Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/147

us. VIIL A. 23, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

141

THE SECOND FOLIO OF THE SHAKE- SPEARE PLAYS, 1632.

MILTON'S EPITAPH. (See 11 S. vii. 227, 456.) ON 24 July I received (through Mr. Frank Burgoyne) from the magnificent New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Foundations, the following letter, signed " Wilberforce Eames " :

" Replying to your letter of July 4th enquiring about the reading of the fourth line of Milton's Epitaph to Shakespeare on p. 5 of the Second Folio of Shakespeare, 1632, I would say that I have examined the eight copies [of the Second Folio] belonging to this library, and find the corrected ' Starre-ypointed ' in only one of the eight, being in the copy marked by Mr. Lennox A 1, with the imprint Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot. The seven other copies have the incorrect form rected line seems to me to have been inserted in place of a cancelled leaf, as the paper is somewhat thicker. Although the typographical ornament at the head is the same, the ornamental initial letters are different."
 * Starre-ypointing.' The leaf containing the cor-

Then follows the list of copies of the Second Folio in the Library, which are, in addition to the A-l copy already mentioned,

A-2. Tho. Cotes for Robert Allot.

B. Tho. Cotes for Robert Allot.

C. Tho. Cotes for Robert Allot.

D. Tho. Cotes for William Aspley.

E. Tho. Cotes for John Smethwick.

F. Tho. Cotes for Richard Hawkins. Astor. Tho. Cotes for Robert Allot.

The New York Public Library seems, there- fore, to possess all the known editions of the 1632 Second Folio of the Shakespeare plays, excepting only the one with the imprint " Tho. Cotes for Richard Meighen."

In the British Museum there are three copies only, all of which bear the imprint " Tho. Cotes for Robert Allot."

In my own library, which contains so many special copies of books with engravings printed upside down in order to afford reve- lations, there is only one copy of the Second Folio, viz., that with the imprint " Tho. Cotes for William Aspley." But into this copy has been inserted the special leaf upon thicker paper, as described in the A-l copy in the New York Public Library, in which the correct grammatical form " Starre- ypointed " appears. Experts are satisfied that " this page is evidently an original and contemporary print, not a reproduction in any modern sense .... The paper is con- temporary."

In the 1623 edition of the Shakespeare plays, which is known as the First Folio, no Epitaph appeared, although William Shakespeare of Stratford had been dead seven years; but in the 1632 edition of the plays, known as the Second Folio, we read :

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramaticke poet,

W. SHAKESPEARE. What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd

bones,

The laboxir of an Age, in piled stones Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid Under a starre-ypointed Pyramid ? Deare Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame, What needst thou such dull witnesse of thy Name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy selfe a lasting Monument : For whil'st, to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art, Thy easie numbers flow, and that each part, Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke Those Delphicke Lines with deepe Impression

tooke :

Then thou our fancy of her selfe bereaving. Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving, And so Sepulcher'd in such pompe dost lie, That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.

I am asking you kindly to print the whole poem, because, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it has never been correctly printed, excepting only in my own copy of