death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain, to have collected and published them; and so to have published them as where (before) you were abused with divers stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them, even those are now offered to your view cured and perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them; who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it: his mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." But, as Malone long ago remarked, this statement concerning the imperfections of the quartos one and all, "is not strictly true of any but two of the whole number, The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Henry V.;" and "the quartos were in general the basis on which the folio editors built." It is demonstrable that Heminge and Condell printed Much Ado about Nothing from the quarto of 1600, omitting some short portions and words here and there, and making some trivial changes, mostly for the worse:—that they printed Love's Labour's lost from the quarto of 1598, occasionally copying the old errors of the press; and though in a few instances they corrected the text, they more frequently corrupted it; spoilt the continuity of the dialogue in act iii. sc. 1, by omitting several lines, and allowed the preposterous repetitions in act iv. sc. 3, and act v. sc. 2,4 to stand as in the quarto:—that their text of A Midsummer-Night's Dream was mainly taken from Roberts's quarto,-by much the inferior of the two quartos of 1600,-its blunders being sometimes followed; and though they amended a few passages, they introduced not a few bad

2 I need hardly observe that the quarto of Hamlet, 1603, which was unknown to Malone, does not form a third exception; for it was entirely superseded by the quarto of 1604.

3 Preface to Shakespeare, 1790.

4 See notes on Love's Labour's lost.

:

variations, to say nothing of their being chargeable with some small omissions:-that for The Merchant of Venice they used Heyes's quarto, 1600, retaining a good many of its misprints; and though in some places they improved the text, their deviations from the quarto are generally either objectionable readings or positive errors:-that in King Richard II. they chiefly adhered to the quarto of 1615, copying some of its mistakes; and though they made one or two short additions and some slight emendations, they occasionally corrupted the text, and greatly injured the tragedy by omitting sundry passages, one of which, in act i. sc. 3, extends to twenty-six lines:5-that their text of The First Part of King Henry IV. is, on the whole, more faulty than that of the incorrect quarto of 1613, from which they printed the play :that their text of King Richard III.,—which materially differs from that of all the quartos, now and then for the better, but oftener perhaps for the worse,-was in some parts printed from the quarto of 1602, as several corresponding errors prove; and though it has many lines not contained in any of the quartos, it leaves out a very striking and characteristic portion of the 2d scene of act iv.,6 and presents passages here and there which cannot be restored to sense without the assistance of the quartos:-that they formed their text of Troilus and Cressida on that of the quarto of 1609, from which some of their many blunders were derived; and though they made important additions in several passages, they omitted other passages, sometimes to the destruction of the sense:-that in Hamlet, while they added considerably to the prosedialogue in act ii. sc. 2, inserted elsewhere lines and words which are wanting in the quartos of 1604, &c., and rectified

K. Rich. How chance the prophet could not at that time

various mistakes of those quartos; they,-not to mention minor mutilations of the text, some of them accidental,omitted in the course of the play about a hundred and sixty verses (including nearly the whole of the 4th scene of act iv.), and left out a portion of the prose-dialogue in act v. sc. 2, besides allowing a multitude of errors to creep in passim :that their text of King Lear, though frequently correct where the quartos are incorrect, and containing various lines and. words omitted in the quartos, is, on the other hand, not only often incorrect where the quartos are correct, but is mutilated to a surprising extent, the omissions, if we take prose and verse together, amounting to about two hundred and seventy lines, among which is an admirable portion of the 6th scene of the iiid act, as well as the whole of the 3d scene of act iv. :-but, not to weary the reader, I refrain from further details, though something might be added concerning their text of The Second Part of King Henry IV., of Titus Andronicus, of Romeo and Juliet, and of Othello. In short, Heminge and Condell made up the folio of 1623, partly from those very quartos which they denounced as worthless, and partly from manuscript stage-copies, some of which had been depraved, in not a few places, by the alterations and "botchery of the players," and awkwardly mutilated for the purpose of

False justicer, why hast thou let her scape?"

8 I may just notice that in Othello's famous address to the Senate, describing his courtship of Desdemona (who, as her father tells us, was

She gave me for my pains a world of KISSES:

She swore,-in faith, 'twas strange," &c. (act i. sc. 3);

which is certainly not a misprint, but an improvement introduced by some actor who thought that the older reading, "a world of sighs," was comparatively tame.

