# The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778)/Volume 1/Preface by Theobald

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Mr. THEOBALD’s
PREFACE.
THE attempt to write upon Shakespeare is like going into a large, a spacious, and a splendid dome through the conveyance of a narrow and obscure entry. A glare of light suddenly breaks upon you beyond what the avenue at first promised: and a thousand beauties of genius and character, like so many gaudy apartments pouring at once upon the eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the mind. The prospect is too wide to come within the compass of a single view: it is a gay confusion of pleasing objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general admiration: and they must be separated, and eyed distinctly, in order to give the proper entertainment.
And as in great piles of building, some parts are often finished up to hit the taste of the connoisseur; others more negligently put together, to strike the fancy of a common and unlearned beholder: some parts are made stupendously magnificent and grand, to surprise with the vast design an execution of the architect; others are contracted, to amuse you with his neatness and elegance in little. So, in Shakespeare, we may find traits that will stand the test of the severest judgement; and strokes as carefully hit off, to the level of the more ordinary capacities: some descriptions raised to the pitch of grandeur, as to astonish you with the compass and elevation of his thought: and others copying nature within so narrow, so confined a circle, as if the author’s talent lay only at drawing in miniature.
In how many points of light must we be obliged to gaze at this great poet! In how many branches of excellence to ​consider and admire him! Whether we view him on the side of art or nature, he ought equally to engage our attention: whether we respect the force and greatness of his genius, the extent of his knowledge and reading, the power and address with which he throws out and applies either nature or learning, there is ample scope both for our wonder and pleasure. If his diction, and the cloathing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! If his images and ideas steal into our souls, and strike upon our fancy, how much are they improved in price, when we come to respect with what propriety and justness they are applied to character! If we look into his characters, and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts out for them, how are we taken up with the mastery of his portraits! What draughts of nature! What variety of originals, and how differing each from the other! How are they dressed from the stores of his own luxurious imagination; without being the apes of mode, or borrowing from any foreign wardrobe! Each of them are the standards of fashion for themselves: like gentlemen that are above the direction of their taylors, and can adorn themselves without the aid of imitation. If other poets draw more than one fool or coxcomb, there is the same resemblance in them, as in that painter’s draughts, who was happy only at forming a rose: you find them all younger brothers of the same family, and all of them have a pretence to give the same crest: but Shakespeare’s clowns and sops come all of a different house: they are no farther allied to one another than as man to man, members of the same species; but as different in features and lineaments of character, as we are from one another in face or complexion. But I am unawares lanching into his character as a writer, before I have said what I intended of him as a private member of the republick.
Mr. Rowe has very justly observed, that people are fond of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity; and that the common accidents of their lives naturally become the subject of our critical enquiries: that however trifling such a curiosity at the first view may appear, yet, as for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may, perhaps, sometimes conduce to the better understanding his works; and, indeed, this author’s works, from the bad treatment he has met with from copyists and editors, have so long wanted a comment, that ​one would zealously embrace every method of information that could contribute to recover them from the injuries with which they have so long lain overwhelmed.
It is certain, that if we have first admired the man in his writings, his case is so circumstanced, that we must naturally admire the writings in the man: that if we go back to take a view of his education, and the employment in life which fortune had cut out for him, we shall retain the stronger ideas of his extensive genius.
His, father, we are told, was a considerable dealer in wool, but having no fewer than ten children, of whom our Shakespeare was the eldest, the best education he could afford him was no better than to qualify him for his own business and employment. I cannot affirm with any certainty how long his father lived; but I take him to be the same Mr. John Shakespeare who was living in the year 1599, and who then, in honour of his son, took out an extract of his family-arms from the herald’s office; by which it appears, that he had been officer and bailiff of Stratford upon Avo in Warwickshire; and that he enjoyed some hereditary lands and tenements, the reward of his great grandfather’s faithful and approved service to king Henry VII.
Be this as it will, our Shakespeare, it seems was bred for some time at a free-school; the very free-school, I presume, founded at Stratford: where, we are told, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but that his father being obliged, through narrowness of circumstance, to withdraw him too soon from thence, he was thereby unhappily prevented from making any proficiency in the dead languages: a point that will deserve some little discussion in the sequel of this dissertation.
How long the continued in his father’s way of business, either as an assistant to him, or on his own proper account, no notices are left to inform us: nor have I been able to learn precisely at what period of life he quitted his native Stratford, and began his acquaintance with London and and the stage.
In order to settle in the world after a family-manner, he thought fit, Mr. Rowe acquaints us, to marry while he was yet very young. It is certain, he did so: for by the monument in Stratford church, erected to the memory of his daughter susanha, the wife of John Hall, gentleman, it appears, that she died on the 2d of July, in the year 1649, ​aged 66. So that she was born in 1583, when her father could not be full 19 years old; who was himself born in the year 1564. Nor as she his only child, for he had another daughter, Judith, who was born before her, and who was married to one Mr. Thomas Quiney. So that Shakespeare must have entered into wedlock by that time he was turned of seventeen years.
Whether the force of inclination merely, or some concurring circumstances of convenience in the match, prompted him to marry so early, is not easy to be determined at this distance: but it is probable, a view of interest might partly sway his conduct in this point: for he married the daughter of one Hathaway, a substantial yeoman in his neighbourhood, and she had the start of him in age no less than eight years. She survived him notwithstanding, seven seasons, and died that very year the players published the first edition of his works in folio, anno Dom. 1623, at the age of 67 years, as we likewise learn from her monument in Stratford church.
