SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE.
A Passage in "The Taming of the Shrew."—Perhaps I mistake it, but Mr. C. Mansfield Ingleby seems to me to write in a tone as if he fancied I should be unwilling to answer his questions, whether public or private. Although I am not personally acquainted with him, we have had some correspondence, and I must always feel that a man so zealous and intelligent is entitled to the best reply I can afford. I can have no hesitation in informing him that, in preparing what he terms my "monovolume Shakspeare," I pursued this plan throughout; I adopted, as my foundation, the edition in eight volumes octavo, which I completed in 1844; that was "formed from an entirely new collation of the old editions," and my object there was to give the most accurate representation of the text of the folios and quartos. Upon that stock I engrafted the manuscript alterations in my folio 1632, in every case in which it seemed to me possible that the old corrector might be right—in short, wherever two opinions could be entertained as to the reading: in this way my text in the "monovolume Shakspeare" was "regulated by the old copies, and by the recently discovered folio of 1632."
Mr. Ingleby will see that in the brief preface to the "monovolume Shakspeare," I expressly say that "while a general similarity (to the folio 1632) has been preserved, care has been taken to rectify the admitted mistakes of the early impression, and to introduce such alterations of a corrupt and imperfect text, as were warranted by better authorities. Thus, while the new readings of the old corrector of the folio 1632, considerably exceeding a thousand, are duly inserted in the places
to which they belong, the old readings, which, during the last century and a half, have recommended themselves for adoption, and have been derived from a comparison of ancient printed editions, have also been incorporated." I do not know how I could have expressed myself with greater clearness; and it was merely for the sake of distinctness that I referred to the result of my own labours in 1842, 1843, and 1844, during which years my eight volumes octavo were proceeding through the press. Those labours, it will be seen, essentially contributed to lighten my task in preparing the "monovolume Shakspeare."
My answer respecting the passage in The Taming of the Shrew, referred to by Mr. Ingleby, will, I trust, be equally satisfactory; it shall be equally plain.
I inserted ambler, because it is the word substituted in manuscript in the margin of my folio 1632. I adopted mercatantè, as proposed by Steevens, not only because it is the true Italian word, but because it exactly fits the place in the verse, mercatant (the word in the folios) being a syllable short of the required number. In the very copy of Florio's Italian Dictionary, which I bought of Rodd at the time when I purchased my folio 1632, I find mercatantè translated by the word "marchant," "marter," and "trader," exactly the sense required. Then, as to "surely" instead of surly, I venture to think that "surely" is the true reading:
"In gait and countenance surely like a father."
"Surely like a father" is certainly like a father; and although a man may be surly in his "countenance," I do not well see how he could be surly in his "gait;" besides, what had occurred to make the pedant surly? This appears to me the best reason for rejecting surly in favour of "surely;" but I have another, which can hardly be refused to an editor who professes to follow the old copies, where they are not contradicted. I allude to the folio 1628, where the line stands precisely thus:
"In gate and countenance surely like a Father."
The folio 1632 misprinted "surely" surly, as, in Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 3., it committed the opposite blunder, by misprinting "surly" surely. Another piece of evidence, to prove that "surely" was the poet's word in The Taming of the Shrew, has comparatively recently fallen in my way; I did not know of its existence in 1844, or it would have been of considerable use to me. It is a unique quarto of the play, which came out some years before the folio 1623, and is not to be confounded with the quarto of The Taming of the Shrew, with the date of 1631 on the title-page. This new authority has the line exactly as it is given in the folio 1623, which, in truth, was printed from it. It is now before me.
J. Payne Collier.
July 10.
Critical Digest of various Readings in the Works of Shakspeare.—There is much activity in the literary world just now about the text of Shakspeare: but one most essential work, in reference to that text, still remains to be performed,—I mean, the publication of a complete digest of all the various readings, in a concise shape, such as those which we possess in relation to the MSS. and other editions of nearly every classical author.
At present, all editions of Shakspeare which claim to be considered critical, contain much loose information on readings, mixed up with notes (frequently very diffuse) on miscellaneous topics. This is not in the least what we require: we need a regular digest of readings, wholly distinct from long debates about their value.
What I mean will be plain to any one who is familiar with any good critical edition of the Greek New Testament, or with such books as Gaisford's Herodotus, the Berlin Aristotle, the Zurich Plato, and the like. We ought to have, first, a good text of Shakspeare: such as may represent, as fairly as possible, the real results of the labours of the soundest critics; and, secondly, page by page, at the foot of that text, the following particulars:
I. All the readings of the folios, which should be cited as A, B, C, and D.
II. All the readings of the quartos, which might be cited separately in each play that possesses them, either as a, b, c, d; or as 1, 2, 3, and 4.
III. A succinct summary of all the respectable criticisms, in the way of conjecture, on the text. This is especially needed. The recent volumes of Messrs. Collier, Singer, and Dyce, show that even editors of Shakspeare scarcely know the history of all the emendations. Let their precise pedigree be in the last case recorded with the most absolute brevity; simply the suggestion, and the names of its proposers and adopters.
