FOOTNOTES:

Mr. Blount: Isaak Jaggard. Entred for their copie under the hands of MrDoctor Worrall and MrCole, Warden, MrWilliam 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. Twelft Night. The winters tale. Histories. The thirde part of Henry the sixt. Henry the eight. Tragedies. Coriolanus. Timon of Athens. Julius Cæsar. Mackbeth. Anthonie and Cleopatra. Cymbeline.

One notes here the omission of1and2 Henry VI,King John, andThe Taming of the Shrew, which had neither been previously entered nor issued in Quarto. This is probably due to the fact that three of these are based on older plays of which Quartos exist, which may have seemed to the publishers reason enough to save their sixpences. If we assume that "The thirde part of Henry the sixt" is a misprint for "The first part,"the explanation covers the whole case. The registration ofAntony and Cleopatrawas superfluous, as it had been entered, though not printed, so far as we know, on May 20, 1608.

There are thus in the First Folio, the publication of which immediately followed this entry in 1623, twenty plays not before issued, for which the text of this volume is our sole authority. The emphasis so commonly placed on the supreme value of the text of the First Folio is justified with regard to these twenty plays; as for the remaining seventeen, its importance is shared, in proportions varying from play to play, with the texts of the Quartos. The sources from which the compilers of the Folio obtained their new material were in all probability playhouse copies, as in the case of the better Quartos. Heminge and Condell, Shakespeare's actor colleagues and friends, who sign the Address to the Readers,[9]would obviously be the instruments for obtaining such copies. As for the so-called "private transcripts" which some have postulated as a source of material, there is no evidence that at this date any such existed. Whether any of the playhouse manuscripts provided by Heminge and Condell were in Shakespeare's autograph we can neither affirm nor deny, but it is well to be cautious in accepting at its face value the implication contained in their words that they had "scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

The Title Page of the First Folio(From the copy in the New York Public Library.)

The First FolioThe First Folio is a large volume of 908 pages, measuring in the tallest extant copy 13⅜ x 8½ inches. A reduced facsimile of the title page with the familiar wood-cut portrait appears on the opposite page. The text is printed in two columns with sixty-six lines to a column. The typography is only fairly good, and many mistakes occur in the pagination. Extant copies, of which there are at least 156, vary in some respects, on account of the practice of making corrections while the sheets were being printed. The printer was William Jaggard, and his associates in the publishing enterprise were his son Isaac and the booksellers, William Aspley, John Smethwick, and Edward Blount. Estimates of the size of the edition vary from five to six hundred.

Many of the causes which made the text of these early editions inaccurate are common to all the plays, while some are peculiar to those obtained by reporters in the theater. Of the first, the most fundamental is, of course, the illegibility or ambiguity of the author's original manuscript. Such flaws were perpetuated and multiplied with each successive transcript, and when the manuscript copy came into the printer's hands, the errors of the compositor—confusion of words sounding alike, of words looking alike, unconscious substitution of synonyms, mere manual slips, and the like—were added to those already existing. The absence of any uniform spelling, and carelessness in punctuation, which led to these being freely modified by the printer, increased the risk of corruption. Thepunctuation of both Quartos and Folio, though by no means without weight, cannot be regarded as having the author's sanction, and all modernized editions re-punctuate with greater or less freedom. Most nineteenth-century editors carry on with minor modifications the punctuation of Pope, so that their texts show a composite of sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century methods; the text used in the Tudor edition is frankly punctuated, as far as the syntax permits, according to modern methods, with, it is believed, no loss in authority. There is no clear evidence that, in such productions as plays, proof was read outside of the printing-office. The theory, insisted on by Dr. Furness in successive volumes of theNew Variorum Shakespeare, that the Elizabethan compositor set type to dictation is without foundation, the phenomena which he seeks to explain by it occurring commonly to-day when there is no question of such a practice.

Another class of variation in text arose from the treatment of the manuscript in the playhouse. Cuts, additions, and alterations were made for acting purposes, stage directions were added with or without the assistance of the author, revivals of the play called for revision by the original writer or another. The majority of stage directions in modern editions, except exits and entrances, are due to editors from Rowe onwards, and these unauthorized additions are distinguished in the Tudor edition by brackets. AlmostCorruptions of Textall notes of place at the beginnings of scenes belong to this class.

The defects to which the texts of the surreptitiously obtained Quartos are particularly subject include omissions and alterations due to lapse of memory on the part of the actors, additions due to the tendency to improvise which Shakespeare censures inHamlet, omissions due to the reporter's failure to hear or to write quickly enough, garbled paraphrases made up to supply such omissions, and the writing of prose as verse and verse as prose.

Such are the most important of the causes of the corruptions which the long series of editors of Shakespeare have devoted their study and their ingenuity to remedying. The series really begins with the second Folio of 1632 and is continued with but slight improvements in the third Folio of 1663, reprinted with the addition ofPericlesand six spurious plays in 1664, and in the fourth Folio of 1685. The emendations made in the seventeenth-century editions are mainly modernizations in spelling and such minor changes as occurred to members of the printing staff. In no case do they have any authority except such as may be supposed to belong to a man not far removed from Shakespeare in date; and they add about as many mistakes as they remove.

The difficulty of the task of the modern editor varies greatly from play to play. It is least in the twenty plays for which the First Folio is the sole authority,greater in the eight in which the Folio reprints a Quarto with some variations, greatest in the nine in which Folio and Quarto represent rival versions. In these last cases, it is the duty of the editor to decide from all the accessible data which version has the best claim to represent the author's intention, and to make that a basis to be departed from only in clear cases of corruption. The temptation, which no editor has completely resisted, is naturally towards an eclecticism which adopts the reading that seems most plausible in itself, without giving due weight to the general authority of the text chosen as a basis. If carried far, such eclecticism results in a patchwork quite distinct from any version that Shakespeare can have known.

