado, TwelfthNight, andAs You Like It,—are usually regarded as Shakespeare's crowning achievement in the world of mirth and humor. In this group of plays, whether history or comedy, the author is depicting chiefly the cheerful, energetic side of life.
The Third Period really begins about 1599, for this and the second overlap; and it continues to about 1608. In the plays of this group the poet becomes interested in a wholly new set of themes. The aspects of life which he interprets are no longer bright and cheerful, but stern and sad. Here come the great tragedies, several of which we have mentioned above—Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare is now at the height of his power, for his greatest masterpieces are included in the above list. Mixed in with this wealth of splendid tragedy (though inferior to it in merit), there are also three comedies. But even the comedies share in the somber gloom which absorbed the poet's attention during this period. The comedies before 1600 had been full of sunshine, brimming with kindly, good-natured mirth, overflowing with the genial laughter which makes us love the very men at whom we are laughing. But the three comedies of this Third Period are bitter and sarcastic in their wit, making us despise the people who furnish us fun, and leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouth after the laugh is over. Some have assumed that the dark tinge of this period was due to an unknown sorrow in the poet's own life, but there seems to be no need of any such assumption. We may become interested in reading cheerful books one year and sad ones the next without being more cheerful ormore sad in one year than in the other; and what is true of the reader might reasonably be true of the writer. But whatever the cause which influenced Shakespeare, the tragedies of this group are the saddest as well as the greatest of all his plays.
The Fourth and last Period contains plays written after 1608-1609. There are only five of these, and sincePericlesandHenry VIIare in large part by other hands, our interest focuses chiefly on the remaining three—The Tempest, Cymbeline, andThe Winter's Tale. All the plays of this period end happily and are wholly free from the bitterness of the Third Period comedy. Nevertheless, they have little of the rollicking, uproarious fun of the earlier comedies. Their charm lies rather in a subdued cheerfulness, a quiet, pure, sympathetic serenity of tone, less strenuous, but even more poetic, than what had gone before. In some ways they are hardly equal to the great tragedies just mentioned, for the poet is growing older now, and the fiery vigor ofMacbethis fading out of his verse. But in loftiness of thought and tenderness of feeling these later romances are equal to anything that the author ever gave us.
Whether other causes influenced him or not, Shakespeare was doubtless in these four periods conforming to some extent to the literary tendencies of the hour. The writings of his contemporaries also show a larger percentage of comedies between 1595-1600 than between 1590-1595. Many other dramatists, too, were writing histories while he was, and dropped them at about the same time. Likewise during his Fourth Period three-quarters of all the plays written by other men were comedies, the most successful of them in a similarromantic tone. On the whole, too, other writers produced a rather larger percentage of tragedies during 1601-1607 than at any other time while Shakespeare was writing, although the change was not nearly as marked in them as in him. But whether the influence of contemporaries was great or small, these periods exist; and the individual plays can be better understood if read in the light of the groups to which they belong.
Perhaps the best book on Shakespeare's development as a dramatist is:The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatistby G. P. Baker (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1907).
[1] These plays are throughout designated asI,II, andIIIHenry VI.
Shakespeare and Plagiarism.—Among the curious alterations in public sentiment that have come in the last century or two, none is more striking than the change of attitude in regard to what is called "plagiarism." Plagiarism may be defined as the appropriation for one's own use of the literary ideas of another. The laws of patent and of copyright have led us into thinking that the ideas of a play must not be borrowed in any degree, but must originate in every detail with the writer. This is as if we should say to an inventor, "Yes, you may have invented a safety trigger for revolvers, but you must not apply it to revolvers until you have invented a completely new type of revolver from the original matchlock."
But the playwright of to-day cannot help plagiarizing his technique, many of his situations, and even his plots from earlier plays; consequently, he tries to conceal his borrowings, to placate public opinion by changing the names and the environment of his characters.
The Elizabethan audiences were less exacting. If a play about King Lear were written and acted with some success, they thought it perfectly honest for another dramatist to use this material in building up a new and better play on the story of King Lear. They caredeven less when the dramatist went to other dramas for hints on minor details. The modern audience, if not the modern world at large, holds the same view. So long as the mind of the borrower transforms and makes his own whatever he borrows, so long will his work be applauded by his audience, whatever be the existing state of the copyright laws or of public fastidiousness.
Hence we do not to-day hunt up the sources of Shakespeare's plots and characters in order to prove plagiarism, but in order to understand just how great was the power of his genius in transmuting common elements into his fine gold.