9 Gifford,-note on Jonson's Works, v. 163.

curtailing the pieces in representation.10-For the strange inconsistency of such a procedure with what the editors of 1623 professed to do, Mr. W. N. Lettsom has perhaps satisfactorily accounted when he suggests, "that, in their eyes, autographs, transcripts to the third and fourth generation, and printed books, were all much on a level, if they were only used and sanctioned by their company."-As to the original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays, it is altogether improbable that any of them (especially when we recollect that the Globe Theatre was burned down in 1613) should have existed in 1623—we know, on the testimony of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, that the original manuscript of The Winter's Tale,-one of our poet's latest compositions,—was "missing" in August 1623.12

The editor of the second folio, which appeared in 1632, was alike ignorant of Shakespeare's phraseology and versification: hence he vitiated the text in numerous instances by capriciously altering what he did not understand, and by interpolating words in lines where he thought the metre halted. All he did in the way of real correction was to set right some of the more obvious mistakes of the first folio, while he left others as he found them, and not unfrequently substituted new errors for the old. Since whatever changes he made were merely arbitrary, for he certainly never consulted manuscript copies of the plays, the second folio cannot be considered as an independent authority.

After what has been said, it is almost unnecessary to add that the text of this edition is eclectic. Mr. Collier justly

10 With a boldness of assertion similar to that of Shakespeare's earliest editors, Humphrey Moseley, in an address "To the Readers," prefixed to the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies, 1647, declares, 66 now you have both all that was acted, and all that was not; even the perfect full originals, without the least mutilation:" which is certainly not true with respect to two of the plays, The Humorous Lieutenant and The Honest Man's Fortune, and is probably untrue with respect to many others. (See my ed. of Beaumont and Fletcher's Works.)

11 Preface to Walker's Shakespeare's Versification, &c., p. xvii. 12 See Introduction to The Winter's Tale.

remarks of Hamlet, that "any editor who should content himself with reprinting the folio, without large additions from the quartos, would present but an imperfect notion of the drama as it came from the hand of the poet. The text of 'Hamlet' is, in fact, only to be obtained from a comparison of the editions in quarto and folio:"13 and the remark is applicable to nearly all the other plays which were first printed in quarto; for even when the quartos do not supply absolute deficiencies, and though in various passages they may be themselves defective or corrupt, they frequently enable us to restore the language of Shakespeare where it has suffered from the tampering of the players.14

Of the modern editions of Shakespeare, from Rowe's to the most recent, I need make no mention here. But on the Emendations of Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, which are still the subject of acrimonious dispute, I feel myself compelled to give an opinion: and, waving the question, for how much of that immense farrago the Corrector is really answerable, I am bound to say, that, with all his ignorance and rashness,— the far greater proportion of his nova lectiones being either

13 Introd. to Hamlet.

14 That Horne Tooke knew little or nothing of the quartos is manifest: if he had ever examined them even with ordinary attention, it is impossible that a man of his acuteness could have written about the folio in these extravagant terms: "The first Folio, in my opinion, is the only edition worth regarding. And it is much to be wished, that an edition of Shakespeare were given literatim according to the first Folio: which is now become so scarce and dear, that few persons can obtain it. For, by the presumptuous license of the dwarfish commentators, who are for ever cutting him down to their own size, we risque the loss of Shakespeare's genuine text; which that Folio assuredly contains; notwithstanding some few slight errors of the press, which might be noted, without altering." "Eneа Птероеνтα, &c., vol. ii. 54, ed. 1829. Nor is Mr. Knight's encomium on the folio less extravagant: "Perhaps," he says, "all things considered, there never was a book so correctly printed as the first folio of Shakspere" (see first note on act iv. sc. 5 of Troilus and Cressida): yet throughout his editions Mr. Knight has very great obligations to the quartos.

Mr. Hunter gives the true character of the folio: "Perhaps in the whole annals of English typography there is no record of any book of any extent and any reputation having been dismissed from the press with less care and attention than the first folio." Preface to New Illust. of Shakespeare, p. iv.