The first editor of Shakespeare, in the modern sense, was Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate under Queen Anne. He published in 1709 an edition of the plays in six octavo volumes, preceded by the first formal memoir of the dramatist, and furnished with notes. The poems were issued in the following year in similar form, with essays by Gildon. Rowe based his text upon that of the fourth Folio, with hardly any collation of previous editions. He corrected a large number of the more obvious corruptions, the most notable of his emendations being perhaps the phrase inTwelfth Night, "Some are become great," which he changed to "Some are born great." On the external aspect of the plays Rowe has left a deeper mark than any subsequent editor. In the Folios only eight of theRowe and Popeplays had lists ofdramatis personæ; Rowe supplied them for the rest. In the Folios the division into acts and scenes is carried out completely in only seventeen cases, it is partially done in thirteen, and in six it is not attempted at all. Rowe again completed the work, and though some of his divisions have been modified and others should be, he performed this task with care and intelligence. He modernized the spelling and the punctuation, completed the exits and entrances, corrected many corrupt speech-tags, and arranged many passages where the verse was disordered. In virtue of these services, he must, in spite of his leaving much undone, be regarded as one of the most important agents in the formation of our modern text.

A second edition of Rowe's Shakespeare was published in 1714, and in 1725 appeared a splendid quarto edition in six volumes, edited by Alexander Pope. In his preface Pope made strong professions of his good faith in dealing with the text. "I have discharged," he said, "the dull duty of an editor to my best judgment, with more labor than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture.... The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that anyone may compare 'em; and those I have preferred into the text are constantlyex fide codicum, upon authority.... The more obsolete or unusual words are explained." Hardly one of these statementsis entirely true. Pope possessed copies of the first and second Folios, and at least one Quarto of each play that had been printed before 1623, exceptMuch Ado, but these he consulted only occasionally, and seldom registered the variants as he said he had done. When he did, he gave no clue to their source. He constantly inserted his private conjectures without notice, and his explanations of difficult expressions are few and frequently wrong. Passages considered by him inferior or spurious he relegated to the foot of the pages; others he merely omitted without notice. His ear was often jarred by the freedom of Shakespeare's verse, and he did his best to make it "regular" by eighteenth-century standards. Yet Pope spent much ingenuity in striving to better the text, and no small number of restorations and emendations are to be credited to him, especially in connection with the arrangement of the verse. He is to be credited also with discernment in rejecting the seven plays added to the Shakespearean canon in the third Folio, of which onlyPericleshas since been restored.

The weaknesses of Pope's edition did not long remain hidden. In the spring of 1726 appeared "Shakespeare Restored: or, a Specimen of the many Errors, as well committed, as unamended, by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this Poet. Designed not only to correct the said edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet publish'd." Lewis Theobald, the author, was a translator and scholar,Theobald and Hanmermuch better equipped than Pope for the work of editing, and his merciless exposure of Pope's defects gave a foretaste of the critical ability later displayed in the edition of Shakespeare which he published in 1734. Lovers of Shakespeare discerned at the time the service performed by Theobald in this attack on Pope, but the publication in 1728 of the first edition of theDunciad, with Theobald as hero, gave Pope his revenge, and cast over the reputation of his critic a cloud which is only now dispersing. Modern scholarship, however, has come to recognize the primacy of Theobald among emendators of Shakespeare's text, and the most famous of his contributions, his correction of "a table of green fields" to "'a babled of green fields," in Quickly's account of the death of Falstaff inHenry V, II. iii. 17, is only a specially brilliant example of the combination of acuteness, learning, and sympathy which made his edition a landmark in the history of the text. For many of his troubles, however, Theobald was himself to blame; he attacked his opponents with unnecessary vehemence, as he expressed his appreciation of his own work with unnecessary emphasis; he was not always candid as to what he owed to others, even to the despised edition of Pope, from which he printed; and he indulged his appetite for conjecture at times beyond reasonable bounds.

Theobald's edition was followed in 1744 by that of Sir Thomas Hanmer in six beautifully printed volumes. This edition is based on that of Pope, and even goesfarther than Pope's in relegating to the foot of the page passages supposed unworthy. Hanmer performed no collating worth mentioning, but made some acute conjectures.

The student is apt to be prejudiced against the work of William Warburton on account of the extravagance of his claims and his ungenerous treatment of predecessors to whom he was greatly indebted. "The Genuine Text," he announced, "(collated with all former editions and then corrected and emended) is here settled: Being restored from the Blunders of the first editors and the Interpolations of the two Last"; yet he based his text on Theobald's and joined Pope's name with his own on the title-page. Whatever value belongs to Warburton's edition (1747) lies in a number of probable conjectural emendations, some of which he had previously allowed Theobald to use, and in the amusing bombast and arrogance of many of his notes. The feeble support that lay behind the pretensions of this editor was exposed by a number of critics such as John Upton, Zachary Grey, Benjamin Heath, and Thomas Edwards, who did not issue new editions, but contributed a considerable number of corrections and interpretations.