How long he continued in this kind of settlement, upon his own native spot, is not more easily to be determined. But if the tradition be true, of that extravagance which forced him both to quit his country and way of living; to wit, his being engaged, with a knot of young deer-stealers, to rob the park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford; the enterprize favours so much of youth and levity, we may reasonably suppose it was before he could write full man. Besides, considering he has left us six and thirty plays at least, avowed to be genuine; and considering too, that he had retired from the stage, to spend the latter part of his days at his own native Stratford: the interval of time necessarily required for the finishing so many dramatick pieces, obliges us to suppose he threw himself very early upon the play-house. And as he could, probably, contract no acquaintance with the drama, while he was driving on the affair of wool at home; some time must be lost, even after he had commenced player, before he could attain knowledge enough in the science to qualify himself for turning author.
It has been observed by Mr. Rowe, that, amongst other ​extravagancies, which our author has given to his Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he has made him a deer-stealer; and that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire prosecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow, he has given him very near the same coat of arms, which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, describes for a family there. There are two coats, I observe, in Dugdale, where three silver fishes are borne in the name of Lucy; and another coat, to the monument of Thomas Lucy, son of Sir William Lucy, in which are quartered in four several divisions, twelve little fishes, three in each division, probably Luces. This very coat, indeed, seems alluded to in Shallow’s giving the dozen white Luces, and in Slender saying he may quarter. When I confider the exceeding candour and good nature of our author (which inclined all the gentler part of the world to love him; as the power of his wit obliged the men of the most delicate knowledge and polite learning to admire him); and that he should throw this humourous piece of satire at his prosecutor, at least twenty years after the provocation given; I am confidently persuaded it must be owing to an unforgiving rancour on the prosecutor’s side: and if this was the case, it were pity but the disgrace of such an inveteracy should remain as a lasting reproach, and Shallow stand as a mark of ridicule to stigmatize his malice.
It is said, our author spent some years before his death, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends, at his native Stratford. I could never pick up any certain intelligence, when he relinquished the stage. I know, it has been mistakenly thought by some, that Spenser’s Thalia, in his Tears of his Muses, where she laments the loss of her Willy in the comick scene, has been applied to our author’s quitting the stage. But Spenser himself, it is well known, quitted the stage of life in the year 1598; and, five years after this, we find Shakespeare’s name among the actors in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, which first made its appearance in the year 1603. Nor, surely, could he then have any thoughts of retiring, since, that very year, a licence under the privy-seal was granted by K. James I. to him and Fletcher, Burbage, Phillippes, Hemings, Condel, &c. authorizing them to exercise the art of playing comedies, tragedies, &c. as well at their usual house called The Globe on the other side of the water, as in any other parts of the kingdom, during his majesty’s pleasure (a copy of which licence is preserved ​in Rymer's Fœdera). Again, it is certain, that Shakespeare did not exhibit his Macbeth, till after the union was brought about, and till after K. James I. had begun to touch for the evil: for it is plain, he has inserted compliments, on both those accounts, upon his royal master in that tragedy. Nor, indeed, could the number of the dramatick pieces, he produced, admit of his retiring near so early as that period. So that what Spenser there says, if it relate at all to Shakespeare, must hint at some occasional recess he made for a time upon a disgust taken: or the Willy, there mentioned, must relate to some other favourite poet. I believe, we may safely determine, that he had not quitted in the year 1610. For in his Tempest, our author makes mention of the Bermuda islands, which were unknown to the English, till, in 1609, Sir John Summers made a voyage to North-America, and discovered them: and afterwards invited some of his countrymen to settle a plantation there. That he became the private gentleman, at least three years before his decease, is pretty obvious from another circumstance: I mean, from that remarkable and well-known story, which Mr. Rowe has given us of our author’s intimacy with Mr. John Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury; and upon whom Shakespeare made the following facetious epitaph.
This farcastical piece of wit was, at the gentleman’s own request, thrown out extemporally in his company. And this Mr. John Combe I take to be the same, who, by Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, is said to have died in the year 1614, and for whom, at the upper end of the quire of the Guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford, a fair monument is erected, having a statue thereon cut in alabaster, and in a gown, with this epitaph. “Here lieth interred the body of John Combe, esq; who died the 10th of July, 1614, who bequeathed several annual charities to the parish of Stratford, and 100l. to be lent to fifteen poor tradesmen from three years to three years, changing the parties every third year, at the rate of fifty shillings per annum, the in​crease to be distributed to the almes-poor there.”—The donation has all the air of a rich and sagacious usurer.
Shakespeare himself did not survive Mr. Combe long, for he died in the year 1616, the 53d of his age. He lies buried on the north side of the chancel in the great church at Stratford; where a monument, decent enough for the time, is erected to him, and placed against the wall. He is represented under an arch in a sitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left rested on a scrowl of paper. The Latin distich, which is placed under the cushion, has been given us by Mr. Pope, or his graver, in this manner.
I confess, I do not conceive the difference betwixt ingenio and genio in the first verse. They seem to me inirely synonymous terms; nor was the Pylian sage Nestor celebrated for his ingenuity, but for an experience and judgment owing to his long age. Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, has copied this distich with a distinction which Mr. Rowe has followed, and which certainly restores us the true meaning of the epitaph.
