into mine, as it would, he said, afford him (so great is the modesty of an ingenuous temper) a fit opportunity of confessing his mistakes. In memory of our friendship I have, therefore, made it our joint edition." The modesty of an ingenuous temper certainly was not a characteristic of Warburton. His arrogance repels the reader, and when he goes wrong, which happens very often, he does so with a confidence amounting to effrontery. "Among the commentators on Shakespeare," writes Hallam, with no unjust severity, "Warburton, always striving to display his own acuteness and scorn of others, deviates more than anyone else from the meaning." Yet, having before him the work of Theobald and Hanmer, whom he denounces, his text is in some respects an improvement on that of Pope. The edition drew forth severe criticism from contemporary scholars-Zachary Grey, Heath, Upton, and especially from Thomas Edwards in his satirical "Canons of Criticism." Dr. Johnson, who honoured Warburton above his deserts, describes Edwards as ridiculing the editor's errors with "airy petulance suitable enough to the levity of the controversy;" while Grey attacks them "with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or an incendiary." In the same year in which Warburton published his edition, 1747, David Garrick pronounced at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre the lines in which Johnson, with a fine extravagance, sounded the praises of Shakespeare: Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, The stage history of Shakespeare's plays will be found by readers of the present edition in the introductions to the several dramas. But we cannot pass on without a word of homage to Garrick as an interpreter of Shakespeare's higher meanings, incomparably more important in the history of the growth of his fame than the Hanmers or the Warburtons. It is, however, of the closet, not the stage, that we have here to speak. Johnson's long-promised edition of Shakespeare was completed in 1765. He consulted the earlier texts to some extent, but was disqualified for the task of minute collation by his defective eyesight. As a conjectural emender he was not happy; he tells us that as he practised conjecture more he learned to trust it less, and after he had printed a few plays resolved to insert none of his own readings in the text. His Preface is an admirable piece of criticism, robust and common-sense, though not illuminated by imagination, or very profound in its philosophical views. "This," he writes, "is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions." He defends Shakespeare from the censure incurred by his mingling comic with tragic scenes-here too the poet did no more than hold the mirror up to nature. Particularly noteworthy is Johnson's discussion of the doctrine of the unities of time and place; the spectators "are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage;" knowing which they can make time and place, as well as any other mode of being, obsequious to the imagination. After his manner as a critic Johnson sets his items of condemnation over against his items of praise: as a moralist he is offended by Shakespeare's sacrifice of virtue to convenience, his frequent violation of poetical justice; the plots are often loosely formed; the latter part of his plays especially is often neglected; the poet has little regard to historical accuracy or local colour; his contests of wit are often marred by grossness; in tragedy he is sometimes tumid and sometimes obscure; in narrative he is often pompous and tedious; his set speeches are commonly cold and weak; a quibble has a malignant power over his mind, it is "the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation." Some of Johnson's censures are just, but it is evident that from his eighteenth century standpoint he never quite comprehended the spirit of Elizabethan poetry. His knowledge of human nature renders some of his analyses of Shakespeare's characters of peculiar value; his comment on the character of Polonius is an example of passages which at once elucidate the meaning of Shakespeare and exhibit the mind of his critic. In the late editions of Johnson (1773 onwards) his work is connected with that of George Steevens. Steevens had previously (1766) reprinted twenty of Shakespeare's plays from the early quarto editions. He was a man of industry, learning, and acute intellect; somewhat wanting in reverence, somewhat wanting in modesty, and perhaps in that literary honesty which goes with freedom from vanity. His influence was a quickening one where dulness and stagnation are dangers; but his animation was not of the best or purest kind. The edition of Johnson and Steevens in fifteen volumes, 1793, often called "Steevens' own," is that which shows his work at its best. In his editorial work he remembered the earlier but not the closing words of the motto found in Spenser: “Be bold, be bold, be not too bold." The most laborious Shakespearian scholars of the second half of the eighteenth century were unquestionably Capell and