The value of Dr. Johnson's edition (1765) does not lie in his emendations, which are usually, though not always, poor, or in his collation of older editions, for which he was too indolent, but in the sturdy common-sense of his interpretations and the consummate skillJohnson and Capellfrequently shown in paraphrases of obscure passages. His Preface to the edition was the most weighty general estimate of Shakespeare so far produced, and remains a valuable piece of criticism. In scientific treatment of the text, involving full use of all the Quartos and Folios then accessible, Johnson and his predecessors were far surpassed by Edward Capell, who issued his edition in ten volumes in 1768. Unfortunately, the enormous labor Capell underwent did not bear its full fruit, for he suppressed much of his textual material in the interests of a well-printed page, and his preface and notes are written in a crabbed style that obscures the acuteness of his editorial intelligence. He elaborated stage directions, and carried farther the correction of disarranged meter; but, like most of his fellow-editors in that century, he did less than justice to his predecessors and was too indulgent to his own conjectures. This edition was supplemented by volumes of notes published in 1775 (1 vol.) and 1779-1783 (3 vols.).

Before the publication of Capell's text, the antiquary George Steevens had issued in 1766 reprints of twenty of the early Quartos; and in 1773 he produced, in association with Johnson, an edition with a good text in which he benefited from Capell's labors (though he denies this). Through his knowledge of Elizabethan literature he made substantial contributions to the interpretation of difficult passages. He restoredPericlesto a place in the canon, but excluded thePoems, because"the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service." To the second edition of Johnson and Steevens's text (1778) Edmund Malone contributed his famous "Essay on the Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays," which began modern investigation of this subject. The third edition was revised in 1785 by Isaac Reed; and this was succeeded by the edition of Malone in 1790, in which the vast learning and conscientious care of that scholar combined to produce the most trustworthy text so far published. Malone was not brilliant, but he was extremely erudite and candid, and his so-called "Third Variorum" edition in twenty-one volumes, brought out after his death by James Boswell in 1821, is a mine of information on theatrical history and cognate matters, which will probably always be of value to students of the period. The name of "First Variorum Edition" is given to the fifth edition of Johnson and Steevens, revised by Reed in 1803, and "Second Variorum" to the sixth edition of the same, 1813. Meantime occasional critiques of complete editions contributed something to the text. Johnson's edition called forth comment by Kendrick in 1765 and Tyrwhitt in 1766, and the Johnson and Steevens text was criticized by Joseph Ritson in 1783 and 1788, and by J. Monck Mason in 1785. The first American edition was published in Philadelphia in 1795-1796 from Johnson's text; the first continental edition at Brunswick in 1797-1801 by C. Wagner.

Nineteenth-Century EditorsThe editions of the nineteenth century are too numerous for detailed mention here. Passing by the "family" Shakespeare of T. Bowdler, 1807 and 1820, and the editions of Harness, 1825, and Singer, 1826, we note the editions of 1838-1842, and 1842-1844 in which Charles Knight resorted to the text of the First Folio as an exclusive authority. J. P. Collier in his edition of 1844 leaned, on the other hand, to the side of the Quartos, but later became a clever if somewhat rash emendator, who spoiled his reputation by seeking to obtain authority for his guesses by forging them in a seventeenth-century hand in a copy of the second Folio. The colossal volumes of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps's edition, 1853-1865, contain stores of antiquarian illustration; and in the edition of Delius, 1854-1861, we have the chief contribution of Germany to the text of Shakespeare. Delius, like Knight, though not to the same extreme, exaggerated the authority of the First Folio; but for the plays for which that is the sole source, his text has earned high respect. Alexander Dyce, wisest of Elizabethan scholars, produced in 1857 a characteristically sane text, on the whole the best to this date; while in America in 1857-1860 and 1859-1865 the brilliant but erratic Richard Grant White produced editions which show a commendable if puzzling openness to conviction in successive changes of opinion.

From 1863 to 1866 appeared the first issue of the Cambridge Shakespeare, edited originally by W. G.Clark, J. Glover, and W. A. Wright. The responsibility for the later revised edition of 1891-3 is Dr. Wright's. The exceedingly careful and exhaustive collation of all previous textual readings in the notes of this edition make it indispensable for the serious student, and its text, substantially reprinted in the Globe edition, is the most widely accepted form of the works of Shakespeare which has ever been circulated. The over-emphasis on the First Folio which has been noted in Knight and Delius is no longer found here, and in general the comparative value of Quarto and Folio is weighed in the case of each play. Occasionally, in cases like that ofRichard III, where both Quarto and Folio are good but vary widely, the Cambridge editors seem more eclectic than their general theory warrants, and the punctuation is still archaic, clinging to the eighteenth-century tradition. But the acceptance of this careful and conservative text has been a wholesome influence in Shakespearean study.

The only completely reëdited texts which have been issued since the revised Cambridge edition are that of the Oxford Shakespeare, by W. J. Craig, on principles very similar to the Cambridge, and the Neilson text, originally published in one volume in 1906 and revised and reprinted in the Tudor Shakespeare. The massive volumes of Dr. H. H. Furness'sNew Variorum Shakespeare, begun in 1871 (17 volumes issued), now reprint the text of the First Folio, and show marked traces of the tendency to follow this authorityRecent Editorswithout due discrimination. This monumental abstract of all previous criticism is of great value to the professional student of Shakespeare, and its textual apparatus has the advantage over the Cambridge edition of recording not only the first occurrence of a reading, but the names of the chief editors who have adopted it. It thus gives a compendious history of editorial judgment on all disputed points.

The conjectural emendation of Shakespeare still goes on, but since Dyce, comparatively few suggestions find general acceptance. More progress has been made in interpretation through the greater accessibility of contemporary documents and the advance in recent years in our knowledge of Elizabethan theatrical conditions. But, in view of the circumstances under which the original editions were printed, there will always be room for variations of individual opinion in many cases, both as to what Shakespeare wrote and as to what he meant.