IV. To simplify this last point, a new siglation might be introduced to denote the various critical editions.
Such a publication should be kept distinct from any commentary; especially from one laid out in the broad flat style of modern editors. Mr. Collier's volume of Emendations, &c., for instance, need not have occupied half its present space, if he had first denoted his MS. corrector by some short symbol, instead of by a lengthy phrase; and, secondly, introduced his suggestions by some such formularies as those employed in classical criticisms, instead of toiling laboriously after variations in his style of expression, till we are wearied by the real iteration which lies under the seeming diversity.
There should be none of this phrasework in the digest which I recommend. If indeed it were found absolutely necessary to connect it with a commentary, then arrange the two portions of the
apparatus as in Arnold's edition of Thucydides: the variæ lectiones in the middle of the page, and the comment in a different type below it. But I repeat, it would be better still to give us the digest without the comment. All would go into one large volume. And it cannot be doubted that such a volume, if thoroughly well done, would furnish at once a sort of textus receptus, and a critical basis, from which future editors might commence their labours. It would also be an indispensable book of reference to all who treat of, or are interested in, the poet's text. Such, I say, would be its certain prospects if the editor were at once an accurate, painstaking scholar, and a man of true poetical feeling. The labour would be great, but so would be the reward. It is only what the ablest scholars have proudly undertaken for the classics, even in the face of toils far more severe. Would that Mr. Dyce could be roused to attempt it!
B.
[Some such edition as that alluded to by our correspondent has been long desired and contemplated. A proposal in connexion with it has been afloat for some time past, and we had hoped would have been publicly made in our pages before now. There are difficulties in the way which do not exist in the parallel instances from classical literature, and which do not seem to have occurred to our correspondent; but the project is in good hands, and we hope will soon be brought to bear.—Ed.]
Emendations of Shakspeare.—I am sadly afraid, what with one annotator and another, that we, in a very little time, shall have Shakspeare so modernised and weeded of his peculiarities, that he will become a very second-rate sort of a person indeed; for I now see with no little alarm, that one of his most delightful quaintnesses is to give way to the march of refinement, and be altogether ruined. Hazlitt, one the most original and talented of critics, has somewhere said, that there was not in any passage of Shakspeare any single word that could be changed to one more appropriate, and as an instance he gives a passage from Macbeth, which certainly is one of the most perfect and beautiful to be found in the whole of his works:
"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress,
Nor coin of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed, and procreant cradle: where they
Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air
Is delicate."
There are some who differ from Hazlitt in the present day, and assert that there is an error in the press in Dogberry's reproof of Borachio for calling him an "ass." The passage as it stands is as follows:
"I am a wise fellow; and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him."
His having had losses evidently meaning, though he was then poor, that his circumstances were at one time so prosperous, that he could afford to bear losses; and he, even then, had a superfluity of wardrobe in "two gowns, and everything handsome about him." But this little word losses, the perfect Shakspearian quaintness of which is universally acknowledged, is to be changed into leases; if it should be leases, how is it that it does not follow upon "householder," instead of being introduced so many words after? as, if leases were the proper word, it would assuredly have suggested itself immediately as an additional item to his respectability as a householder: for a moment only fancy similar corrections to be introduced in others of Shakspeare's plays, and Falstaff be made to exclaim at the robbery at Gad's Hill, "Down with them, they dislike us old men," instead of "they hate us youth;" for Falstaff was no boy at the time, and this might be advanced as an authority for the emendation. But seriously, if this alteration is sent forth as a specimen of the improvements about to be effected in Shakspeare, from an edition of his plays lately discovered, I shall, for one, deeply regret that it was ever rescued front its oblivion; for with my prejudices and prepossessions against interpolations, and in favour of old readings, I shall find it no easy matter to reconcile my mind to the new. Strip history of its romance, and you deprive it of its principal charm; the scenery of a play-house imposes upon us an illusion, and though we know it to be so, it is not essential that the impression should be removed. I remember once travelling at night in Norfolk, and a part of my way was through a wood, at the end of which I came upon a lake lit up by a magnificent moon. I subsequently went the same road by day: the wood, I then found, was a mere belt of trees, and the lake had dwindled to a duck-pond. I have ever since wished that the first impression had remained unchanged; but this is a digression. There is no author so universal as Shakspeare, and would that be the case if he was not thoroughly understood? He is appreciated alike in the closet and on the stage, quoted by saints and sages, in the pulpit and the senate, and your nostrum-monger advertises his wares with a quotation from his pages; does he then require interpreting who is his own interpreter? Johnson says of him that—
"Panting Time toil'd after him in vain."
And that he—
"Exhausted worlds and then imagined new."
There is no passion that he has not pourtrayed, and laid bare in its beauty or deformity; no feeling or affection to which his genius has not given the stamp of immortality: and does he want an interpreter? It is treading on dangerous ground to attempt to improve him. Even Mr. Knight, enthusiast as he is in his veneration for Shakspeare, and who, by his noble editions of the poet's works, has won the admiration and secured the gratitude of every lover of the poet, has gone too far in his emendations when he changes a line in Romeo and Juliet from
"Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell."
to
"Hence will I to my ghostly friar's close cell."
As in the latter case the line will not scan unless the word "friar" be reduced to a monosyllable, which, on reflection, I think Mr. Knight will be inclined to admit. But my paper is, I fear, extending to a limit beyond which you have occasionally warned your correspondents not to go, and I must therefore draw my remarks to a close, with a hope that not any offence will be taken where none is intended by those to whom any of my observations may apply.
George Blink.
Canonbury.