It is customary to say: "Shakespeare did not invent his plots. He was not interested in plots." So far is this from the truth that the amount of pains and skill spent by him in working over any one of his best comedies or tragedies would more than suffice for the construction of a very good modern plot. It is more true to say of most of his work, "Shakespeare did not waste his time in inventing stories.[1] He took stories where he found them, realized their dramatic possibilities, and spent infinite pains in weaving them together into a harmonious whole."
There is one other point to remember. The sources of Shakespeare's plays were no better literary material than the sources of most Elizabethan plays. Shakespeare's practice in adapting older plays wasthe common practice of the time. We can measure, therefore, the greatness of Shakespeare's achievement by a comparison with what others have made out of similar material.
Just as Shakespeare's plays fall into the groups of history, tragedy, and comedy, so his chief sources are three in number: biography, as found in theChronicleof Holinshed and Plutarch'sLives; romance, as found in the novels of the period, which were most of them translations from Italiannovelle; and dramatic material from other plays.
Holinshed.—Raphael Holinshed (died 1580?) published in 1578 a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland, usually known as Holinshed'sChronicle. The two immense folio volumes contain an account of Britain "from its first inhabiting" up to his own day, largely made up by combining the works of previous historians. TheChroniclebears evidence, however, of enormous and painstaking research which makes it valuable even now. Holinshed's style was clear, but not possessed of any distinctly literary quality. Much of what Shakespeare used was indeed but a paraphrase of an earlier chronicler, Edward Hall. Holinshed was uncritical, too, since he made no attempt to separate the legendary from the truly historical material. So far as drama is concerned, however, this was rather a help than a hindrance, since legend often crystallizes most truly the spirit of a career in an act or a saying which never had basis in fact. The work is notable chiefly for its patriotic tone, of which there is certainly more than an echo in Shakespeare's historical plays. But the effects ofsteadfast continuity of national purpose, of a belief in the greatness of England, and of an insistent appeal to patriotism, which are such important elements in Shakespeare's histories, are totally wanting in Holinshed.
Not only are all of the histories of Shakespeare based either directly or through the medium of other plays upon Holinshed, but his two great tragedies,MacbethandKing Lear(the latter through an earlier play), and his comedyCymbelineare also chiefly indebted to it. The work was, moreover, the source of many plays by other dramatists.
Plutarch.—Plutarch of Chaeronea, a Greek author of the first century A.D., wrote forty-six "parallel" Lives, of famous Greeks and Romans. Each famous Greek was contrasted with a famous Roman whose career was somewhat similar to his own. TheLiveshave been ever since among the most popular of the classics, for they are more than mere biographies. They are the interpretation of two worlds, with all their tragic history, by one who felt the fatal force of a resistless destiny.
A scholarly French translation of Plutarch'sLiveswas published in 1559 by Jacques Amyot, Bishop of Bellozane. Twenty years after (1579) Thomas North, later Sir Thomas, published his magnificent English version.[2] The vigor and spirit which he flung into his work can only be compared to that of William Tyndale in his translation of the New Testament. Here was very different material for drama from thedry bones of history offered by Holinshed. Shakespeare paid North the sincerest compliment by borrowing, particularly inAntony and Cleopatra, andCoriolanus, not only the general story, but whole speeches with only those changes necessary for making blank verse out of prose. The last speeches of Antony and Cleopatra are indeed nearly as impressive in North's narrative form as in Shakespeare's play.
In addition to the tragedies already named,Julius Caesarand almost certainly the suggestion ofTimon of Athens, though not the play as a whole, were taken from Plutarch'sLives. Other Elizabethans were not slow to avail themselves of this unequaled treasure-house of story.
Italian and Other Fiction.—Except for Geoffrey Chaucer (1338-1400), whoseTroilus and CriseydeShakespeare dramatized, and John Gower (died 1408), whoseConfessio Amantisis one of the books out of which the plot ofPericlesmay have come, there was little good English fiction read in the Elizabethan period. Educated people read, instead, Italiannovelle, or short tales, which were usually gathered into some collection of a hundred or so. Many of these were translated into English before Shakespeare's time; and a number of similar collections had been made by English authors, who had translated good stories whenever they found them.