FOOTNOTES:[7]For facsimile reproductions see Bibliography,Appendix D.[8]In the table of Quarto editions may be noted four entries with the words "or 1619" added to the date which appears on the title-page. These four plays, the Roberts Quartos ofThe Merchant of VeniceandA Midsummer-Night's Dreamof 1600, the third Quarto ofHenry V, 1608, the second Quarto ofKing Lear, 1608, along with the 1619 Quartos ofThe Merry WivesandPericles, an undated Quarto ofThe Whole Contention(the earlier form of2and3 Henry VI), the Quarto ofSir John Oldcastle, dated 1600, and the Quarto ofA Yorkshire Tragedie, dated 1619, have been shown by Mr. A. W. Pollard, with the coöperation of Mr. W. W. Greg, to have been put on the market at the same time, and Mr. W. J. Neidig has proved from typographical evidence that the title-pages of all nine were set up in succession in 1619. A very curious problem is thus presented, and the motives for the deception practised, apparently by the printers Pavier and Jaggard, have not been satisfactorily cleared up; but at present it appears likely that in the case of these nine Quartos the correct date of publication should be 1619, and that, in the case of the first two mentioned, the question of the comparative authority of the Heyes and Fisher Quartos respectively as against that of the Roberts Quartos should be settled against the latter. This last point is the only part of this remarkable discovery which is of importance in determining the text, as the Quartos dated 1608 and 1619 were already known to be mere reprints of earlier ones.[9]For this and other prefatory matter from the First Folio, seeAppendix A.

[7]For facsimile reproductions see Bibliography,Appendix D.

[8]In the table of Quarto editions may be noted four entries with the words "or 1619" added to the date which appears on the title-page. These four plays, the Roberts Quartos ofThe Merchant of VeniceandA Midsummer-Night's Dreamof 1600, the third Quarto ofHenry V, 1608, the second Quarto ofKing Lear, 1608, along with the 1619 Quartos ofThe Merry WivesandPericles, an undated Quarto ofThe Whole Contention(the earlier form of2and3 Henry VI), the Quarto ofSir John Oldcastle, dated 1600, and the Quarto ofA Yorkshire Tragedie, dated 1619, have been shown by Mr. A. W. Pollard, with the coöperation of Mr. W. W. Greg, to have been put on the market at the same time, and Mr. W. J. Neidig has proved from typographical evidence that the title-pages of all nine were set up in succession in 1619. A very curious problem is thus presented, and the motives for the deception practised, apparently by the printers Pavier and Jaggard, have not been satisfactorily cleared up; but at present it appears likely that in the case of these nine Quartos the correct date of publication should be 1619, and that, in the case of the first two mentioned, the question of the comparative authority of the Heyes and Fisher Quartos respectively as against that of the Roberts Quartos should be settled against the latter. This last point is the only part of this remarkable discovery which is of importance in determining the text, as the Quartos dated 1608 and 1619 were already known to be mere reprints of earlier ones.

[9]For this and other prefatory matter from the First Folio, seeAppendix A.

Owing to the conditions of publication described in Chapter VII there are questions as to the authenticity of a number of the poems and plays ascribed to Shakespeare. Of the poems, "The Phœnix and the Turtle" and "A Lover's Complaint" have been sometimes rejected as unworthy, but there is no other evidence against the ascription to him by the original publishers. The case ofThe Passionate Pilgrimis different and is interesting as illustrating the methods of piracy practised by booksellers and as affording the only record of a protest by Shakespeare against the free use which they made of his name. This anthology was published by W. Jaggard in 1599 as "by W. Shakespeare." The third edition in 1612 added two pieces by Thomas Heywood. Heywood immediately protested and in the postscript to hisApologie for Actors, 1612, declared that Shakespeare was "much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." Of the twenty poems that made up the volume, only five are certainly by Shakespeare, two appearing also inThe Sonnetsand three inLove's Labour's Lost. Six others can be assigned to contemporary poets. The authorship of the remainingThe Shakespeare Apocryphanine is unknown, but probably only one or two are by Shakespeare.

In addition to the thirty-seven plays now included in all editions of Shakespeare, some forty others have been, for one reason or another, attributed to him. The First Folio contained thirty-six plays; and it is a strong evidence of the honesty and information of its editors, Heming and Condell, that subsequent criticism has been satisfied to retain the plays of their choice and to make but one addition,Pericles. Of these plays, however, it is now generally agreed that a number are not entirely the work of Shakespeare, but were written by him in part in collaboration with other writers,e.g.,Titus Andronicus, 1, 2, and3Henry VI,Timon of Athens,Pericles, andHenry VIII. Of two of these,Titus Andronicusand1 Henry VI, some students refuse to give Shakespeare any share. Of the forty doubtful plays, there is not one which in its entirety is now credited to Shakespeare; and only three or four in which any number of competent critics see traces of his hand. Only in the case ofThe Two Noble Kinsmenis there any weight of evidence or opinion that he had a considerable share.

