Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/27

 io* s. in. JAN. 7, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

19

7Y<<3 Work* of William Shakespeare. " Stratford Town" Edition Vol. I. (Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press.)

SENTIMENTAL reasons must count among the motives to the production of the superb edition of Shake- speare of which the first volume is now before us. Nothing is more natural than that the birthplace of Shakespeare should give to the world an adequate and sumptuous edition of her greatest son. As the home of Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon claims, a species of supremacy among cities, and ranks as a shrine with Delphos. It is useless for London even, the scene of Shakespeare's triumphs, to contest the supremacy with the Warwickshire home, seeing that if it be urged that Shakespeare is England's poet, and not Stratford's, it may with equal justice be maintained that he is not England's poet, but the world's. "He was not of an age, but for all time," Jonson's immortal utterance, may be supple- mented with, He was not of a place, but for the world. Stratford has, however, elected to have an edition of its own,and in supplyingsuch has met alike the requirements of the book-lover and the scholar. So far as regards the latter there is matter for hearty congratulations. Which of us has not wished for a text undisturbed by note and undefiled by conjecture? There are tens of thousands of readers who require explanations of Tudor phrase and a history of the growth of Shakespeare's tex-t. For such men have laboured diligently and well, and between the publication of the great Variorum text of all the commentators, with its monstrous growth of eru- dition and absurdity, and the new Variorum of Dr. Horace Howard Furness, now in progress, innumer- able editions, appealing to every class of readers, have seen the light. Ample room remains for an edition such as is now given us, and the moderate number of subscribei's to which appeal is made one thousand in all might, we should suppose, easily be quintupled. Adhering for a moment to the sentimental aspects, we may say that the work is printed in the house of Julius Shaw, one of the poet's most intimate friends and one of the witnesses to his will. The house in question is situated two doors to the north of New Place, and, so far as the main structure is concerned, has undergone little change since the poet's days. For the text Mr. A. H. Bullen, the best, and sanest of editors, to whom are owing the best editions we possess of the early dramas, is responsible. Its aim, as announced, is to stand midway between Dyce and Clark and Wright, the editors of the Cambridge text, less austere than the latter, but more rigorous than the former. So far as we have gone in com- paring the present text with that of the Cambridge Shakespeare, a labour in which naturally we cannot proceed far, the advantage, so far as regards adherence to the First Folio, is with the new work. Such differences as we have found, however, though fairly numerous, are rarely important.

The first volume, which contains four plays, ' The Tempest,' ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and ' Measure for Measure,' has for frontispiece a fine reproduction of the Droeshout portrait. Its preliminary matter consists of 'The Epistle Dedicatory,' by John Heminge and Henry Condell, to the Earls oi Pembroke and Montgomery, the address ' To the Great Varietie of Readers,' Ben Jonson's address ' To the Reader,' ' The Names of the Principal Actors in all these Plays,' the 'Commendatory Verses,' and the 'Additional Commendatory Verses,'

all from the 1623 folio. In paper, text, typography, &c., the volume leaves nothing to be desired. A more beautiful and luxurious, and, so far as we are- able to judge, more accurate, commendable, and desirable edition of Shakespeare does not exist.

The, Poore's Lamentation for the Death of Queen

Elizabeth. (Printed for private circulation.) To our valued friend Mr. Alexander Smith, of Glasgow, with whose knowledge and zeal as a bibliophile our readers are familiar, we owe thi handsome and interesting reprint of a unique poetic tract preserved in the Malone Collection- in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Anonymous in authorship, this work was issued in 1603 for Thomas Pauier in " Cornehill" "at the signe of the Cat and the Parrets." It was known to John, Payne Collier, who has left an account of it from.' which Mr. Alexander Smith quotes. An elaborate- eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, whom in alliterative fashion it calls

Our good and Godly gracious royall Queene, it no less fulsomely eulogizes her successor, for whom it invokes a life thrice exceeding that of Nestor. Not very considerable is it as poetry, bub it is scarcely below the average of the didactic or elegiac work of the epoch. It has, however, some- historic value, giving a rimed account of the suffer- ing of the princess in the reign of Bloody Mary during her transference from one place of confine- ment to another. The verse is nai've at times, and we find lines such as the following : Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I say, From little England now is torne away. A genuine service to letters is rendered by those who preserve such waifs and strays of our early literature, and we own our obligation to Mr. Smith for allowing us to count the reprint, of which- twenty-five copies only are issued, among our possessions.

Photograms of the Year 1904. (Dawbarn & Ward.) 1 THE advance in photographic art which Photo- grams has at once assisted and chronicled is happily maintained, and much of the work exhibited in the present volume is fully entitled to rank as art. The frontispiece, entitled ' L'Effort,' exhibits wonderful effects of light, and it is followed by some splendid landscape effects of French origin. From all parts- of the world they come, until it must puzzle the most competent to award the prize of merit. The- composition is not in every case quite successful,, but the collection may be studied with delight as well as advantage.

The Clergy Directory and Parish Guide, 1905.

(Phillips.)

THE thirty - fifth annual issue of this admirable directory is before us, and once more fulfils every condition of excellence. It is thoroughly up to date, supplies all information to be expected in a work of its class, and is, as experience shows, the handiest and most convenient of similar com- pilations.

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. THE frontispiece to The Burlington consists of ' The Good Shepherd,' a wall painting of the third century, in the Catacomb of Prtetextatus. This is wonderfully reproduced in colours. Mr. A. H. Smith deals with 'The Sculptures in Lansdowne