One of these wasGli Heccatommithi, 1565 (The Hundred Tales), by Giovanni Giraldi, surnamed Cinthio, which was later translated into French and was the source ofMeasure for MeasureandOthello. Another collection was that of Matteo Bandello, whoseTales, 1554-1573, translated into French by Belleforest, furnished the sources ofMuch Ado About Nothing, and perhapsTwelfth Night. The greatest of these collections was theDecameron, c. 1353, by Giovanni Boccaccio, one of whose stories, translated by William Painter in hisPalace of Pleasure, 1564, furnished the source ofAll's Well That Ends Well. Another story of theDecameronwas probably the source of the romantic part of the plot ofCymbeline. TheMerry Wives of Windsorhad a plot like the story in Straparola'sTredici Piacevole Notte(1550),Thirteen Pleasant Evenings; andThe Merchant of Veniceborrows its chief plot from Giovanni Florentine'sIl Pecorone.
Two of Shakespeare's plays are based on English novels written somewhat after the Italian manner—As You Like Iton Thomas Lodge's novel-poem,Rosalynde, andThe Winter's Talefrom Robert Greene'sPandosto. TheTwo Gentlemen of Veronais from a Spanish story in the Italian style, theDianaof Jorge de Montemayor. TheComedy of Errorsfrom Plautus is his only play based on classical sources.
The Italiannovelleemphasized situation, but had little natural dialogue and still less characterization. The Elizabethan dramatists used them only for their plots. Never did works of higher genius spring from less inspired sources.
The Plays used by Shakespeare.—Although Shakespeare made up one of his plots, theComedy of Errors, from two plays of Plautus (254-184 B.C.), theMenaechmiandAmphitruo, the rest of the plays he used for material were contemporary work. He borrowed from them plots and situations, andoccasionally even lines. With the exception, however, of one of the early histories, the plays he made use of are in themselves of no value as literature. Their sole claim to notice is that they served the need of the great playwright. None but the student will ever read them. In practically every case Shakespeare so developed the story that the fiction became essentially his own; while the poetic quality of the verse, the development of character, and the heightening of dramatic effect, which he built upon it, left no more of the old play in sight than the statue shows of the bare metal rods upon which the sculptor molds his clay.
Seven histories go back to the earlier plays on the kings of England. The Second and Third Parts ofHenry VIare taken from two earlier plays often called theFirst and Second Contentions(between the two noble houses of York and Lancaster). The First and Second parts ofHenry IV, andHenry V, are all three an expansion of a cruder production, theFamous Victories of Henry V.Richard IIIis based upon theTrue Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York; King John upon the Troublesome Reigne of John, King of England, the latter undoubtedly the best of the sources of Shakespeare's Histories.
King Leir and His Daughtersis the only extant play which is known to have formed the basis of a Shakespearean tragedy. Shakespeare made additions in this case from other sources, borrowing Gloucester's story from Sidney'sArcadia. The earlier play ofHamlet, which it is believed Shakespeare used, is not now in existence.
Among the comedies, theTaming of the Shrewisdirectly based upon theTaming of a Shrew.Measure for Measureis less direct, borrowing from George Whetstone's play in two parts,Promos and Cassandra(written before 1578).
The existence of versions in German and Dutch of plays which present plots similar in structure to Shakespeare's, but less highly developed, leads scholars to advance the theory that several lost plays may have been sources for some of his dramas. Entries or mentions of plays, with details like Shakespeare's, dated earlier than his own plays could have been in existence, are also used to further the same view. TheTwo Gentlemen of Verona, theMerchant of Venice,Romeo and Juliet,Hamlet, and, with less reason,Timon of Athens, andTwelfth Night, are thought to have been based more or less on earlier lost plays.
Finally, a number of plays perhaps suggested details in Shakespeare's plays. Of plays so influenced,Cymbeline,The Winter's Tale, andHenry VIIIare the chief. But the debt is negligible at best, so far as the general student is concerned.
To conclude, what Shakespeare borrowed was the raw material of drama. What he gave to this material was life and art. No better way of appreciating the dramatist at his full worth could be pursued than a patient perusal and comparison of the sources of his plays with Shakespeare's own work.
The best books on this subject are: H. E. D. Anders,Shakespeare's Books(Berlin, 1904);Shakespeare's Library, ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. Hazlitt (London, 1875); and the newShakespeare Librarynow being published by Chatto and Windus, of which several volumes are out.
[1] There are two plays at least which have plots probably original with Shakespeare—Love's Labour's LostandThe Tempest. Both of these draw largely, however, from contemporary history and adventure, and the central idea is directly borrowed from actual events.
[2] It is not unlikely that it was the second edition published in 1595 by Richard Field (Shakespeare's printer) that the poet read.
The Elizabethan audiences who filled to overflowing the theaters on the Bankside possessed a far purer text of Shakespeare than we of this later day can boast. In order to understand our own editions of Shakespeare, it is necessary to understand something, at least, of the conditions of publishing in Shakespeare's day and of the relations of the playhouses with the publishers.