The second Folio kept to the thirty-six plays of the First Folio; but the second printing of the third Folio (1664) added seven plays:Pericles Prince of Tyre,The London Prodigal,The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell,Sir John Oldcastle,Lord Cobham,The Puritan Widow,A Yorkshire Tragedy,The Tragedy of Locrine.These seven plays were also included in the fourth Folio, and as supplementary volumes to Rowe's, Pope's, and some later editions. They were all originally published in quarto as by W. S., or William Shakespeare, but except in the case ofPericles, this has been regarded as a bookseller's mistake or deception without warrant.Locrine, "newly set forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S., 1595," is a play of about the date ofTitus Andronicus, and is probably by Greene, Peele, or some imitator of Marlowe and Kyd.Sir John Oldcastleappeared in 1600 in two quartos, one of which ascribed it to William Shakespeare, but it was clearly composed for the Admiral's men as a rival to the Falstaff plays which the Chamberlain's men had been acting.Thomas Lord Cromwell(1602) andThe Puritan(1607) were ascribed to W. S., on their title-pages, but offer no possible resemblances to Shakespeare.The London Prodigal(1605) andA Yorkshire Tragedy(1608) were both acted by Shakespeare's company, and bore his name on their first editions, and the latter also on a second edition, 1619. The external evidence for his authorship is virtually the same as in the case ofPericles, which also was acted by his company, appeared under his name during his lifetime, but was rejected by the editors of the First Folio. No one, however, can discover any suggestion of Shakespeare inThe London Prodigal.A Yorkshire Tragedyis a domestic tragedy in one act, dealing with a contemporary murder. It gives the conclusion of a story also treated in a play,The Two Noble KinsmenTheMiseries of Enforced Marriage(1607) by George Wilkins, the author of a novelThe Painful Adventures of Pericles, and sometimes suggested as a collaborator on the playPericles.A Yorkshire Tragedyis very unlike Shakespeare, but it has a few passages of extraordinarily vivid prose, which might conceivably owe something to him.

The Two Noble Kinsmenwas registered April 8, 1634, and appeared in the same year with the following title-page "The Two Noble Kinsmen: Presented at the Blackfriars by the Kings Maiesties servants, with great applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time;

Mr. John Fletcher, andMr. William Shakespeare}Gent.

Printed at London by the Tho. Cotes for Iohn Waterson; and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne in Paul's Church-yard. 1634." The exclusion of the play from the First Folio may be explained on the same basis as the exclusion ofPericles; for in each play Shakespeare wrote the minor part. There is now general agreement thatThe Two Noble Kinsmenwas written by two authors with distinct styles, and that the author of the larger portion is Fletcher. The attribution of the non-Fletcherian part to Shakespeare has been upheld by Lamb, Coleridge, De Quincey, Spalding (in a notable Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship ofThe Two Noble Kinsmen, 1833), Furness, and Littledale (who edited the play forThe New ShakespeareSociety, Series II, 1, 8, 15, London, 1876-1885); but there are still many critics who do not believe that Shakespeare had any part in the play. This question will probably always remain a matter of opinion; but the evidence of various verse tests confirms esthetic judgment in assigning about two fifths of the verse to Shakespeare. The Shakespearean portion, here and there possibly touched by Fletcher, includes, I. i; I. ii; I. iii; I. iv. 1-28; III. i; III. ii; V. i. 17-73; V. iii. 1-104; V. iv, and perhaps the prose II. i and IV. iii.

The dance in the play is borrowed from an anti-masque in Beaumont'sMasque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, presented at court, February 20, 1613. This fixes the date of composition for the play in 1613, the same year asHenry VIII, on which it is now generally agreed that Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated. On both of the plays the collaboration seems to have been direct;i.e., after making a fairly detailed outline, each writer took certain scenes, and, to all intents, completed these scenes after his own fashion.

One other play must be mentioned in connection withThe Two Noble Kinsmen.Cardenio, entered on the Stationers' Register, 1653, was described as "by Fletcher and Shakespeare." It seems probably identical with aCardennoacted at court by the King's men in May, 1613, and aCardennain June, 1613. Attempts have been made to connect it withDouble Falsehood, assigned to Shakespeare by Theobald on its publication in 1728.

Last AscriptionsOther non-extant plays ascribed to Shakespeare after 1642 require no attention, nor do a number of Elizabethan plays assigned to him in certain of their later quartos. Among these areThe Troublesome Reign of King John, on which Shakespeare'sKing Johnwas based;The First Part of The Contention, and (the Second Part)The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York(versions of2 Henry VIand3 Henry VI); andThe Taming of a Shrew, the basis of Shakespeare's play. The relation of Shakespeare's plays to these earlier versions is discussed in the introductions to the respective volumes of the Tudor Shakespeare. Other plays assigned, without grounds, to Shakespeare by late seventeenth-century booksellers areThe Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Arraignment of Paris, Fair Em, Mucedorus, andThe Birth of Merlin.

A few other anonymous plays have been ascribed to Shakespeare by modern critics. Of chief note areArden of Feversham, 1592, first attributed to Shakespeare by Edward Jacob in 1770;Edward III, 1596, included with other false attributions to Shakespeare in a bookseller's list of 1659, and edited and assigned to Shakespeare by Capell in 1760;Sir Thomas More, an old play of about 1587, preserved in manuscript until edited by Dyce in 1844 and assigned to Shakespeare by Richard Simpson in 1871. There is no evidence for the ascription of various portions of these plays to Shakespeare, except that certain passages seem to some critics characteristic of him. But at the date when thethree plays were written his style had not attained its characteristic individuality; and the assignment of these anonymous plays to any particular author neglects the obvious fact that many writers of that period present similar traits of versification and imagery. The attribution to Shakespeare of the Countess of Salisbury episode inEdward III, parts of the insurrection scenes inSir Thomas More, and a few passages inArden of Fevershamhas scarcely any warrant beyond the enthusiastic admiration of certain critics for these passages.

Thus only one play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha has any considerable claim to admission into the canon. The evidence for his participation inThe Two Noble Kinsmenis about as strong as inPericles, and the part assigned to him is fairly comparable with his contribution toHenry VIII.

