CHAPTER VIII. THE TEXT OF SHAKESPERE. "To blot old books and alter their contents."-Lucrece. More relative than this. The play's the thing."-Hamlet. THE text of Shakespere has long been one of the "vexed questions of literature. The original authorities for a genuine text-the manuscripts of Shakespere-are not to be had. We have, then, only the copies of his works issued during his own lifetime; the "Othello," published in 1622; and the First Folio, as the groundwork of a textus receptus as nearly approaching to the original sources as are now obtainable. None of these, of course, possess absolute authority, except the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Lucrece," which are known to have been published with the concurrence of, and, in fact, by the author. Of this, the dedications are sufficient evidence. The early quartos, even when least carelessly printed, do not appear to have undergone either an author's or an editor's revision-indeed, some of them do not even seem to have been what is technically called read, so numerous are the errors, palpable and acknowledged, with which they abound. Several of them are generally believed to have been piratical and unauthorized publications, hurriedly brought out, and made up from the repetition of actors, from prompters' books, and from reporters' notes, to catch the popular tide, as what were then called "get-pennies." The First Folio is declared to be printed "according to the true originall copies," and to be “absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them;" but it is, in fact, a very ill-printed book, abounding in typographical errors, in nonsense lines, in incomprehensible passages, in metrical defects, in absurd punctuation, and in obscure or imperfect speeches. These things seem to indicate that the editors either did not oversee the work, or were incapable of supervising, much less of revising it. These disfigurations destroy its authoritativeness, and make the attainment of an authentic text almost a matter of impossibility. An authentic text is plainly not to be got at by mere black-letter reading, however extensive. Some authority must be accepted; and those plays, that were really produced under superintendence, seem to have the best claim to being the true theatrical, as opposed to the literary, texts-the text meant for the ear, not the eye— for the stage, not the closet. The characters of Heminge and Condell have not been impeached; they have not been alleged to be fabricators; no suspicion has been excited about them, or has been attached to them; on the contrary, most positive and reliable testimony has been given to the essential truth of their book, from persons who were clearly capable of knowing. The book they offered to the public was accepted. It is true it is, like most books of the time, sadly unrevised, but that cannot justify radical changes. The commentators, by treating the "plays" as a reading literature, have been led to expect what was neither intended nor attempted— a systematic and strict versification-poems, in fact, when only plays were made;—and so "scenes, invented merely to be spoken,” have been "enforcively published to be read." Many faults are permissible in spoken, that cannot be allowed in written, literature; and he who would criticize an oration by the same strict rules as a deliberate composition, would not fail to be regarded as hypercritical. This is the mistake of the commentators, and so they have gone on seeking an ideal and enforced perfection which was never aimed at. This has led to the introduction of many changes in the text, and specially to several recent re-issues of Shakespere's Works, &c., by the author of Reasons for a New Edition of Shakespere's Works, containing Notices of the Defects of Former Impressions," 1841 (J. Payne Collier), which have a curious history, and are the occasion of one of the keenest and most singular controversies of the day; of both of which we shall endeavour to present a brief outline. In the spring of 1849, Mr. J.P. Collier was in the shop of Mr. Rodd, bookseller, Newport Street, when a large packet of old books arrived from the country. It was opened, and found to contain, inter alia, a torn, corner-cropt, greasy and old-of-cover, blurred, beer-stained, and blotted copy of the second folio edition of Shakespere's "Plays," 1632, and a copy of Florio's "New World of Worlds," date 1611. These Collier bought for 30s. and 12s. respectively. With the former he expected to complete another edition he had at home, but he found, on trial, that the leaves he wanted were short, damaged, and defaced; so he sold his former copy, and laid past his recent purchase. When making a selection of books to take with him on leaving London, he chose this Shakespere as one, and then first discovered