The printing of Shakespeare's poems is an easy tale,Venus and Adonisin 1593, andThe Rape of Lucrecein 1594, were first printed in quarto by Richard Field, a native of Stratford, who had come to London. In each case a dedication accompanying the text was signed by Shakespeare, so that we may guess that the poet not only consented to the printing, but took care that the printing should be accurate. Twelve editions of one, eight of the other, were issued before 1660. The other volume of poetry, the Sonnets, was printed in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, without Shakespeare's consent. Two of them, numbers 138 and 144, had appeared in the collection known asThe Passionate Pilgrim, a pirated volume printed by W. Jaggard in 1599. No reëdition of the Sonnets appeared till 1640.
With regard to the plays it is different. It is firstto be said that in no volume containing a play or plays of Shakespeare in existence to-day is there any evidence that Shakespeare saw it through the press. All we can do is to satisfy ourselves as to how the copy of Shakespeare's plays may have got into the hands of the publishers, and as to how far that copy represents what Shakespeare must have written.
The editions of Shakespearean plays may be divided into two groups,—the separate plays which were printed in quarto[1] volumes before 1623, and the First Folio of Shakespeare, which was printed in 1623, a collected edition of all his plays savePericles. Our text of Shakespeare, whatever one we read, is made up, either from the First Folio text, or in certain cases from the quarto volumes of certain plays which preceded the Folio; together with the attempts to restore to faulty places what Shakespeare must have written—a task which has engaged a long line of diligent scholars from early in the eighteenth century up to our own day.
The Stationers' Company.—In the early period of English printing, which began about 1480 and lasted up to 1557, there was very little supervision over the publishing of books, and as a result the competition was unscrupulous. There was a guild of publishers, calledthe Stationers' Company, in existence, but its efforts to control its members were only of a general character. In 1557, however, Philip and Mary granted a charter to the Stationers' Company under which no one not a member of the Stationers' Company could legally possess a printing press. Queen Mary was, of course, interested in controlling the press directly through the Crown. Throughout the Elizabethan period the printing of books was directly under the supervision of Her Majesty's Government, and not under the law courts. Every book had to be licensed by the company. The Wardens of the company acted as licensers in ordinary cases, and in doubtful cases the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or some other dignitary appointed for the purpose. When the license was granted, the permission to print was entered upon the Register of the company, and it is from these records that much important knowledge about the dates of Shakespeare's plays is gained.
The Stationers' Company was interested only in protecting its members from prosecution and from competition. The author was not considered by them in the legal side of the transaction. How the printer got his manuscript to print was his own affair, not theirs.
Many authors were at that time paid by printers for the privilege of using their manuscript; but it was not considered proper that a gentleman should be paid for literary work. Robert Greene, the playwright and novelist, wrote regularly in the employ of printers. On the other hand, Sir Philip Sidney, a contemporaryof Shakespeare's, did not allow any of his writings to be printed during his lifetime. Francis Bacon published his essays only in order to forestall an unauthorized edition, and others of the time took the same course. Bacon says in his preface that to prevent their being printed would have been a troublesome procedure. It was possible for an author to prevent the publication by prosecution, but it was scarcely a wise thing to do, in view of the legal difficulties in the way. Nevertheless, fear of the law probably acted as some sort of a check on unscrupulous publishers.
The author of a play was, however, really less interested than the manager who had bought it. The manager of a theater seems, from what evidence we possess, to have believed that the printing of a play injured the chances of success upon the stage. The play was sold by the author directly to the manager, whose property it became. Copies of it might be sold to some printer by some of the players in the company, by the manager himself, or, in rarer cases, by some unscrupulous copyist taking down the play in shorthand at the performance. When a play had got out of date, it would be more apt to be sold than while it was still on the stage. In some cases, however, the printing might have no bad effect upon the attendance at its performances.
During the years before 1623, seventeen of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto. Two of these,Romeo and JulietandHamlet, were printed in two very different versions, so that we have nineteen texts of Shakespeare's plays altogether published before the First Folio. A complete table of theseplays with the dates in which the quartos appeared follows:—
1594. Titus Andronicus. Later quartos in 1600 and 1611.1597. Richard II. Later quartos in 1598, 1608, and 1615.1597. Richard III. Later quartos in 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612, and 1622.1597. Romeo and Juliet. Later quartos in 1599 (corrected edition) and 1609.1598. I Henry IV. Later quartos in 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, and 1622.1598. Love's Labour's Lost.1600. Merchant of Venice. Later quarto in 1619. (Copyingon the title-page the original date of 1600, however.)1600. Henry V. Later quartos in 1602 and 1619. (Dated on the title-page, 1608.)1600. Henry IV, Part II.1600. Midsummer Night's Dream. Later quarto in 1619. (Dated, however, 1600.)1602. Merry Wives of Windsor. Later quarto in 1619.1603. Hamlet.1604. Second edition of Hamlet. Later quartos in 1605 and 1611.1608. King Lear. Later quarto in 1619. (Title-page date, 1608.)1608. Pericles. Later quartos in 1609, 1611, and 1619.1609. Troilus and Cressida. A second quarto in 1609.1622. Othello.