An account of the Shakespeare Apocrypha is, however, incomplete without reference to the forgeries of documents or plays. Theobald publishedDouble Falsehoodin 1728, as based on a seventeenth-century manuscript which he conjectured to be by Shakespeare. John Jordan, a resident of Stratford, forged the will of Shakespeare's father, and probably some other papers in hisCollections, 1780; William Henry Ireland, with the aid of his father, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers purporting to relate to Shakespeare's career, and on April 2, 1796, Sheridan and Kemble presented at Drury Lane the tragedy ofVortigern, really by Ireland, butForgeriessaid by him to have been found among Shakespeare's manuscripts. Ireland was exposed by Malone, and he published a confession of his forgeries in 1805. More skilful and far more disturbing to Shakespearean scholarship are the forgeries of John Payne Collier, extending over a period from 1835 to 1849. These included manuscript corrections in a copy of the second Folio, and many documents concerning the biography of Shakespeare and the history of the Elizabethan theater. These forgeries have vitiated many of Collier's most important publications, as hisMemoirs of Edward Alleyn, andHistory of English Dramatic Poetry.

We turn now from attempts to increase Shakespeare's writings to an extraordinary effort to deny him the authorship of all his plays. Doubts on this score seem to have been raised by Joseph C. Hart in hisRomance of Yachting, 1848, and by an article inChambers' Journal, August 7, 1852. In 1856, Mr. W. H. Smith first proposed Bacon's authorship in a letter to Lord Ellesmere, "Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?" These were followed by an article by Miss Delia Bacon inPutnam's Monthly, 1856, and a volume,The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon. Since Miss Bacon's book, her hypothesis has resulted in the publication of hundreds of volumes and pamphlets supporting many variations of the theory. Some are content to view the authorship as a mystery, assigning the plays to an unknown author. Others attribute the authorshipto a club of distinguished men, or to Sir Anthony Shirley, or the Earl of Rutland, or another. Others give Bacon only a portion of the plays, as those containing many legal terms. The majority, however, are thoroughgoing "Baconians," and the most prodigious cases of misapplied ingenuity have been the efforts to find in the First Folio a cipher, by which certain letters are selected which proclaim Bacon's authorship; asThe Great Cryptogram, 1887, by Ignatius Donnelly, andThe Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon, 1900, by Mrs. Gallup. Such cyphers are mutually destructive, and their absurdity has been repeatedly demonstrated. Either they will not work without much arbitrary manipulation, or they work too well and are found to indicate Bacon's authorship of literature written before his birth and after his death. Yet similar 'discoveries' continue to be announced.

The evidences supporting Shakespeare's authorship have been set forth sufficiently in this volume and offer no basis for an attitude of skepticism. A few considerations may be recalled as correctives for a partial or mistaken reading of the evidence. (1) Though the records of Shakespeare's life are meager, they are fuller than for any other Elizabethan dramatist. Indeed we know little of the biography of any men of the sixteenth century unless their lives affected church or politics and hence found preservation in the records. There is no 'mystery' about Shakespeare. (2) Records amply establish the identity betweenThe "Baconian" QuestionShakespeare the actor and the writer. Moreover, the plays contain many words and phrases natural to an actor, many references to the actor's art, and show a wide and detailed knowledge of the ways and peculiarities of the theater. (3) The extent of observation and knowledge in the plays is, indeed, remarkable, but it is not accompanied by any indication of thorough scholarship, or a detailed connection with any profession outside of the theater, or a profound knowledge of the science or philosophy of the time. (4) The law terms are numerous, and usually correct, but do not establish any great knowledge of the law. Elizabethan London was full of law students who were among frequent patrons of the theater. Through acquaintance with these gentlemen Shakespeare might have readily acquired all the law that he displays. Moreover Shakespeare had an opportunity to gain a considerable familiarity with the law through the frequent litigations in which he and his father were concerned. (5) The dedication, commendatory poems, and address to the readers prefixed to the First Folio ought in themselves to be sufficient to remove the skepticism as to Shakespeare's authorship.

The following considerations apply to the attribution to Bacon, so far as that rests on any tangible basis: (1) Sir Tobie Matthews writes in a letter to Bacon, written some time later than January, 1621, "The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship'sname, though he be known by another." The sentence probably refers to Father Thomas Southwell, a Jesuit, whose real surname was Bacon. There is nothing to connect it with Shakespeare. (2) The parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare and Bacon deal with phrases in common use and fail to establish any connection between the two men. (3) The few surviving examples of Bacon's verse suggest no ability as a poet. (4) Bacon's life is well known, and it offers no hint of connection with the theaters and no space in its crowded annals for the production of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, if we had to find an author for Shakespeare's plays among writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bacon would be about the last person conceivable.

During Shakespeare's lifetime, his plays were mentioned and imitated as often as those of any of his contemporaries. The more important documents bearing on his growing reputation have already been noted in this volume. This popularity, however, was confined to theater-goers and the readers of the sixteen plays that had appeared before 1616. There was no opportunity for a full estimate of his plays as literature until their publication in the Folio of 1623. This is given full and worthy expression in the fine verses which Ben Jonson contributed as a preface to the Folio. He had girded at several of Shakespeare's plays, and his own views of the principles and practices of the dramatic art were largely opposed to Shakespeare's, but he took this opportunity to express unstinted appreciation of Shakespeare's greatness. He notes with discrimination that Shakespeare learned his art in an earlier day, but far outshone Kyd, Lyly, and Marlowe.

Soul of the AgeThe applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!

He may challenge comparison with the great Greek tragedians, or in comedies

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty RomeSent forth, or since did from their ashes come.He was not of an age but for all time!

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty RomeSent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

He was not of an age but for all time!

The magnitude of Shakespeare's achievement was thus enthusiastically proclaimed by the literary dictator of the time.