Malone. "If the man would have come to me," said Dr. Johnson of Capell's Preface, "I would have endeavoured to endow his purposes with words; for as it is, he doth gabble monstrously." It is true that he expressed himself with awkwardness; but he had a true conception of the scholar's duty, and the preface of which Johnson speaks in this disparaging way has been justly described by competent authorities as the most valuable contribution to Shakespearian criticism that had yet appeared. All the quartos then accessible, and with them the folios, were collated by Capell. His text con sequently is one of exceeding value, but unfortunately he did not assign the emendations which he adopted from other editors and critics to their individual authors. His edition is likely to disappoint a reader who comes to it for the first time, because it was issued without the valuable annotations and illustrations subsequently published in part in the year 1774, and after Capell's death in their entirety in three quarto volumes (1783) entitled Notes, Various Readings, and the School of Shakespeare. Valuable service was rendered by Capell in investigating the sources of Shakespeare's plots. The work of Edmond Malone began with an Attempt to ascertain the Order in which the Plays attributed to Shakespeare were Written, which he handed over as a contribution to Steevens. This was followed in 1780 by a Supplement to the edition of 1778, containing the Poems, the doubtful plays of the Folio of 1664, and among his Prolegomena a study of the early history of the English theatre. In 1790 he published his edition of the Plays and Poems in ten volumes. His industry was amazing; he was as honest as he was industrious; and if he was not brilliant, like his rival Steevens, he was free from the defects which sometimes accompany brilliancy in a critic. The debt of all later Shakespeare students to Malone is incalculable. His studies and annotations are perhaps best seen in the third "Variorum" edition of Shakespeare, 1821, edited by James Boswell from a copy corrected by Malone. The earlier Variorum editions, called also the fifth and sixth editions of Johnson and Steevens, appeared respectively in 1803 and 1813 under the editorship of Isaac Reed. Malone's erudition was well employed in the exposure of the celebrated Ireland forgeries. The father, Samuel Ireland, has suffered for the misdeeds of his son, Samuel William Henry Ireland, who began his discreditable career by producing for his father's delectation a forged document bearing Shakespeare's signature. With the success of his fraud the ambition of the young conveyancer's apprentice took a higher flight. A large collection of papers and relics obtained from an invisible old gentleman came into the hands of the fortunate youth. These included a love-letter to Anne Hathaway, a lock of Shakespeare's hair, his profession of faith, and many other treasures. Those who desired to believe in the authenticity of the papers looked hard and saw what they wished to see. An ancestor, with superfluous letters in his name, William Henrye Irelaunde had saved Shakespeare from drowning in the Thames, and what less could the grateful poet do than bequeath many papers and books to his preserver for the delight of future generations? In due time a play of the great dramatist came to light. Vortigern was actually presented at Drury Lane Theatre to a full house, but no second night was possible. Finally the impostor came forward in 1796 with a confession; he was still under the age of twenty. His father suffered deeply from the disgrace, and died in 1800. William Henry Ireland survived until 1835. The critics of the eighteenth century-Grey, Upton, Heath, Ritson, Monck Mason, and others, were in the main textual critics of greater or less ability. Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare (1767) deserves special mention; in this he aims at proving that Shakespeare's knowledge of the classics was derived from translations: "He remembered," says Farmer, "perhaps enough of his school-boy learning to put the Hig, hag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans; and might pick up in the writers of the time, or the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian: but his studies were most demonstratively confined to nature and his own language." Another essay of a different kind, Maurice Morgann's Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff (1777), is a genial piece of criticism, maintaining the thesis that Falstaff was no coward. Charlotte Lennox, the friend of Dr. Johnson, did something by her Shakespeare Illustrated (1753-54) to render the materials from which the dramatist formed his plots better known. Another lady, Mrs. Montagu, ventured to come forward with a defence of Shakespeare against the criticism of Voltaire. "When Shakespeare has got Mrs. Montagu for his defender," said Johnson, "he is in a poor state indeed." But Reynolds and Garrick were of a different opinion. A new school of criticism illuminated the study of Shakespeare in the early years