JUDICIO Pylium, genio Socratem, &c.
​In 1614, the greater part of the town of Stratford was consumed by fire; but our Shakespeare’s house, among some others, escaped the flames. This house was first built by Sir Hugh Clopton, a younger brother of an ancient family in that neighbourhood, who took their name from the manor of Clopton. Sir Hugh was Sheriff of London, in the reign of Richard III. and lord-mayor in the reign of king Henry VII. To this gentleman the town of Stratford is indebted for the fine stonebridge, consisting of fourteen arches, which, at an extraordinary expence, he built over the Avon, together with a causeway running at the west-end thereof; as also for rebuilding the chapel adjoining to his house, and the cross-isle in the church there. It is remarkable of him, that, though he lived and died a batchelor, among the other extensive charities which he left both to the city of London and town of Stratford, he bequeathed considerable legacies for the marriage of poor maidens of good name and fame both in London and at Stratford. Notwithstanding which large donations in his life, and bequests at his death, as he had purchased the manor of Clopton, and all the estate of the family, so he left the same again to his elder brother’s son with a very great addition (a proof how well beneficence and œconomy may walk hand in had in wise families); good part of which estate is yet in the possession of Edward Clopton, esq; and Sir Hugh Clopton, knt. lineally descended from the elder brother of the first Sir Hugh: who particularly bequeathed to his nephew, by his will, his house, by the name of his Great House in Stratford.
The estate had now been sold out of the Clopton family for above a century, at the time when Shakespeare became the purchaser: who, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New-place; which the mansion-house, since erected upon the same spot, at this day retains. The house and lands, which attended it, continued in Shakespeare’s descendants to the time of the Restoration: when they were repurchased by the Clopton family, and the mansion now belongs to Sir Hugh Clopton, knt.
​To the favour of this worthy gentleman I owe the knowledge of one particular, in honour of our poet’s once dwelling-house, of which, I presume, Mr. Rowe never was apprized. When the civil war raged in England, and king Charles the First’s queen was driven by the necessity of affairs to make a recess in Warwickshire, she kept her court for three weeks in New-place. We may reasonably suppose it then the best private house in the town; and her majesty preferred it to the college, which was in the possession of the Combe family, who did not so strongly favour the king’s party.
How much our author employed himself in poetry, after his retirement from the stage, does not so evidently appear: very few posthumous sketches of his pen have been recovered to ascertain that point. We have been told, indeed, in print, but not till very lately, that two large chests full of this great man’s loose papers and manuscripts, in the hands of an ignorant baker of Warwick (who married one of the descendants from our Shakespeare) were carelessly scattered and thrown about as garret-lumber and litter, to the particular knowledge of the late Sir William Bishop, till they were all consumed in the general fire and destruction of that town. I cannot help being a little apt to distrust the authority of this tradition: because his wife survived him seven years, and as his favourite daughter Susanna survived her twenty-six years, it is very improbable they should suffer such a treasure to be removed, and translated into a remoter branch of the family, without a scrutiny first made into the value of it. This, I say, inclines me to distrust the authority of the relation: but, notwithstanding such an a improbability, if we really lost such a treasure, by whatever fatality or caprice of fortune they came into such ignorant and neglectful hands, I agree with the relater, the misfortune is wholly irreparable.
To these particulars, which regard his person and private life, some few more are to be gleaned from Mr. Rowe’s Account of his Life and Writings: let us now take a short view of him in his publick capacity as a writer: and, from thence, the transition will be easy to the state in which his writings have been handed down to us.
No age, perhaps, can produce an author more various from himself, than Shakespeare has been universally acknowledged to be. The diversity in stile, and other parts of composition, so obvious in him, is as variously to be accounted for. His education, we find, was at best but begun: and ​he started early into a science from the force of genius, unequally assisted by acquired improvements. His fire, spirit, and exuberance of imagination gave an impetuosity to his pen: his ideas flowed from him in a stream rapid, but not turbulent; copious, but not ever overbearing its shores. The ease and sweetness of his temper might not a little contribute to his facility in writing: as his employment, as a player, gave him an advantage and habit of fancying himself the very character he meant to delineate. He used the helps of his function in forming himself to create and express that sublime, which other actors can only copy, and throw out, in action and graceful attitude. But, Nullum fine veniâ placuit ingenium, says Seneca. The genius, that gives us the greatest pleasure, sometimes stands in need of our indulgence. Whenever this heppens with regard to Shakespeare, I would willingly impute it to a vice of his times. We see complaisance enough, in our days, paid to a bad taste. So that his clinches, false wit, and descending beneath himself, may have proceeded from a deference paid to the then reigning barbarism.
I have not thought it out of my province, whenever occasion offered, to take notice of some of our poet’s grand touches of nature: some, that do not appear sufficiently such; but in which he seems the most deeply instructed; and to which, no doubt, he has so much owed that happy preservation of his characters, for which he is jultly celebrated. Great genius’s, like his, naturally unambitious, are satisfied to conceal their art in these points. It is the foible of your worser poets to make a parade and ostentation of that little science they have; and to throw it out in the most ambitious colours. And whenever a writer of this class shall attempt to copy these artful concealments of our author, and shall either think them easy, or practised by a writer for his ease, he will soon be convinced of his mistake by the difficulty of reaching the imitation of them.