marks on its margin. Some time after, when consulting it, he was induced to examine it, from supposing that Thomas Perkins (whose name it bore) might have been the actor in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," in 1633. This was a mistake; his name was Richard Perkins. Then he saw that there was hardly a page which did not present, in a handwriting of that time, some emendations in the pointing or in the text, while on most of them they were frequent, and on many, numerous. After consideration, and due announcement in the literary organs, he published, in 1852, the "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays, from Early Manuscript Corrections in a copy of the Folio, 1632, in the Possession of," &c. Favour greeted him at first; but the genuine Shakespereans were alert right early. S. W. Singer, Rev. A. Dyce, &c., entered protests against the marring and mutilation of the text thus proposed, and expressed or implied doubts of the authenticity of the history, and the genuineness of the writing. A Shakespere-criticism epidemic broke out in consequence. Pamphleteers and periodical writers busied themselves with the debate, and new editions became the order of the day. The controversy has grown hotter every day since, until it has almost acquired a personal interest for the respective combatants. Collier, in 1842-4, had edited an edition in accordance with the views contained in the "Reasons," published in 1841. This discovery [?] changed his point of view or interest, and he issued his "Notes and Emendations," 1852-3; a mono-volumed Shakespere, incorporating them in 1854, followed; a list of them was introduced into a work on Shakespere and Milton, in 1856; and in 1858 an eight-volumed edition was passed through the press under his editorship. Meanwhile, opposition was gaining ground, and at length burst into energetic activity early in 1860. The following is an abstract of the opposing arguments, culled from the writings of Mr. Collier, articles in the Edinburgh Review, the Athenæum, &c.; and from the works of Messrs. Hamilton, Ingleby, Staunton, Mr. Arnold's papers in Fraser's Magazine, pamphlets by Mr. Singer and the Rev. A. Dyce, &c., besides several letters, contributions, &c., for and against, in H the Times, the Literary Gazette, the Critic, and some of the provincial newspapers; as well as the magazines of the day. They have been arranged with the utmost impartiality in our power, and have been adduced in their full force, though frequently in an abbreviated form. They form, as we have arranged them, the heads of a debate on this subject, which may interest many of our readers. ANTI-COLLIER PERKINS. In the 1842-4 "Shakespere," edited by Mr. Collier, the rule adopted by him was to adhere implicitly to the readings of the old copies wherever the words imputed to the dramatist on their authority could be reconciled with even a plausible meaning; but now he does not hesitate to accept changes madeallowing him the hypothesis he puts forth-from recitations made prior to the suppression of the theatres, which had crept in from time to time to make sense out of difficult passages, but which do not represent the authentic text of Shakespere. This change of view-point is regarded as suspicious, not in itself only, but also as leading to three profitable (?) issues of the said emendations. The various prefaces, letters, accounts, affidavits, &c., given by Mr. Collier as justifications of his inferences, acts, editorial changeableness, and publications, are inconsistent with themselves, the books, and other facts. Mr. Collier "has elsewhere printed, as genuine and authentic, documents respecting Shakespere which other and competent judges have pronounced to be spurious, and therefore his opinion [statement] is not to be implicitly relied on in a case... fraught with suspicion." The coincidences between the editorial suggestions of Collier and the emendations of [the supposed] Perkins are so frequent and so close, as to produce a disbelief in their fortuitousnessa belief in an origin capable of explaining this singularly happy concurrence of view-which would place the discoverer of the folio so far ahead of all contemporary Shakespere editors. That the phraseology and idioms employed by the so-called corrector-as PRO-COLLIER PERKINS. The emendations are, taking them all in all, of much value and probability— the work of a person "possessed of extraordinary powers of Shakesperean criticism." It is highly unlikely that so many emendations could be the results of mere conjectural annotation, and hence these may have possibly had a prompter-book or stage-usage authority. They at least "present us with better readings than his original editors, or his whole army of commentators." Collier's affidavit before the Lord Chief