From 1623, until the closing of the theaters, the plays continued favorites on the stage, though they yielded somewhat in the current taste to the theatrical successes of Fletcher and Massinger. After 1623, they continued to be read and admired, as is shown by the publication of the second and third folios in 1632 and 1663-1664, and by many appreciations, including those of D'Avenant, Suckling, the Duchess of Newcastle, and Milton. At the Restoration many of the plays were at once revived on the stage, and Dryden's essayOf Dramatick Poesie(1668) summed up in a masterly fashion contemporary opinion on Shakespeare. He is compared with other great dramatists, and is declared less correct than Jonson and less popular and modern than Beaumont and Fletcher, yet is "the man who of all Moderns, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul."

The Restoration was in some doubt about Shakespeare, for while it found in him much to admire, it also found much to condemn. His plays now had the advantage of women actors for the female parts, butThe Seventeenth Centurythey encountered changed fashions in the theater. The romantic comedies were not to the taste of the time, and disappeared from the stage until toward the middle of the eighteenth century. Meanwhile,The Merry Wives of Windsorwas the most popular and most highly esteemed of his comedies. The tragedies attracted the genius of Betterton and were constantly acted, but these were subject to revision of various kinds.HamletandOthelloheld their places without alterations, but Nahum Tate's tame version ofKing Learand Cibber's version ofRichard IIIsuperseded the originals for many years.Romeo and Juliet, too, gave way to Otway'sCaius Marius, 1692, which kept large portions of Shakespeare's play; andAntony and Cleopatrayielded place on the stage to Dryden's fineAll for Love(1678), in the style of which he professes to imitate the "divine Shakespeare." By 1692, adaptations had also been made ofTroilus and Cressida,The Tempest,Macbeth,The Two Noble Kinsmen,Timon,Richard II,Coriolanus,Henry VI,Cymbeline,Titus Andronicus,Julius Cæsar. A great deal of contempt has been visited upon these revisions of Shakespeare, and their attempts to improve on him are usually feeble enough; but sufficient recognition has not been given to the testimony that these revisors bear to a great appreciation and admiration of Shakespeare. They tried to adapt him to current metrical conventions, to current literary fashions, to an idea of art quite foreign to his, but they made these efforts because they admired hisgenius. If they did not admire everything in his thirty-seven plays, they admired a great deal.

Further, these revisions are the outcome of critical strictures on the plays which were then common and, in essence, have been frequently repeated. Critics objected to the irregularity and confusion of their structure, to their disregard of the unities of action, their mixture of tragic and comic, their obscurity and archaism of diction, their mixed and confused figures, their occasional puns and bombast. These are substantially the criticisms that Dryden offers when under the influence of Rymer. Rymer himself (A Short View of Tragedy, 1693) goes much farther. He desires tragedy to give a rationalized view of life, dealing poetic justice to various typical persons, and consequently condemns Shakespeare's persons as too individual, his plots as too irregular, and the total effect of his plays as insufficiently didactic and moral. This view of tragedy was mainly due to the rationalistic and classical ideas which continued for a century to dominate European criticism. But before the seventeenth century was over, Shakespeare's growing reputation had proved itself a rock against which the tendencies in criticism had broken like unavailing waves. However much they might insist on rules in art, critics were generally willing to hail Shakespeare as the great exception. Champions were ready to answer Rymer and to defend Shakespeare.Othello, selected by Rymer for special analysis and condemnation, continued to holdWidening Influenceits place on the stage and to incite dramatists to emulation. The plays continued to be read, and new editions were demanded. In the forty years from 1660 to 1700, in spite of great changes in theatrical conditions, in spite of changes of taste in readers that relegated most of Elizabethan drama to neglect, and in spite of the formation of a criticism doubtful or neglectful of the very qualities in literature that his plays present, Shakespeare continued to win admirers. By 1700 he was recognized as a dramatist and poet who was one of the great possessions of the English race.

In the two centuries since, Shakespeare's fame and influence have spread and multiplied to an extent difficult to characterize justly in a brief summary. Some important evidences of this growth may indeed be collected and analyzed. The position and importance of his plays on the stage, the ever increasing number of editions, the changing attitudes of critics and men of letters—on these matters it is not difficult to draw conclusions as to Shakespeare's influence at home and abroad. But it is not so easy to say what his influence was on the literature of any generation, and still less easy to summarize with certainty the effects on thought and feeling and conduct which made up his continuing power over generation after generation of readers. This much is clear, that a study of Shakespeare's influence is in part a study of changing ideas and ideals in literature—that as he survived the Restoration taste, so he survived the newclassicism of the eighteenth and the romanticism of the early nineteenth century. It is also clear that a full record of the influence of Shakespeare on English-speaking readers would touch on almost all the varied changes of thought and conduct that have entered into the history of two centuries.

The most important of the successive editions of Shakespeare from that of Nicholas Rowe, 1709, to the present time, have been noted in the history of the text inChapter VII. It must be observed that these various publications indicate not only progress toward establishing a sound text, but also a constantly increasing number of readers. The multiplication of editions kept pace with the vast extension of the middle-class interest in literature. By the end of the eighteenth century, the works of Shakespeare were in the possession of everyone who had a library, and with a text and notes that left few difficulties for a person of any education.

The nineteenth century well maintained the tradition of earlier scholarship. Malone's extensive antiquarian knowledge of Elizabethan drama and theater served as the basis for further research in these fields by Dyce, Ward, Fleay, and others. The chronological order of the plays, which Malone was the first to investigate, was determined with considerable certainty and gave a new significance to the study of Shakespeare's work as a whole. Dyce, Sidney Walker, and Wright, Delius of the Germans, Richard Grant WhiteOn the Stageof the Americans, are a few among the long list of scholars who have added notable emendations and illustrative notes. Editions of the collected works indeed soon became almost too numerous for record, and the number of readings, notes, and illustrations too great for collection even in the largest variorum. To-day the task of scholarship may lie in the restriction, simplification, and final determination of certain varying editorial practices rather than in the accumulation of further illustrative and appreciative comment. But to the work of adding new editions there can be no end so long as the number of readers increases. Volumes of all sizes, for many classes, following various editorial methods, are likely to continue to meet the changing but ever increasing demands of English-speaking readers. At the end of the nineteenth century Shakespeare's works were not merely a household possession, they were to be had in every possible form to suit every possible taste or convenience.