Indeed, to point out and exclaim upon all the beauties of Shakespeare, as they come singly in review, would be as insipid, as endless; as tedious, as unnecessary: but the explanation of those beauties that are less obvious to common readers, and whose illustration depends on the rules of just ​criticism, and an exact knowledge of human life, should deservedly have a share in a general critick upon the author. But to pass over at once to another subject:—
It has been allowed on all hands, how far our author was indebted to nature; it is not so well agreed, how much he owed to languages and acquired learning. The decisions on this subject were certainly set on foot by the hint from Ben Jonson, that he had small Latin and less Greek: and from this tradition, as it were, Mr. Rowe has thought fit peremptorily to declare, that, “It is without controversy, he had no knowledge of the writings of the ancient poets, for that in his works we find no traces of any thing which looks like an imitation of the ancients. For the delicacy of his taste (continues he) and the natural bent of his own great genius (equal, if not superior, to some of the best of theirs) would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much pleasure, that some of their fine images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings: and so his not copying, at least, something from them, may be an argument of his never having read them.” I shall leave it to the determination of my learned readers, from the numerous passages which I have occasionally quoted in my notes, in which our poet seems closely to have imitated the classicks, whether Mr. Rowe’s assertion be so absolutely to be depended on. The result of the controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our author’s honour: how happily he could imitate them, if that point be allowed; or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing any thing to imitation.
Though I should be very unwilling to allow Shakespeare so poor a scholar, as many have laboured to represent him, yet I shall be very cautious of declaring too positively on the other side of the question; that is, with regard to my opinion of his knowledge in the dead languages. And therefore the passages, that I occasionally quote from the classicks, shall not be urged as proofs that he knowingly imitated those originals; but brought to shew how happily he has expressed himself upon the same topicks. A very learned critick of our own nation has declared, that a sameness of thought and sameness of expression too, in two writers of a different age, can hardly happen, without a violent suspicion of the latter copying from his predecessor. I shall not therefore run any great risque of a censure, though I ​should venture to hint, that the resemblances in thought and expression of our author and an ancient (which we should allow to be imitation in the one, whose learning was not questioned) may sometimes take its rise from strength of memory, and those impressions which he owed to the school. And if we may allow a possibility of this, considering that, when he quitted the school, he gave into his father’s profession and way of living, and had, it is likely, but a slender library of classical learning; and considering what a number of translations, romances, and legends started about his time, and a little before (most of which, it is very evident, he read) I think it may easily be reconciled, why he rather schemed his plots and characters from these more latter informations, than went back to those fountains, for which he might entertain a sincere veneration, but to which he could not have so ready a recourse.
In touching on another part of his learning, as it related to the knowledge of history and books, I shall advance something, that, at first sight, will very much wear the appearance of a paradox. For I shall find it no hard matter to prove, that, from the grossest blunders in history, we are not to infer his real ignorance of it: nor from a greater use of Latin words, than ever any other English author used, must we infer his intimate acquaintance with that language.
A reader of taste may easily observe, that though Shakespeare, almoft in every scene of his historical plays, commits the grossest offences against chronology, history, and ancient politicks; yet this was not through ignorance, as is generally supposed, but through the too powerful blaze of his imaginations which, when once raised, made all acquired nowledge vanish and disappear before it. But this licence in him, as I have said, must not be imputed to ignorance: since as often we may find him, when occasion serves, reasoning up to the truth of history; and throwing out sentiments as justly adapted to the circumstances of his subject, as to the dignity of his characters, or dictates of nature in general.
Then to come to his knowledge of the Latin tongue, it is certain, there is a surprising effusion of Latin words made English, far more than in any one English author I have seen; but we must be cautious to imagine, this was of his own doing. For the Englith tongue, in his age, began extremely to suffer by an inundation of Latin: and this, to be ​sure, was occasioned by the pedantry of those two monarchs, Elizabeth and James, both great Latinists. For it is not to be wondered at, if both the court and schools, equal flatterers of power, should adapt themselves to the royal taste.
But now I am touching on the question (which has been so frequently agitated, yet so entirely undecided) of his learning and acquaintance with the languages; an additional word or two naturally falls in here upon the genius of our author, as compared with that of Jonson his contemporary. They are confessedly the greatest writers our nation could ever boast of in the drama. The first, we say, owed all to his prodigious natural genius; and the other a great deal to his art and learning. This, if attended to, will explain a very remarkable appearance in their writings. Besides those wonderful master-pieces of art and genius, which each has given us; they are the authors of other works very unworthy of them: but with this difference; that in Jonson's bad pieces we do not discover one single trace of the author of The Fox and Alchymist: but in the wild extravagant notes of Shakespeare you every now and then encounter strains that recognize the divine composer. This difference may be thus accounted for. Jonson, as we said besore, owing all his excellence to his art, by which he sometimes strained himself to an uncommon pitch, when at other times he unbent and played with his subject, having nothing then to support him, it is no wonder that he wrote so far beneath himself. But Shakespeare, indebted more largely to nature, than the other to acquired talents, in his most negligent hours could never so totally divest himself of his genius, but that it would frequently break out with astonishing force and splendor.
