Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/301

Rh Great Newport-street, at a time when a package of books arrived from the country; how, among the contents, two folios attracted his attention, one of which, bound in rough calf, was a copy of the second (1632) folio of Shakspeare's Plays, "much cropped, the covers old and greasy," and "imperfect at the beginning and end;" how, in spite of the cropping, and the grease, and the imperfections, he bought the thing—"an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own"—for thirty shillings sterling, paid down on the nail; how, when he got home, he repented of his bargain, so damaged and defaced was it intus et in cute; and how, in a fit of disappointment, he threw it by, nor, for the space of a year, had a word to say to (or peradventure of) it. Then, however, on moving it from the dust and degradation of an upper shelf, Mr. Collier discovered, to his surprise, that there was hardly a page in the direspectable looking folio which did not present, in a handwriting of the time, some emendations in the pointing or in the text, while on most of them they were frequent, and on many numerous. The handwriting, he is of opinion, is one man's only, though the amendments must have been introduced from time to time, possibly during the course of several years. Who the ready writer was who handled the pen so industriously, is an interesting problem, but not easily "floored;" Mr. Collier, however, suggests a claim for Richard Perkins, the "great actor of the reign of Charles I." As to the capital question of the authority upon which these emendations were introduced, he contends, in limine, that no authority is required, that they carry conviction (speaking generally) on the very face of them. "Many of the most valuable corrections of Shakespeare's text are, in truth, self-evident; and so apparent, when once suggested, that it seems wonderful how the plays could have passed through the hands of men of such learning and critical acumen, during the last century and a half …. without the detection of such indisputable blunders." Mr. Collier avows his inclination to think that his possible Perkins, in some of the changes he made in the text, was indebted to his own sagacity and ingenuity, and merely guessed at arbitrary emendations; hence, and so far, his suggestions are only to be taken as those of an individual, who lived, we may suppose, not very long after the period when the dramas he elucidates were written, and who might have had intercourse with some of the actors of Shakspeare's day. But again Mr. Collier argues, from certain characteristics in his emendator's handicraft, that he must have had recourse to some now not extant authority. The emendation has special reference to stage purposes; and this fact,taken together with the internal evidence, has induced some of Mr. Collier's ablest reviewers to conclude that the book in question was amended from