of the present century. Coleridge in his lectures conceived art in general, and the dramatic art in particular, in a truer and higher way than any preceding writer. He was neither in bondage to Aristotle nor in revolt against him. He saw that the same spirit was expressing itself through Eschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, though by methods which differed with all the differences of epochs and of races. He conceived Shakespeare's work as a whole; he observed the fruit as it hung in living beauty on the tree. And each play and poem he also conceived as a living whole. He studied its parts in their vital relation to one another; he did not murder to dissect. His analyses, or rather interpretations, of the characters of the dramatis persona, are the outcome of a penetrative imagination; they are new creations, as it were, of the Shakespearian personages, transposed from poetry to criticism. He does not measure them by yard and line, but winds himself into their inner being and discovers the secret of their life. Unfortunately his criticisms have reached us, for the most part, in a fragmentary form; but often a sentence of Coleridge is, as it were, a lamp and a key, with the aid of which we can open and explore the mysteries of the dramatist's art for ourselves. Hazlitt's light is not so pure, his leading is not so certain as Coleridge's; but he was ardent, and threw strong gleams upon certain parts of Shakespeare's work. Lamb, who touched nothing that he did not adorn, attempted no systematic body of criticism, but now with a loving phrase, now with a paradox, now with a quip or crank, now with a reminiscence from the stage, now with a brief analysis of character, he helps us to a truer understanding of Shakespeare. The Tales from Shakespeare by Lamb and his sister have served to introduce many young readers to the plays from which the narratives are derived. Among commentators of learning rather than genius in the first thirty years of this century Francis Douce was perhaps the most eminent. His Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners (1807) is a valuable storehouse of curious information. In 1817 appeared two quarto volumes entitled Shakespeare and his Times, by Nathan Drake, which in their day rendered useful service as a well-arranged compilation of facts, with agreeable comment by one who, though no original thinker, was a cultivated lover of literature. The most important editions of Shakespeare which have been issued since the Variorum of 1821 are those of Singer (1826), Knight (1838-43), Collier (1841-44), Dyce (1857), Staunton (1857-60), Halliwell (Folio 1853-65), and the Cambridge edition (1863-66). Into the comparative merits of these it is not necessary to enter; but the learning and sound judgment of Dyce deserve a special acknowledgment, and no less the accuracy with which the Cambridge editors have done the work of collation, and the fulness with which they have recorded the conjectural readings of earlier editors and commentators. To these we must add the edition of the German Shakespeare scholar Delius (1854-61), and the American editions of R. Grant White (1857-65), Hudson (1851-56), and Rolfe (1884). Mr. Furness's Variorum Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 1871-88) sums up the work of all his predecessors with respect to the plays included in the volumes which have been issued; each volume is indeed a little library in itself; but work so laborious cannot be hastened, and as yet we have received only six plays from this most judicious and learned editor. The Shakespeare Society of England, in a series of volumes dating from 1841 to 1853, reprinted many rare and curious pieces of Elizabethan literature. In January, 1852, an eminent member of the society, J. Payne Collier, announced that three years previously he had obtained for a small sum from the bookseller Rodd a copy of the second Folio Shakespeare, containing many annotationswhich he had not observed at first-in a hand of about the middle of the seventeenth century. This volume became famous as the Perkins Folio, deriving its name from the fact that it bore on the cover the inscription "Tho. Perkins his Booke." Collier supposed, or pretended to suppose, that the numerous corrections of the text, stage-directions, &c., were the work of an early owner of the volume, who through his connection with the theatre and attendance at performance of the plays had sources of trustworthy information as to the genuine text. Having previously given specimens of the "Old Corrector's" work, Collier towards the close of 1852 published a volume of "Notes and Emendations" which was alleged to include all the most important of the manuscript readings. When, in 1859, the Perkins Folio was submitted to the scrutiny of experts, the manuscript notes were declared to be modern forgeries. Pencil tracing was found to have guided the pen in its simulation of a seventeenth1 The date of the first edition is given; in several instances later editions much altered and improved have appeared. |