As I have never proposed to dilate farther on the character of my author, than was necessary to explain the nature and use of this edition, I shall proceed to consider him as a genius in possession of an everlasting name. And how great that merit must be, which could gain it against all the disadvantages of the horrid condition in which he has hitherto appeared! Had Homer, or any other admired author, first started into publick so maimed and deformed, we cannot determine whether they had not sunk for ever under the ignominy of such an ill appearance. The mangled condition of Shakespeare has been acknowledged by Mr. Rowe, who published him indeed, but neither corrected his text, nor collated the old copies. This gentleman had abilities, and ​sufficient knowledge of his author, had but his industry been equal to his talents. The same mangled condition has been acknowledged too by Mr. Pope, who published him likewise, pretended to have collated the old copies, and yet seldom has corrected the text but to its injury. I congratulate with the manes of our poet, that this gentleman has been sparing in indulging his private sense, as he phrases it; for he, who tampers with an author, whom he does not understand, must do it at the expence of his subject. I have made it evident throughout my remarks, that he has frequently inflicted a wound where he intended a cure. He has acted with regard to our author, as an editor, whom Lipsius mentions, did with regard to Martial; Inventus est nescio quis Popa, qui non vitia ejus, sed ipsum excidit. He has attacked him like an unhandy slaughterman; and not lopped off the errors, but the poet.
When this is found to be the fact, how absurd must appear the praises of such an editor? It seems a moot point, whether Mr. Pope has done most injury to Shakespeare, as his editor and encomiast; or Mr. Rymer done him service, as his rival and censurer. They have both shewn themselves in an equal impuissance of suspecting or amending the corrupted passages: and though it be neither prudence to censure, or commend what one does not understand; yet if a man must do one when he plays the critick, the latter is the more ridiculous office; and by that Shakespeare suffers most. For the natural veneration which we have for him, makes us apt to swallow whatever is given us as his, and set off with encomiums; and hence we quit all suspicions of depravity: on the contrary, the censure of so divine an author sets us upon his defence; and this produces an exact scrutiny and examination, which ends in finding out and discriminating the true from the spurious.
It is not with any secret pleasure, that I so frequently animadvert on Mr. Pope as a critick; but there are provocations, which a man can never quite forget. His libels have been thrown out with so much inveteracy, that, not to dispute whether they should come from a christian, they leave it a question whether they could come from a man. I should be loth to doubt, as Quintus Serenus did in a like case:
​The indignation, perhaps, for being represented a blockhead, may be as strong in us, as it is in the ladies for a reflexion on their beauties. It is certain, I am indebted to him for some flagrant civilities; and I shall willingly devote a part of my life to the honest endeavour of quitting scores: with this exception however, that I will not return those civilities in his peculiar strain, but confine myself, at least, to the limits of common decency. I shall ever think it better to want wit, than to want humanity: and impartial posterity may, perhaps, be of my opinion.
But to return to my subject, which now calls upon me to enquire into those causes, to which the depravations of my author originally may be assigned. We are to consider him as a writer, of whom no authentick manuscript was left extant; as a writer, whose pieces were dispersedly performed on the several stages then in being. And it was the custom of those days for the poets to take a price of the players for the pieces they from time to time furnished; and thereupon it was supposed they had no farther right to print them without the consent of the players. As it was the interest of the companies to keep their plays unpublished, when any one succeeded, there was a contest betwixt the curiosity of the town, who demanded to see it in print, and the policy of the stagers, who wished to secrete it within their own walls. Hence, many pieces were taken down in short-hand, and imperfectly copied by ear from a representation: others were printed from piece-meal parts surreptitiously obtained from the theatres, uncorrect, and without the poet’s knowledge. To some of these causes we owe the train of blemishes, that deform those pieces which stole singly into the world in our author’s life-time.
There are still other reasons, which may be supposed to have affected the whole set. When the players took upon them to publish his works entire, every theatre was ransacked to supply the copy; and parts collected, which had gone through as many changes as performers, either from mutilations or additions made to them. Hence we derive many chasms and incoherences in the sense and matter. scenes were frequently transposed, and shuffled out of their true place, to humour the caprice, or supposed convenience of some particular actor. Hence much confusion and impropriety has attended, and embarrassed the business and fable. To these obvious causes of corruption it must be added, that our author has lain under the disadvantage of having his er​rors, propagated and multiplied by time: because, for near a century, his works were published from the faulty copies, without the assistance of any intelligent editor: which has been the case likewise of many a classick writer.
The nature of any distemper once found has generally been the immediate step to a cure. Shakespeare's case has in a great measure resembled that of a corrupt classick; and, consequently, the method of cure was likewise to bear a resemblance. By what means, and with what success, this cure has been effected on ancient writers, is too well known, and needs no formal illustration. The reputation, consequent on tasks of that nature, invited me to attempt the method here; with this view, the hopes of restoring to the publick their greatest poet in his original purity: after having so long lain in a condition that was a disgrace to common sense. To this end I have ventured on a labour, that is the first assay of the kind on any modern author whatsoever. For the late edition of Milton by the learned Dr. Bentley is, in the main, a performance of another species. It is plain, it was the intention of that great man rather to correct and pare off the excrescencies of the Paradise Lost, in the manner that Tucca and Varius were employed to criticise the Æneis of Virgil, than to restore corrupted passages. Hence, therefore, may be seen either the iniquity or ignorance of his censurers, who, from some expressions, would make us believe, the doctor every where gives us his corrections as the original text of the author; whereas the chief turn of his criticism is plainly to shew the world, that if Milton did not write as he would have him, he ought to have wrote so.
