Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/63

* SHAKESPEARE. 47 ticity of which is indisputable is the engraving by Martin Droeshout in the Folio of 123 ; but though it lias a general resemblance to the bust, it is equally poor in execution. A paintetl por- trait in the Shakespeare ilemorial Gallery at Stratford is believed bj' some experts to be the orignal of the Folio engraving, but it may have been copied from the latter. Shakespeare's widow survived him for more than seven years, the record of the burial being dated February 8, 1623. Tradition says that she earnestly desired to be buried in the same grave with her husband, and her tombstone is beside his. The Folio of 1023, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, was nominally edited by John Heming and Henry Condell, two of his friends and fellow-actors, and was brought out by a syndicate of five publishers and printers. It contained thirty-six of the thirty-seven plays commonly ascribed to the poet (I'ericlcs being omitteil), arranged as in many modern editions under the head of "Comedies," "Histories." and "Tragedies." Twenty plays appear in it for the first time, the other sixteen having been pi'evious- ly printed in quarto form. The t3-pographical execution of the volume demands particular attention on account of the confused and contradictory descriptions giveji by some editors and commentators and the use that the Baconian heretics have made of it. Accord- ing to the latter, the Folio was edited by Bacon, being a collection of his plays carefully revised, corrected, and put into the shape in which he de- sired to hand them down to posterity. Shake- spearean critics, on the other hand, assume that the Folio is just what it purports to be — a col- lection of plays by William Shakespeare, made seven years after his death by persons who had no skill in editing, and who did little except to furnish the publislier with the best copies of the plays they could get; these being partly manu- scripts used in the theatre, and partly the earlier quartos that had also been used by the actors in learning their parts. These critics believe tliat internal evidence shows, beyond a doubt, that the Folio could not have had editor or edit- ing in any proper sense. That the 'copy' came from the theatre is proved by the fact that the names of actors are often found prefixed to speeches instead of the proper dramatiit personw ; as, for instance, "Kemp" nine times and "Kem." thrice before Dogberry's speeches, and "Cowley" twice and "Couley" once before those of Verges, in Much Ado ( iv. 2 ). William Kemp and Richard Cowley were actors of the time in London. Some of the plays are divided through- out into acts and .scenes ; some only into acts ; some partly divided, or inconsistently divided; some not divided at all. Only seven plays have lists of dramatis personw — in every instance at the end of the play. Words and phrases from foreign languages are wretchedly corrupted. Latin is printed with tolerable accuracy, though sometimes editors have been in doubt whether a phrase was Latin or French; but French. Span- ish, and Italian are almost invariably misprint- ed, and often ridiculously so. In the Merry Wives (i. 4), for instance, "Ma foi, il fait fort chaud: je m'en vais a. la eour — la grande af- faire" (as corrected by Eowe) appears thus: "mai foy, il fait fort chando, Je man voi a le Court la Grand affaires;" and "un garcon" as "oon garsoon." Verse is often printed as prose, SHAKESFEABE. and prose as verse; stage directions are made * parts of the text, and vice versa. The punctua- tion is careless throughout, and often absurd. In short, there is hardly a possible typographical blunder or peiwersion of which we do not find frequent examples. Heming and Condell doubt- less did the work as well as they could, but not as Shakespeare, if he had lived, would have done it, or as Bacon, if the book ha<l been his, would have done it. The player-editors, intieed, seem to think that their task has been performed very creditably. In their preface, after referring to the quartos as "diverse stolne, and surrepti- tious copies, maimed and defm-iiied by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors," they add: "even those are now offered to your view eur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers [metre], as he conceived them." It has nevertheless been shown by careful examination and compiitation that the mmiber of 'readings' in the volume that are either clearly wrong or in the highest de- gree suspicious is about twenty thousand, and the number of typographical errors of all kinds in those readings and elsewhere must be many times twenty thousand. The second folio (1632) was a reprint of the first, with few changes for the better except (as Professor C. Alphonso Smith, of the Louisiana State University, has sho^vn in the Leipzig Enfflische Studien for De- cember. 1901) in s.^Titactical corrections. The third folio, a reprint of the second, with few variations of any value or interest, was first pjfc- lished in 1663. It was reissued the next yeSr with seven plays added: Pericles: The London Prodigal; The History of Thomas Lord Crom- u-ell; Sir John Oldeastle: The Puritan Widow; A Yorkshire Tragedy; and Ijocrine. The fourth folio (1685) was a reprint of that of 1664 (in- cluding the seven plays just mentioned) with the spelling somewhat modernized, but no other change. After the publication of the fourth folio, no collected edition of Shakespeare's works appeared until 1709, when Rowe's (6 vols., octavo) was brought out. It was based on the text of the fourth folio. The poems were not included until the second edition (9 vols.) was issued in 1714. Rowe made some corrections in the text, and modernized the spelling and point- ing, besides inserting lists of dramatis personw. Among other complete editions of the eight- eenth century and the early part of the nine- teenth that have any critical value, the follow- ing may be mentioned: Pope's (6 vols., 1723-25; other editions appeared in 1728, 1735, and 1768); Lewis Theobald's (7 vols.. 1733; other eds. in 1740, 1752. etc.) ; Sir Thomas Hanmer's (6 vols., 1744) ; Bishop Warburton's (8 vols., 1747); Dr. Samuel Johnson's (8 vols., 1765); Edward Capell's (10 vols., n68) ; George Steevens's revision of Johnson's ed. (10 vols.. 1773: 2d ed. 1778) ; Isaac Reed's revision of the preceding (10 vols., 1785) ; Edmund JIalone's (10 vols., 1790): Steevens's. with Bovdell's il- lustrations (9 vols., 1802; in parts. 1791-1802) ; Reed's first ed. with his name (21 vols.. 1803; 2d ed. 1813); Alexander Chalmers's (10 vols., 1805) ; the "Variorum of 1821." edited by James Boswell, from a corrected proof left by Malone (21 vols.). Since 1821 editions have rapidly multiplied, and the bulk of Shakespearean liter- ature has immensely increased. For the bibliog- raphy of the subject, consult: Lowndes, Library