The Press. — London, England, 1853-10-08 00:00:00

littratart. THE Sll A KFISPEARE CONTROVERSY. Notes stud I.:Nweibtlbws to the 'Text of Shake :prom's IV .1. Payne Collier. See tind Edition. I Anob in : Whittaker awl Co. 7'h e Plop if Shithexpoto . e: the regelated the 01,1 e‘ppiex. owl hq the reeently-tliseurefed Folio of 1682, moo/min:, .Ibootsetipt Esneatibt tioms. Edited by .1. Pay, IC ( ' sillier. LOillloll : Whittaker and Co. 7'he Text of Shithemirgre riatsliew.. , l fern), the Interpolations awl l'orreptiuns etflowsstrd by ./. Payne Collier. By S. W. Singer. 1,,i ii ,10 11 : Pickering. A Pew Notes oit Shakeapeare, 'Fe. By the Rev. A. Dyce. London : .1. R. Smith. A Few It lit Reply. By the Rev. Joseph Hunter. London : .1. R. Smith. ele. Tins dr. must be 'held to include some five or six o•nittll pnblirations by NI r. pamphlet tor two by 11r. Charles Knight, two long articles in Illor4 roma. Magazixe, several numbers of our weekly vontempontries. the A thrtsava r, the Exantiner. and A'atem and (lorries. have specified them partieularly would have ew•rupled more room than we are abbe to spare f4ir noisier of ?-9 . 41V1 . 1 . 11111 Mil than a mere catalogue of isiniphlets and newspapers. The :4'11+41, howe've'r. Whiell they relate is of rest moment I lave we anything like a correct text of Shakespeare's Nays? The gentleman who has occasioned all this emitroversy—this wstr of wordn, ay, and hard words too—is a munelosm annotator, who is said to have lived dining the Protectorate, Hutt who appears in person represented by Mr. Joins Payne Collier. This Mr. Perkins (for such it.; supposed to have been his name) Alume befo r e us, we admit, well represented. Mr. Collier has been one of the most misfal sulinirers of the great islet, and to his eitte mid industry we are indebted for the best existing edition of his works (that. in eight whores octavo), and for the di:(covery of many new and initswtant partieulars bearing directly on Sliakeveare himself. lie had been. it is well known, a sturdy advocate for the purity of the text in the first folio. What he wart unable to understated ho was u n willing to lie worked for truth : And his edition was, and with some exceptions must still be, looked upon as the true text of the great poet. What, then, was the piddle surprise when Isom . some year and a lin I fag 4 4) Mr. Collier began to repudiate his own test. to give np Ileminge and Condelt, to abandon his fitith in the first folio, and to supply from week to week in the eolumus of the Athem,ento many startling new readings. made by a nameless petson in a (lofty of the second folio, and in a handwriting nearly ent'Vetl with Shakespeare himself? The surprise will not soon be forgotten in literary civvies. Mr. Collies% it is di n ` to hint to say. put one and all haore the piddle Milli a becoming diffidence. He told the story of his nequisition briefly and monistakaldy. Al he bad to say in their behalf he urged moderately. and now 111141 tlicn convincingly. The corrections, indeed. spoke for themsolves. Many were addressed to poetie minds—more to common-sense people. New lights were thrown 1111 obscure passages. Mill, i u sonic instances, whole lines were restored. Former cotkieeturem were now and then confirmed. and the public iiegan to !eel that or the countless e4itgolls4 of Shakespeare to be had at every kind of priee none Were 1,0 be relied up on . Mr. Colliers 11 S. annotator was worth all your Popes owl Theoladds. your Ilamssers and Warburton., your ('spell, your .14•Impsons, your Steseveliws, your Heeds. your Maiones, your colliers. your Knights. and your Dynes. 'lime Shakespeare Society patronised the itnnatator : the hook was publicly shown at the Society of Antiquaries and elsewhere opininna of all kinds wen e sought and such was the belief in this new annotator and his test that .both the Row nod Albemarle-street wow pulling the skirts of Nlr. Collier at one and the same time. The Row won, and then THE PRESS. came forth the volume which stands the first on our list. It was well received ; the Ai/sew/sum backed up its pet contributor ; the Examiner welcomed - it in its best style; other papers praised it ; and the mania for at text founded on Mr. Collier's discovery raged at fever point. Large sums were offered for the book—larger for the sole use of the book. Copyright was talked about, anal Mr. Collier, it was said, was about to enjoy a monopoly of Shakespeare's works. It was even hinted that be had dipped his !meads into lime anal mortar on the strength of it. This, of course, was not to be endured. Mr. Knight cried aloud, anal condemned the new annotator. 111 r. Knight is an editor of Shakespeare. Mr. Halliwell cried louder still, and condemned the new annotator. Mr. Halliwell haul announced an expensive edition of Shakespeare. Mr. Singer roared and called naughty names. Mr. Singer was about to appear a second time as an editor of Shakespeare. Mr. Dye° hooted and pooh-poohed the new annotator. Mr. Dvee was in treaty for his thrice-thwarted edition of Shakespeare. The copyright cry of Mfr. Collier induced all this disbelief in the MS. annotator. Haul the corrections been announced as public property Mr. Perkins would have appeared at much more able anno tator in the eyes of Messrs. Knight, Singer, anal Ilyee, than he has been made to swear, by tucauts of the bugbear cry of a copyright in the notes. It is our belief that too much importance was attached at first to the actual value of Mr. discovely, and that (as is frequently the ease in like mutters ) too little attention is about to be paid to it. We have seen the folio in which the corrections are made. There can be no doubt about the age of the hand writing—it is the handwriting of a period ringing from I 6:) 11 16911—but on what au thority the corrections are made we have ma means of information other than that derived from internal evidence of tolly or good sense in the alterations themselves. Stone are poetic—some aro prosaic enough ; many are addressed to common sense. and command immediate acquiescence : others show that the annotator was a prompter or player. or some one working tar a playhouse; while the general inference is that the annotator—whoever he was—was a person who had access to at least. one prompt or