I thought proper to premise this observation to the readers, as it will shew that the critick on Shakespeare is of a quite different kind. His genuine text is for the most part religiously adhered to, and the numerous faults and blemishes, purely his own, are left as they were found. Nothing is altered, but what by the clearest reasoning can be proved a corruption of the true text; and the alteration, a real restoration of the genuine reading. Nay, so strictly have I strove to give the true reading, though sometimes not to the advantage of my author, that I have been ridiculously ridiculed for it by those, who either were iniquitously for turning every thing to my disadvantage; or else were totally ignorant of the true duty of an editor.
​The science of criticism, as far as it affects an editor, seems to be reduced to these three classes; the emendation of corrupt passages; the explanation of obscure and difficult ones; and an enquiry into the beauties and defects of composition. This work is principally confined to the two former parts: though there are some specimens interspersed of the latter kind, as several of the emendations were best supported, and several of the difficulties best explained, by taking notice of the beauties and defects of the composition peculiar to this immortal poet. But this was but occasional, and for the sake only of perfecting the two other parts, which were the proper objects of the editor’s labour. The third lies open for every willing undertaker: and I shall be pleased to see it the employment of a masterly pen.
It must necessarily happen, as I have formerly observed, that where the assistance of manuscripts is wanting to set an author’s meaning right, and rescue him from those errors which have been transmitted down through a series of incorrect editions, and a long intervention of time, many passages must be desperate, and past a cure; and their true sense irretrievable either to care or the sagacity of conjecture. But is there any reason therefore to say, that because all cannot be retrieved, all ought to be left desperate? We should shew very little honesty, or wisdom, to play the tyrants with an author’s text; to raze, alter, introvate, and overturn, at all adventures, and to the utter detriment of his sense and meaning: but to be so served and cautious, as to interpose no relief or conjecture, where it manifestly labours and cries out for assistance, seems, on the other hand, an indolent absurdity.
As there are very few pages in Shakespeare, upon which some suspicions of depravity do not reasonably arise; I have thought it my duty in the first place, by a diligent and laborious collation, to take in the assistances of all the older copies.
In his historical plays, whenever our English chronicles, and in his tragedies, when Greek or Roman story could give any light, no pains have been omitted to set passages right, by comparing my author with his originals; for, as I have frequently observed, he was a close and accurate copier where-ever his fable was founded on history.
Where-ever the author’s sense is clear and discoverable (though, perchance, low and trivial) I have not by any innovation tampered with his text, out of an ostentation of ​endeavouring to make him speak better than the old copies have done.
Where, through all the former editions, a passage has laboured under fiat nonsense and invincible darkness, if, by the addition or alteration of a letter or two, or a transposition in the pointing, I have restored to him both sense and sentiment; such corrections, I am persuaded, will need no indulgence.
And whenever I have taken a greater latitude and liberty in amending, I have constantly endeavoured to support my corrections and conjectures by parallel passages and authorities from himself, the surest means of expounding any author whatsoever. Cette voïe d'interpreter un autheur par lui-même est plus sure que tous les commentaires, says a very learned French critick.
As to my notes (from which the common and learned readers of our author, I hope, will derive some satisfaction) I have endeavoured to give them a variety in some proportion to their number. Wherever I have ventured at a emendation, a note is constantly subjoined to justify and assert the reason of it. Where I only offer a conjecture, and do not disturb the text, I fairly set forth my grounds for such conjecture, and submit it to judgment. Some remarks are spent in explaining passages, where the wit or satire depends on an obscure point of history: others, where allusions are to divinity, philosophy, or other branches of science. Some are added to shew, where there is a suspicion of our author having borrowed from the ancients: others, to shew where he is rallying his contemporaries; or where he himself is rallied by them. And some are necessarily thrown in, to explain an obscure and obsolete term, phrase, or idea. I once intended to have added a complete and copious glossary; but as I have been importuned, and am prepared to give a correct edition of our author’s Poems, (in which many terms occur that are not to be met with in his plays) I thought a glossary to all Shakespeare’s works more proper to attend that volume.
In reforming an infinite number of passages in the pointing, where the sense was before quite lost, I have frequently subjoined notes to shew the depraved, and to prove the reformed, pointing: a part of labour in this work which I could very willingly have spared myself. May it not be objected, why then have you burdened us with these notes? The answer is obvious, and, if I mistake not, very ma​terial. Without such notes, these passages in subsequent editions would be liable, through the ignorance of printers and correctors, to fall into the old confusion: whereas, a note on every one hinders all possible return to depravity: and for ever secures them in a state of purity and integrity not to be lost or forfeited.
Again, as some notes have been necessary to point out the detection of the corrupted text, and establish the restoration of the genuine readings; some others have been as necessary for the explanation of passages obscure and difficult. To understand the necessity and use of this part of my talk, some particulars of my author’s character are previously to be explained. There are obscurities in him, which are common to him with all poets of the same species; there are others, the issue of the times he lived in; and there are others, again, peculiar to himself. The nature of comick poetry being entirely satirical, it busies itself more in exposing what we call caprice and humour, than vices cognizable to the laws. The English, from the happiness of a free constitution, and a turn of mind peculiarly speculative and inquisitive, are observed to produce more humourists, and a greater variety of original characters, than any other people whatsoever: and these owing their immediate birth to the peculiar genius of each age, an infinite number of things alluded to, glanced at, and exposed, must needs become obscure, as the characters themselves are antiquated and disused. An editor therefore should be well versed in the history and manners of his author’s age, if he aims at doing him a service in this respect.