The extension of Shakespeare's popularity on the stage was concurrent with this widening range of readers. In the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, which marked a revolution in the nature of the drama and the taste of the audiences, Shakespeare's tragedies continued to be among the most frequently acted stock plays at the two patented theaters. The middle of the century saw the revival of most of the romantic comedies and the appearance of David Garrick. Some of the adaptations continued, but otherswere displaced by genuine Shakespeare, as inMacbeth,The Merchant of Venice, andRomeo and Juliet.All's Well That Ends Well,As You Like It,Cymbeline,Much Ado,Twelfth Night,The Winter's Tale, were all revived. In fact, if we include adaptations, every play of Shakespeare was seen on the stage during the eighteenth century, with the exceptions of2and3 Henry VI, only parts of these appearing, and ofLove's Labour's Lost, of which a version prepared for acting was published in 1762 but not produced.

The traditions of Betterton had been carried on by Wilks (1670-1732), Barton Booth (1681-1733), Colley Cibber (1671-1757), and others. But the prevailing manner was condemned as stiff and lifeless in comparison with the energy of Garrick's presentation. From his first triumph in Richard III in 1741, to his farewell performance of Lear in 1776, he won a series of signal successes in both tragedy and comedy, in Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Falconbridge, Romeo, Hotspur, Iago, Leontes, Posthumus, Benedick, and Antony. Garrick's services to Shakespeare extended beyond the parts which he impersonated. He revived many plays, and though he garbled the texts freely, yet in comparison with earlier practice he really had some right to boast that he had restored the text of Shakespeare to the stage. Further, his example led to an increased popularity of Shakespeare in the theater and afforded new incentives for other actors. Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Pritchard were amongKemble and Keanthe women who acted with Garrick. Macklin, by his revival of Shylock as a tragic character, Henderson by his impersonation of Falstaff, and John Palmer in secondary characters, as Iago, Mercutio, Touchstone, and Sir Toby, were his contemporaries most famous in their day.

Garrick's place at the head of the English stage was taken by John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), an actor of great dignity of presence and manner, who won general admiration in the great tragic parts, especially those offering opportunities for declamation. His sister, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, was doubtless the greatest of English actresses; her Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine, and Constance overwhelmed her audiences by their majesty and passion. Kemble's reputation was surpassed by Edmund Kean, whose appearance as Shylock in 1819, at Drury Lane, was the first of a series of great successes in most of the tragic parts, including Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Richard III. In contrast to Kemble's declamation, Kean's acting was vehement and passionate. Coleridge declared that to see him was "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Readers of the dramatic criticism of Hazlitt and Lamb will recall tributes to Kean and to other favorite actors, especially perhaps their praise of Mrs. Jordan's Viola and Rosalind. Macready for forty years maintained the great traditions of English acting, and during his managements of Drury Lane sought to retain for Shakespeare's plays their preëminence on thestage. Associated with his many impersonations were those of Mrs. Warner and Helen Faucit (Lady Martin). From Garrick's début to the retirement of Macready (1851) is a century of great actors and actresses who brought to the interpretation of the many characters of the plays a skill and intelligence that satisfied the most critical theater-goers and extended vastly the appreciation and knowledge of Shakespeare's men and women.

Shakespeare's position on the stage was, however, maintained only with difficulty against the melodramas, musical farces, and spectacles that absorbed the theaters. Yet from 1844 to 1862, Samuel Phelps, at Sadler's Wells, presented thirty-one of the plays. Since then the stage has hardly seen an equally important revival; but the great traditions of acting have been carried on by many eminent actors: Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Forbes Robertson, in England; Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, Junius Brutus Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Ada Rehan, Julia Marlowe, and Edward Sothern in America. Lately, successful attempts have been made to perform plays in the Elizabethan manner, and perhaps there is a tendency to pay less attention to elaborate scenic presentation than was the habit during the last of the nineteenth century. In one respect, at least, the present offers a decided improvement on the past, for there is now a strong sentiment in favor of as close an adherence as possible to an authorized text of the plays.

The Eighteenth CenturyShakespeare has held his place on the stage in spite of many and great changes in theatrical conditions and dramatic taste. He will probably survive changes greater than those which separate the picture stage with its electric lights from the projecting open-air platform of his own day, or than those which separate the dramas of Ibsen, Shaw, and Barrie from those of Marlowe and Fletcher, or the cinematograph and comic opera from the bear-baiting and jugglery which rivaled the Globe. The visitor who scans, in the Stratford Museum, the curious collection of portraits of actors and actresses in Shakespearean parts may wonder what peculiarities of costume, manner, and expression will be devised for the admired interpretations of the centuries to come. But it hardly seems possible that any actor of the future will influence as greatly the appreciation of Shakespeare's characters and speeches as did Garrick and Mrs. Siddons in England or Edwin Booth in America.

Shakespearean criticism in the eighteenth century was, as has been noted, largely textual, but there was also a considerable discussion of Shakespeare's learning, his art, and its violations of neo-classical theory. John Dennis, in hisLetters, 1711, proved a sturdy admirer, and the consensus of opinion of following writers was that of Sedley's couplet which described Shakespeare as

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