These are all the known quartos of Shakespeare's plays printed before the Folio. They represent two distinct classes. The first class (comprising fourteen texts) of the quartos contains good texts of the plays and is of great assistance to editors. The second (comprising five texts), the firstRomeo and Juliet, Henry V, Merry Wives, the firstHamlet, andPericles,is composed of thoroughly bad copies. Two of this class were not entered on the Stationers' Register at all, but were pure piracies. Two others were entered by one firm, but were printed by another. The fifth was entered and transferred on the same day. Of the fourteen good texts, twelve were regularly entered on the Stationers' Register, and the other two were evidently intended to take the place of a bad text. It is evident, therefore, that registry upon the books of the Stationers' Company was a safeguard to an author in getting before the public a good text of his writings. It also indicates that the good copies were obtained by printers in a legal manner, and so probably purchased directly from the theaters, whether from the copy which the prompter had, or from some transcript of the play. The notion that all plays were printed in Shakespeare's time by a process of piracy is thus not borne out by these facts.
The five bad quartos deserve a moment's attention. The first of these,Romeo and Juliet, printed and published by John Danter in 1597, omits over seven hundred lines of the play, and the stage directions are descriptions rather than definite instructions. The book is printed in two kinds of type, a fact due probably to its being printed from two presses at once. Danter got into trouble later on with other books from his dishonest ways. The second poor quarto,Henry V, printed in 1600, was less than half as long as the Folio text, and was probably carelessly copied by an ignorant person at a performance of the play. The third, theMerry Wives of Windsor, was pirated through the publisher ofHenry V, John Busby, who assigned hispart to another printer on the same day. As in the case ofRomeo and Juliet, the stage directions are mere descriptions. No play of Shakespeare's was more cruelly bungled by an unscrupulous copyist. The first edition ofHamletin 1603 was the work of Valentine Sims. While the copying is full of blunders, this quarto is considered important, as indicating that the play was acted at first in a much shorter and less artistic version than the one which we now read. For eight months of 1603-1604 the theaters of London were closed on account of the plague, and Shakespeare's revision ofHamletmay have been made during this time. At any rate, the later version appeared about the end of 1604. The last of these pirated quartos,Pericles, was probably taken down in shorthand at the theater. Here, unfortunately, as this play was not included in the First Folio, and as all later quartos were based on the First Quarto, we have to-day what is really a corrupt and difficult text. Luckily, Shakespeare's share in this play is small.
The title-pages of the quartos of Shakespeare bear convincing testimony, not only to the genuineness of his plays, but also to his rise in reputation. Only six of his plays were printed in quartos not bearing his name. Of these, two—Romeo and JulietandHenry V—began with pirated editions not bearing the author's name. Three—Richard II, Richard III, I Henry IV—were all followed by quartos with the poet's name upon them. The sixth play,Titus Andronicus, was one of his earliest works, and its authorship is even now not absolutely certain.
Since the name of a popular dramatist on thetitle-page was a distinct source of revenue to the publisher after 1598, it was to be expected that anonymous plays should be ascribed in some cases to William Shakespeare by an unscrupulous or a misinformed printer. Here arose the Shakespeare 'apocrypha,' which is discussed in a following chapter.
A new problem in the history of Shakespearean quartos has been presented since 1903 by a study of the quartos of 1619. Briefly summarized, the theory which is best defended at the present time is, that in that year Thomas Pavier and William Jaggard, two printers of London, decided at first to get up a collected quarto edition of Shakespeare's plays, but on giving up this idea, they issued nine plays in a uniform size and on paper bearing identical watermarks, which were either at that time or later bound up together as a collected set of Shakespeare's plays in a single volume.[2] These plays are theWhole Contention Between the Two Famous Houses of Lancaster and York, "printed for T. P.";A Yorkshire Tragedie, "printed for T. P., 1619";Pericles, "printed for T. P. 1619";Merry Wives, "printed for Arthur Johnson, 1619";Sir John Oldcastle, "printed for T. P., 1600";Henry V, "printed for T. P., 1608";Merchant of Venice, "printed by J. Roberts, 1600";King Lear, "printed for Nathaniel Butter, 1608";Midsummer Night's Dream, "printed for Thomas Fisher, 1600."