Besides, wit lying mostly in the assemblage of ideas, and in putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance, or congruity, to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions in the fancy; the writer, who aims at wit, must of course range far and wide for materials. Now the age in which Shakespeare lived, having, above all others, a wonderful affection to appear learned, they declined vulgar images, such as are immediately fetched from nature, and ranged through the circle of the sciences to fetch their ideas from thence. But as the resemblances of such ideas to the subject must necessarily lie very much out of the common way, and every piece of wit appear a riddle to the vulgar; this, that should have taught them the forced, quaint, unnatural tract they were in (and induce them to follow a more natural one) ​was the very thing that kept them attached to it. The ostentatious affectation of abstruse learning, peculiar to that time, the love that men naturally have to every thing that looks like mystery, fixed them down to the habit of obscurity. Thus became the poetry of Donne (though the wittiest man of that age) nothing but a continued heap of riddles. And our Shakespeare, with all his easy nature about him, for want of the knowledge of the true rules of art, falls frequently into this vicious manner.
The third species of obscurities which deform our author, as the effects of his own genius and character, are those that proceed from his peculiar manner of thinking, and as peculiar a manner of cloathing those thoughts. With regard to his thinking, it is certain, that he had a general knowledge of all the sciences: but his acqnaintance was rather that of a traveller than a native. Nothing in philosophy was unknown to him; but every thing in it had the grace and force of novelty. And as novelty is one main source of admiration, we are not to wonder that he has perpetual allusions to the most recondite parts of the sciences: and this was done not so much out of affectation, as the effect of admiration begot by novelty. Then, as to his stile and diction, we may much more justly apply to Shakespeare, what a celebrated writer said of Milton: Our language sunk under him, and was unequal to that greatness of soul which furnished him with such glorious conceptions. He therefore frequently uses old words, to give his diction an air of solemnity; as he coins others, to express the novelty and variety of his ideas.
Upon every distinct species of these obscurities, I have thought it my province to employ a note for the service of my author, and the entertainment of my readers. A few transient remarks too I have not scrupled to intermix, upon the poet’s negligences and omissions in point of art; but I have done it always in such a manner, as will testify my deference and veneration for the immortal author. Some censurers of Shakespeare, and particularly Mr. Rymer, have taught me to distinguish betwixt the railer and critick. The putrage of his quotations is so remarkably violent, so pushed beyond all bounds of decency and sober reasoning, that it quite carries over the mark at which it was levelled. Extravagant abuse throws off the edge of the intended disparagement, and turns the madman’s weapon into his own bofom. In short, as to Rymer, this is my opinion of ​of him, from his criticisms on the tragedies of the last age. He writes with great vivacity, and appears to have been a scholar: but as for his knowledge of the art of poetry, I cannot perceive it was any deeper than his acquaintance with Bossu and Dacier, from whom he has transcribed many of his best reflexions. The late Mr. Gildon was one attached to Rymer by a similar way of thinking and studies. They were both of that species of critics who are desirous of displaying their powers rather in finding faults, than in consulting the improvement of the world: the hyper-critical part of the science of criticism.
I had not mentioned the modest liberty I have here and there taken of animadverting on my author, but that I was willing to obviate in time the splenetick exaggerations of my adversaries on this head. From past experiments I have reason to be conscious, in what light this attempt may be placed: and that what I call a modest liberty, will, by a little of their dexterity, be inverted into downright impudence. From a hundred mean and dishonest artifices employed to discredit this edition, and to cry down its editor, I have all the grounds in nature to beware of attacks. But though the malice of wit, joined to the smoothness of versification, may furnish some ridicule; fact, I hope, will be able to stand its ground against banter and gaiety.
It has been my fate, it seems, as I thought it my duty, to discover some anachronisms in our author; which might have slept in obscurity but for this Restorer, as Mr. Pope is pleased affectionately to stile me; as for instance, where Aristotle is mentioned by Hector in Troilus and Cressida: and Galen, Cato, and Alexander the Great, in Coriolanus. These, in Mr. Pope’s opinion, are blunders, which the illiteracy of the first publishers of his works has fathered upon the poet’s memory: it not being at all credible, that these could be the errors of any man who had the least tincture of a school, or the least conversation with such as had. But I have sufficiently proved, in the course of my notes, that such anachronisms were the effect of poetick licence, rather than of ignorance in our poet. And if I may be permitted to ask a modest question by the way, why may not I restore an anachronism really made by our author, as well as Mr. Pope take the privilege to fix others upon him, which he never had it in his head to make: as I may venture to affirm he had not, in the instance of sir Francis Drake, to which I have spoke in the proper place?
​But who shall dare make any words about this freedom of Mr. Pope’s towards Shakespeare, if it can be proved, that, in his fits of criticism, he makes no more ceremony with good Homer himself? To try, then, a criticism of his own advancing; in the 8th book of the Odysey, where Demodocus sings the episode of the loves of Mars and Venus; and that, upon their being taken in the net by Vulcan,
Mr. Pope is so kind gravely to inform us, “That Homer in this, as in many other places, seems to allude to the laws of Athens, where death was the punishment of adultery.” But how is this significant observation made out? Why, who can possibly object any thing to the contrary?—Does not Pausanias relate, that Draco, the lawgiver to the Athenians, granted impunity to any person that took revenge upon an adulterer? And was it not also the institution of Solon, that if any one took an adulterer in the fact, he might use him as be pleased? These things are very true: and to see what a good memory, and sound judgment in conjunction can atchieve! Though Homer’s date is not determined down to a single year, yet it is pretty generally agreed that he lived above 300 years before Draco and Solon: and that, it seems, has made him seem to allude to the very laws, which these two legislators propounded above 300 years after. If this inference be not something like an anachronism or prolepsis, I will look once more into my lexicons for the true meaning of the words. It appears to me, that somebody besides Mars and Venus has been caught in a net by this episode: and I could call in other instances to confirm what treacherous tackle this net-work is, if not cautiously handled.