Justice in the Queen's Bench relates the circumstances attending the purchase of the folio and of the discovery of its unexpected contents, and is therefore removed from literary to legal criticism. The number of the Perkins folio corrections (about 20,000); the laboriousness of the task of so forging; the mental and manual toil and trouble; the elaboration of the work,—are in themselves proof of a pains-taking, studious, reverential love of Shakespere, not of secret and self-seeking crime. Insanity could not be more effectually proven than by showing that any corrector, of such powers of comprehension, such minute and accurate industry, such patient silence, had passed off his work as another's, and so deprived himself of the honour-the literary student's dearest remuneration of this careful and thoughtful revision of the text. The unexpected novelty, ingenuity, and felicity of many of the emendations are such as to lead the unprejudiced mind to accept and believe them as having been accidentally discovered, not thought on and worked into the book ANTI-COLLIER PERKINS. Mr. Singer asserted-are often not of the Shakesperean age. That the number of adaptationsnot to say plagiarisms-of the readings proposed by the old commentators indicates contrivance, use, invention, and intention. Mr. Collier, throughout his dealings with the [so-called] Perkins emendations and their assailants, has, or at least appears to have, at every turn, done or omitted something to foster suspicion. Singular lacunæ in the evidence occur, and these have been filled up by hypothesis the former look like suppressiones veri, the latter like suggestiones falsi. At no time has there been a want of appreciation for Shakespere's text, such as would make it likely that the corrector should want inducement to let his labour be known. The folios of 1623, 1632, 1664, and 1685, in the seventeenth century, were followed by at least a dozen editions in the eighteenth, and many more in the nineteenth, in all or most of which conjectural emendations formed a chief feature. Why did this corrector retain his silence, and continue his solitary and uncheered labour, while reward and praise were exciting so much Shakesperean activity around him? The intentional ignoring of former emendations, in the zeal of editorship which Mr. Collier exhibited, indicated an interest other than the mere attainment of a true text; e. g., in Tranio's line, "Or so devote to Aristotle's checks," in "The Taming of the Shrew," Sir W. Blackstone had suggested, and Steevens, Singer, Dyce, &c., had adopted, the reading, ethics; but Collier shuts his eyes to this, and says that "such [viz., checks] has been the invariable text, from the first publication of the comedy in 1623 until our own day." "A portentous amount of nonsense, and an enormous mass of unnecessary work," have been accumulated into a PRO-COLLIER PERKINS. by a forger-else we suppose skill working for its own dishonour. The great mass of ingenious labour, apparently unnecessary for the accomplishment of any forger's end, and hence multiplying the chances of detection; the large amount of nonsensical emendations proposed also increasing the likelihood of suspicion;-seem warrants for the bonâ fide nature of the notes and of the correctness of the hypothesis that attributes them to a nonliterary person-one working to fit the dramas for stage representation, not for closet reading. A fabricator would at once have seen that the more wild, wayward, and apparently unnecessary the innovations made on a text, would result in damage to his aim; but the Collier-Perkins changes are very numerous, often needless, frequently prosaic, many times wrongheaded, occasionally absurd, and sometimes absolutely nonsensical. This, as it would scarcely have been done by a forger, seems to evade the charge made against Collier, though it neither substantiates nor authorizes the emendations. A fifty years' reverential exploration of the hidden nooks and corners of old English literature and devotion to Shakesperean and dramatic criticism, would be ill ended by such an offence [or mistake] as that laid to the charge of Mr. Collier. He would thus appear to have educated a taste expressly to detect himself, or have exposed himself to detection by the very antecedents of his own life. Either way, if guilty of fault or inadvertence, he has been or become voluntarily the destroyer of his own reputation. Mr. Collier is calmer in judgment and more cautious in manner than to do so. That the chief emendations are made on the best acting dramas, and not on those that are most poetical or philosophical, most read in the closet, and that many of these alterations consist of omissions-in some plays, such as Hamlet, as many as 200 lines are struck out is in itself a proof that the changes |