Of these plays, theWhole Contention, theYorkshireTragedie, andSir John Oldcastleare spurious, but had been attributed to Shakespeare in earlier quartos. The five plays dated 1600 or 1608 in each case duplicated a quarto actually printed in the year claimed by the Pavier reprint; so that this earlier dating was an attempt to deceive the public into believing they were purchasing the original editions.
Under the date of the 8th of November, 1623, Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard entered for their copy in the Stationers' Register "Mr. William Shakspeers Comedyes, Histories and Tragedyes, soe manie of the said copyes as are not formerly entred to other men vizt, Comedyes, The Tempest. The two gentlemen of Verona. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errors. As you like it. All's well that ends well. Twelfth Night. The winter's tale. Histories The third parte of Henry the sixth. Henry the eight. Tragedies. Coriolanus. Timon of Athens. Julius Caesar. Mackbeth. Anthonie and Cleopatra. Cymbeline." This entry preluded the publication of the First Folio. Associated with Blount and Jaggard were Jaggard's son Isaac, who had the contract for the printing of the book, I. Smethwick, and W. A. Aspley. Smethwick owned at this time the rights ofLove's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, andHamlet, and also theTaming of a Shrew, which latter right apparently carried with it the right to print Shakespeare's adaptation of it, theTaming of the Shrew. Aspley owned the rights toMuch Ado About Nothing, and toII Henry IV. These four printers, making arrangements with other printers, such as Law, who apparently had the rights ofI Henry IV, Richard II,andRichard III, and others, were thus able to bring out an apparently complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. One play,Troilus and Cressida, was evidently secured only at the last moment and printed very irregularly.[3] Blount and Jaggard apparently got the manuscripts of the sixteen plays on the Register from members of Shakespeare's company, two of whom, John Hemings and Henry Condell, affixed their names to the Address to the Reader which was prefixed to the volume. It will be remembered that these men received by Shakespeare's bequest a gold ring as a token of friendship. Their intimacy with the dramatist must have been both strong and lasting. Their actual share in the editing of the volume cannot be ascertained. It may be that all the claims are true which are made above their names in the Address to the Reader as to their care and pains in collecting and publishing his works "so to have publish'd them as where before you were abused with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed, the stealthes of injurious copyists, we expos'd them; even those are now offer'd to your view, crude and bereft of their limbes, and of the rest absolutely in their parts 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 told with that easinesse that wee have scarse received from him ablot in his papers." On the other hand, scholarship has discovered more in the life of Edward Blount to justify his claim to the chief work of editing this volume. Whoever they were, the editors' claim to diligent care in their work was sincere. Throughout the volume there are proofs that they employed the best text which they could get, even when others were in print.
It is owing to this volume, in all probability, that we possess twenty of the best of Shakespeare's plays and the best texts of a number of the others. We are therefore glad to hear that the edition was a success and was considered worth reprinting within nine years. It is not improbable that this edition ran to five hundred copies. Among the most interesting work of the editors of the volume was the prefixing of the Droeshout engraved portrait on the title-page, and an attempt to improve the stage directions, as well as the division of most of the plays, either in whole or in part, into acts and scenes.
The twenty plays which appeared in print for the first time in the First Folio were taken in all probability directly from copies in the possession of Shakespeare's company. Their texts are, upon the whole, excellent. In the case of the sixteen other plays the editors substituted for eight of the plays already in print in quartos, independent texts from better manuscripts. This act must have involved considerable expense and difficulty, and deserves the highest praise. Five of the printed quartos were used with additions and corrections. In the case ofTitus Andronicusa whole scene was added. In three cases onlyof the sixteen plays already printed did the editors follow a quarto text without correcting it from a later theatrical copy. This conscientious effort to give posterity the best text of Shakespeare deserves our gratitude.