plavhouse book. Mr. Halliwell, Mr. Singer, and Mr. Knight are simply savage in condemning Mr. Collier and Mr. Perkins. Mr. Singer, indeed, treats Mr. Collier ver sonally as a sort of convicted felon, anal writes in the style throughout unhappily intro duced into tslitoehal 1;# ..4'111.1111' by the late Mr. Hittaard; while his additions to our stock of information acre of the most infinitesimal quart tity. Mr. Dyee is tairer. Ilis book. in point of tone and even information, is a remarkable improvement on his vindictive volume of at few years ago. llis endeavour has been to show that sundry of the recently-published emeodations are "altogether erroneous ;" that others " cannot stand the test of critieism:" that many alterations are "ignorant, tasteless, ,and wanton:" hat (he is, at least, generous) that the volume " presents corrections which " require no authority to reeommend them, " Issquise common sense declares them to be " right." Mr. Hunter is not less gracious. He has his doubts. like others ; but, in more than ore instance, he is hoppy to express his thanks " to Mr. Collier anal the unknown cor " rector for having relieved him from all alitli " culty, by bringing a line to conform itself to " what. soar appears evidently to be the scope of " the passage." Neither Mr. Hunter nor Mr. lbyeewill lose in public estimation by being at least fair: while Messrs Knight. Ilalliwell, anal Singer will do well to remember the rule which the most aerial of the Shakespeare commentators laid down for his own observance. though he dial not always obey it. •"fhe diameters of " living or dead commentators," says ungentle Ceorge Steevens, in his address to the publie about a new edition of Shakespeare. " shall " not. in the edition proposed, be wantlmly " tradured; and no greater freedom of language " be made use of than is necessary tu , convince. " Au error in at quotatiaan, or aceidentad misre " presentation of at fact. shall not be treated " with the severity due to at t 1111 l crime." To Mr. Singer may be applied the couplet which SATURDAY, Johnson would have used in his reply to Warl)urton " I I ..re blinded first, and then beguiled, Looks dark as lguorimee, as Freury wild.' For antiquated failings may best be visited by old-fashioned entire._ _ It must ever be a source of public regret, and also a source of infinite idle conjecture, that those glories of our nation. the plays of Shakespeare and the " Paradise Lost" of Milton, should have wanted when in print the benefit of a revision by their authors. What Shakespeare would not do, Milton could not see to do. How many volumes of idle learn ing and misapplied ingenuity might have been saved to us if Shakespeare had done what his great friend and rival, lien Jenson, did—put his plays into a folio volume ; anti what va garies of punctuation might we not have been saved from (to say nothing of Bentley's mad nesses) if Milton's eyesight had been spared to him ! It was cleverly imagined—we forget by whom—that Shakespeare and his commen tators would meet in the other world, and that it would be evident, from the looks of both, that Shakespeare did not know his commenta tors, and that the commentators did not know Shakespeare. How much would Shakespeare have to reject from his so-called works had he HOW the power of revision! How many obscu rities would not his pen clear up (we will not talk of additional beauties thrown in as he went on) ; how many players' impertinences would he not remove ; what looks of surprise would he not give, and genial laughs sufkr to be heard, anti sometimes vainly seek to suppress, while, over his best editor, by a letter or a word, he would restore meaning and beauty to a whole passage! There is a very interesting inquiry in the life of Shakespeare. Did Shakespeare over print a play, or sanction the printing of a play, or of any publication, beyond his " Venus and Adonis," and his " Rape of Luerece" ? It is our belief (we use a weak word) that he did not. Let us inquire into this. Of Shakespeare's thirty-six plays, seventeen were printed in his lifetime, and of these seventeen several more than once. To no one play of the seventeen is there a dedication, the usual prefix to almost every authorised play or poem of Shakespeare's time, such prefixes being attached to the "Venus and Adonis," and the " Rape of Luerece," the two pieces which Shakespeare did print, anti with great typographical accuracy. Then these seventeen plays, printed in the poet's life time, abound in the grossest errors of sense, to say nothing of the wildest printer's blue• tiers which the least approach to a revision had readily removed. It is true that some editions of these plays are fuller in matter than others (the first Ilesmkt, for example), but the same stupid printer's errors are still to be found in these additions. Would an author, let us ask, who superintended the printing of a play permit the constant recurrence of errors not common to the state of typography in his time ? Ben .lonson's folio is singularly free front misprints; so, as we have already oh served, are the two poems which Skakespearo did see through the MSS. It will be asked, by those who have not looked into the question With the attention it deserves, why did not Shakespeare print his plays? Our answer is—first. it was not the custom of his time ; and, secondly, it was against his interest. To illustrate our two positions, with vita l' s trout the complaints of contemporary writers, would require greater room than wu van give at present even to questions of such literary interest. But our ease may be sup ported generally. In' Beaumont and Fletcher's fifty-two plays, one alone Won't' appear to Itavo been printed by them. That one play was 77/e F,ritlfill Shepherdem, which, when it was con demned on the stage. was printed by its author, Fleteher, "to shame the fools." If it had been suecessful it would not have been printed, and posterity would have suffered. Ben .11onson was laughed at 1 his eohtemponuies for call ing his plays "works," and for giving them other than a Stage publieity : and that it was against. Shakespeare's interest to have his plays printed is dear, from the profit he would derive in those unsettled times of copyright law—from their restricted perfor- 544