How just, notwithstanding, I have been in detecting the anachronisms of my author, and in defending him for the use of them, our late editor seems to think, they should rather have slept in obscurity: and the having discovered them is sneered at, as a sort of wrong-headed sagacity.
The numerous corrections which I have made of the poet’s text in my Shakespeare Restored, and which the publick have been so kind to think well of, are, in the appendix of Mr. Pope’s last edition, slightingly called various reasonings, guesses, &c. He confesses to have inserted as many of them as he judged of any the least advantage to the poet; but says, ​that the whole amounted to about 25 words: and pretends to have annexed a complete list of the rest, which were not worth his embracing. Whoever has read my book will, at one glance, see how in both these points veracity is strained, so an injury might but be done. Malus, etsi obesse non potest, tamen cogitat.
Another expedient, to make my work appear of a trifling nature, has been an attempt to depreciate literal criticism. To this end, and to pay a servile compliment to Mr. Pope, an anonymous writer has, like a scotch pedlar in wit, unbraced his pack on the subject. But, that his virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at me, he has done me the honour to join Dr. Bentley in the libel. I was in hopes we should have been both abused with smartness of satire at least, though not with solidity of argument: that it might have been worth some reply in defence of the science attacked. But I may fairly say of this author, as Falstaff does of Poins;—Hang him, baboon! his wit is as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him, than is in a Mallet. If it be not prophanation to set the opinion of the divine Longinus against such a scribler, he tells us expressly, “That to make a judgment upon words (and writings) is the most consummate fruit of much experience. ἡ γὰρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἔϛι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα. Whenever words are depraved, the sense of course must be corrupted; and thence the reader is betrayed into a false meaning.
If the Latin and Greek languages have received the greatest advantages imaginable from the labours of the editors and criticks of the two last ages, by whose aid and assistance the grammarians have been enabled to write infinitely better in that art than even the preceding grammarians, who wrote when those tongues flourished as living languages; I should account it a peculiar happiness, that, by the faint essay I have made in this work, a path might be chalked out for abler hands, by which to derive the same advantages to our own tongue: a tongue, which, though it wants none of the fundamental qualities of an universal language, yet, as a noble writer says, lisps and stammers as in its cradle; and has produced little more towards its polishing than complaints of its barbarity.
Having now run through all those points, which I intended should make any part of this dissertation, and having in my former edition made publick acknowledgments of the ​assistances lent me, I shall conclude with a brief account of the methods taken in this.
It was thought proper, in order to reduce the bulk and price of the impression, that the notes, wherever they would admit of it, might be abridged: for which reason I have curtailed a great quantity of such, in which explanations were too prolix, or authorities in support of an emendation too numerous: and many I have entirely expunged, which were judged rather verbose and declamatory (and so notes merely of ostentation) than necessary or instructive.
The few literal errors which had escaped notice, for want of revisals, in the former edition, are here reformed; and the pointing of innumerable passages is regulated, with all the accuracy I am capable of.
I shall decline making any farther declaration of the pains I have taken upon my author, because it was my duty, as his editor, to publish him with my best care and judgment; and because I am sensible, all such declarations are construed to be laying a sort of a debt on the publick. As the former edition has been received with much indulgence, I ought to make my acknowledgments to the town for their favourable opinion of it; and I shall always be proud to think that encouragement the best payment I can hope to receive from my poor studies.
* ↑ This is Mr. Theobal’s preface to his second edition in 1740, and had been much curtailed by himself after its appearance before the impression in 1733. Steevens.
* ↑ This is a mistake. Susanna was the poet’s eldest daughter. See the extracts from the register-book of the parish of Stratford, in one of the following pages. Steevens.
* ↑ The first syllable in Socratem is here made short, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakespeare is then appositely compared with a dramatic author among the ancients: but still it should be remembered that the elogium is lessen’d while the metre is reform’d; and it is well known that some of our early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly negligent in their prosody, especially in proper names. The thought of this distich, as Mr. Tollet observes, might have been taken from the Faëry Queene of Spenser, b. ii. c. 9. ft. 48, and c. 10. ft. 3. To this Latin inscription on Shakespeare should be the lines which are found underneath it on his monument. Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast? Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plac’d Within this monument; Shakespeare, with whom Quick nature dy’d, whose name doth deck the tomb Far more than cost; since all that he hath writ Leaves living art but page to serve his wit. Again, near the wall on which this monument is erected, is a plain free-stone, under which his body is buried, with another epitaph, expressed in the following uncouth mixture of small and capital letters: Good Frend for Iesus SAKE forbeare To digg THE Dust EncloAsed HERe Blese be THE Man T/Y spares THEs Stones And curst be He T/Y moves my Bones.Steevens.