The Second Folio, 1632, was a reprint of the First; the Third Folio, 1663, a reprint of the Second; the Fourth Folio, 1685, a reprint of the Third. This practice of copying the latest accessible edition has been adopted by editors down to a very late period. Between 1629 and 1632 six quartos of Shakespearean plays were printed,—a fact which indicates that the First Folio edition had been exhausted and that there was a continued market. A man named Thomas Cotes acquired through one Richard Cotes the printing rights of the Jaggards, and added to them other rights derived from Pavier. The old publishers, Smethwick and Aspley, were still living and were associated with him in publishing the Second Folio. Robert Allott, June 26, 1629, had bought up Blount's title to the plays first registered in 1623, and was thus also concerned in the publication, while Richard Hawkins and Richard Meighen, who owned the rights ofOthelloandMerry Wives, were allowed to take shares. The editors of the Second Folio made only such alterations in the text of the First Folio as they thought necessary to make it more "correct." The vast majority of the changes are unimportant grammatical corrections, some of them obviously right, others as obviously wrong.
Five more Shakespearean quartos followed between 1634 and 1639. Between 1652 and 1655 two otherquartos were published. The Third Folio, 1664, was published by Philip Chetwind, who had married the widow of Robert Allott and thus got most of the rights in the Second Folio. Chetwind's Folio is famous, not only for the addition ofPericles, which alone it was his first intention to include, but also for the addition of six spurious plays—Sir John Oldcastle, The Yorkshire Tragedie, A London Prodigall, The Tragedie of Locrine, Thomas, Lord Cromwell, andThe Puritaine, orThe Widdow of Watling Streete. Chetwind's reason for thus adding these plays was that they had passed under Shakespeare's name or initials in their earliest prints. The Fourth Folio, 1685, is a mere reprint of the Third.
With the Fourth Folio ends the early history of how Shakespeare got into print. From that time to this a long line of famous and obscure men, at first mostly men of letters, but afterwards, and especially in our own times, trained specialists in their profession, have devoted much of their lives to the editing of Shakespeare. Their ideal has been, usually, to give readers the text of his poems and plays in their presumed primitive integrity. Constant study of his works, and of other Elizabethan writers, has given them a certain knowledge of the words and grammatical usages of that day which go far to make Elizabethan English a foreign tongue to us. On the other hand, more knowledge about the conditions of printing in Shakespeare's time has helped the editors very greatly in their attempts to set right a passage which was misprinted in the earliest printed text, or a line of which two early texts give different versions.
An example of the difficulties that still confront editors may be given fromII Henry IV, IV, i, 94-96:—
"Archbishop. My brother general, the commonwealth,To brother born, an household cruelty.I make my quarrel in particular."
Nobody knows what Shakespeare meant to say in this passage, and no satisfactory guess has ever been made as to what has happened to these lines.
A knowledge of Elizabethan English has cleared up the following passage perfectly. According to the First Folio, the only early print, Antony calls Lepidus, inJulius Caesar, IV, i, 36-37:—
"A barren-spirited fellow; one that feedsOn objects, arts, and imitations...."
This has been corrected to read in the second line
"On abjects, orts, and imitations."
Abjects here means outcasts, and orts, scraps, or leavings; but no one unfamiliar with the language of that time could have solved the puzzle.
A different sort of problem is offered by such plays asKing Lear, of which the quartos furnish three hundred lines not in the Folio, while the Folio has one hundred lines not in the quartos, and is, on the whole, much more carefully copied. The modern editor gives all the lines in both versions, so that we read aKing Learwhich is probably longer than Shakespeare's countrymen read or ever saw acted. The modern editor selects, however, when Folio and quartos differ, the reading which seems best.
FOLIO. "Cordelia. Was this a faceTo be opposed against thejarringwinds?"
QUARTOS. "Was this a faceTo be opposed against thewarringwinds?"
In such a difference as this, the personal taste of the editor is apt to govern his text.
We cannot here go farther in explaining the problems of the Shakespeare text. To those who would know more of them, theVariorumedition of Dr. H. H. Furness offers a full history. In the light of the knowledge which he and other scholars have thrown upon textual criticism, it is unlikely that there will ever be poor texts of Shakespeare reprinted. The work of the Shakespeare scholars has not been in vain.
Later Editions.—Nicholas Rowe in 1709 produced the first edition in the modern sense. He modernized the spelling frankly, repunctuated, corrected the grammar, made out lists of the dramatis personae, arranged the verse which was in disorder, and made a number of good emendations in difficult places. He added also exits and entrances, which in earlier prints were only inserted occasionally. Further, he completed the division of the plays into acts and scenes. Perhaps his most important work was writing a full life of Shakespeare in which several valuable traditions are preserved. The poems were not included in the edition, but were published in 1716 from the edition of 1640. He followed the Third and Fourth Folios in reprinting the spurious plays. The edition was reprinted in 1714, 1725, and 1728.
In 1726 Alexander Pope published his famous edition of Shakespeare. Pope possessed a splendid lot of the old quartos and the first two folios, but his edition was wantonly careless. He did, indeed, use some sense in excluding the seven spurious plays as well asPericlesfrom his edition, and he undoubtedlyworked hard on the text. He subdivided the scenes more minutely than Rowe after the fashion of the French stage division,—where a new scene begins with every new character instead of after the stage has been cleared. Pope's explanations of the words which appeared difficult in Shakespeare's text were often laughably far from the truth. The word 'foison,' meaning 'plenty,' Pope defined as the 'natural juice of grass.' The word 'neif,' meaning 'fist,' Pope thought meant 'woman.' Pistol is thus made to say, "Thy woman will I take." Phrases that appeared to be vulgar or unpoetical he simply dropped out, or altered without notice. He rearranged the lines in order to give them the studied smoothness characteristic of the eighteenth century. In fact, he tried to make Shakespeare as near like Pope's poetry as he could.
In 1726 Lewis Theobald publishedShakespeare Restored, with many corrections of Pope's errors. In this little pamphlet most of the material was devoted toHamlet. Theobald's corrections were taken by Pope in very bad part; and the latter tried to destroy Theobald's reputation by writing satires against him and by injuring him in every possible way in print. The first of these publications,The Dunciad, appeared in 1728; and this, the greatest satire in the English language, was so effective as to have obscured Theobald's real merit until our own day. Theobald's edition of Shakespeare followed in 1734, and was reprinted in 1740. It is famous for his corrections and improvements of the text, many of which are followed by all later editors of Shakespeare. The most notable of these is Mrs. Quickly's remark in Falstaff's deathbed scene, "His nose was as sharp as a pen and a' babbled of green fields." The previous texts had given "and a table of green fields." Pope had said that this nonsense crept in from the name of the property man who was named Greenfield, and thus there must have been a stage direction here,—"Bring in a table of Greenfield's."
Theobald's edition was followed in 1744 by Thomes Hanmer's edition in six volumes. Hanmer was a country gentleman, but not much of a scholar.
Warburton's edition followed in 1747. In 1765 appearedSamuel Johnson's long-delayed edition in eight volumes. Aside from a few common-sense explanations, the edition is not of much merit.
Tyrwhitt's edition in 1766 was followed by a reprint of twenty of the early quartos by George Steevens in the same year. Two years later came the edition of Edward Capell, the greatest scholarly work since Theobald's. In this edition was the first rigorous comparison between the readings of the folios and the quartos. His quartos, now in the British Museum, are of the greatest value to Shakespeare scholars. With his edition begins the tendency to get back to the earliest form of the text and not to try to improve Shakespeare to the ideal of what the editor thinks Shakespeare should have said.
In 1773 Johnson's edition was revised by Steevens, andPericleswas readmitted. This was a valuable but crotchety edition. In 1790 Edmund Malone published his famous edition in ten volumes. No Shakespearean scholar ranks higher than he in reputation. Numerous editions followed up to 1865, of which the most important is James Boswell's so-called ThirdVariorumin twenty-one volumes. In 1855-1861 was published J. O. Halliwell's edition in fifteen volumes, which contains enormous masses of antiquarian material.
In 1853 appeared the forgeries of J. P. Collier, to which reference is made elsewhere.
In 1854-1861 appeared the edition in Germany of N. Delius. The Leopold Shakespeare, 1876, used Delius's text.
In 1857-1865 appeared the first good American edition of R. G. White. It contained many original suggestions. Between 1863 and 1866 appeared the edition of Clark and Wright, known as the Cambridge edition. Mr. W. Aldis Wright, now the dean of living Shakespearean scholars, is chiefly responsible for this text. It was reprinted with a few changes into the Globe edition, and is still the chief popular text.
Prof. W. A. Neilson's single volume in the Cambridge series, 1906, is the latest scholarly edition in America. It follows in most cases the positions taken by Clark and Wright.
Within the last few years there has been an enormousstimulus to Shakespeare study. The chief work of modern Shakespearean scholarship is the still incompleteVariorumedition of Dr. H. H. Furness and his son.
Other aids to study are reprints of the books used by Shakespeare, facsimile reprints of the original quartos of the plays, and, perhaps as useful as any one thing, the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio. The few perplexing problems that the scholar still finds in the text of Shakespeare will probably never be solved.
On the subject of this chapter, consult A. W. Pollard,Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, Methuen, London, 1910; Sidney Lee, Introduction to the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio by the Oxford University Press; T. R. Lounsbury,The Text of Shakespeare, New York, Scribners, 1906. For the remarks of critics and editors, theVariorumedition of Dr. H. H. Furness is invaluable.