This may be meant to suggest, but does not affirm, that the actors have “all the rest” of the plays in Shakespeare’s own handwriting. They may have, or may have had, some of his manuscripts, and believed that other manuscripts accessible to them, and used by them, contain his very words. Whether from cunning or design, or from the Elizabethan inability to tell a plain tale plainly, the authors or author of the Preface have everywhere left themselves loopholes and ways of evasion and escape. It is not possible to pin them down to any plain statement of facts concerning the sources for the hitherto unpublished plays, “the rest” of the plays.
These, at least, were from manuscript sources which the actors thought accurate, and some may have been “fair copies” in Shakespeare’s own hand. (Scott, as regards his novels, sent his prima cura, his first writing down, to the press, and his pages are nearly free from blot or erasion. In one case at least, Shelley’s first draft of a poem is described as like a marsh of reeds in water, with wild ducks, but he made very elegant fair copies for the press.) Let it be supposed that Ben Jonson wrote all this Preface, in accordance with the wishes and instructions of the two actors who sign it. He took their word for the almost blotless MSS. which they received from Shakespeare. He remarks, in his posthumously published Discoveries (notes, memories, brief essays), “I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.” And Ben gives, we shall later see, his habitual reply to this habitual boast.
As to the sources of such plays as had been “maimed and deformed by injurious impostors,” and are now “offered cur’d and perfect of their limbs,” “it can be proved to demonstration,” say the Cambridge Editors, “that several plays in the Folio were printed from earlier quarto editions” (but the players secured a retreat on this point), “and that in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or from a better manuscript than the Folio text, and therefore of higher authority.” Hamlet, in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the quarto of 1604, “differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while it differs for the better in twenty places.”
Can the wit of man suggest any other explanation than that the editing of the Folio was carelessly done; out of the best quartos and MSS. in the theatre for acting purposes, and,—if the players did not lie in what they “often said,” and if they kept the originals,—out of some MSS. received from Shakspere? Whether the two players themselves threw into the press, after some hasty botchings, whatever materials they had, or whether they employed an Editor, a very wretched Editor, or Editors, or whether the great Author, Bacon, himself was his own Editor, the preparation of a text was infamously done. The two actors, probably, I think, never read through the proof-sheets, and took the word of the man whom they employed to edit their materials, for gospel. The editing of the Folio is so exquisitely careless that twelve printer’s errors in a quarto of 1622, of Richard III, appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the Merry Wives of the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619, yet keeps old errors.
How can we explain the reckless retention of errors, and also the large additions and improvements? Did the true author (Bacon or Bungay) now edit his work, add much matter, and go wrong forty-seven times where the quarto was right, and go right twenty times when the quarto was wrong? Did he, for the Folio of 1623, nearly double The Merry Wives in extent, and also leave all the errors of the fourth quarto uncorrected?
In that case how negligent was Bacon of his immortal works! Now Bacon was a scholar, and this absurd conduct cannot be imputed, I hope, to him.
Mr. Pollard is much more lenient than his fellow-scholars towards the Editor or Editors of the Folio. He concludes that “manuscript copies of the plays were easily procurable.” Sixteen out of the thirty-six plays existed in quartos. Eight of the sixteen were not used for the Folio; five were used, “with additions, corrections, or alterations” (which must have been made from manuscripts). Three quartos only were reprinted as they stood. The Editors greatly preferred to use manuscript copies; and showed this, Mr. Pollard thinks, by placing plays, never before printed, in the most salient parts of the three sets of dramas in their book. [215a] They did make an attempt to divide their plays into Acts and Scenes, whereas the quartos, as a general rule, had been undivided. But the Editors, I must say, had not the energy to carry out their good intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack.
A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works, could never have made or passed this slovenly Folio. Yet Mr. Greenwood argues that probably Bungay was still alive and active, after Shakspere was dead and buried. (Mr. Greenwood, of course, does not speak of Bungay, which I use as short for his Great Unknown.) Thus, Richard III from 1597 to 1622 appeared in six quartos. It is immensely improved in the Folio, and so are several other plays. Who made the improvements, which the Editors could only obtain in manuscripts? If we say that Shakespeare made them in MS., Mr. Greenwood asks, “What had he to work upon, since, after selling his plays to his company, he did not preserve his manuscript?” [216a] Now I do not know that he did sell his plays to his company. We are sure that Will got money for them, but we do not know what arrangement he made with his company. He may have had an author’s rights in addition to a sum down, as later was customary, and he had his regular share in the profits. Nor am I possessed of information that “he did not preserve his manuscript.” How can we know that? He may have kept his first draft, he may have made a fair copy for himself, as well as for the players, or may have had one made. He may have worked on a copy possessed by the players; and the publisher of the quartos of 1605, 1612, 1622, may not have been allowed to use, or may not have asked for the latest manuscript revised copy. The Richard III of the Folio contains, with much new matter, the printer’s errors of the quarto of 1622. I would account for this by supposing that the casual Editor had just sense enough to add the new parts in a revised manuscript to the quarto, and was far too lazy to correct the printer’s errors in the quarto. But Mr. Greenwood asks whether “the natural conclusion is not that ‘some person unknown’ took the Quarto of 1622, revised it, added the new passages, and thus put it into the form in which it appeared in 1623.” This natural conclusion means that the author, Bungay, was alive in 1622, and put his additions and improvements of recent date into the quarto of 1622, but never took the trouble to correct the errors in the quarto. And so on in other plays similarly treated. “Is it not a more natural conclusion that ‘Shakespeare’” (Bungay) “himself revised its publication, and that some part of this revision, at any rate, was done after 1616 and before 1623.” [217a]
Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, [217b] “There is, of course, another hypothesis. It is that Shakespeare” (meaning the real author) “did not die in 1616,” and here follows the usual notion that “Shakespeare” was the “nom de plume” of that transcendent genius, “moving in Court circles among the highest of his day (as assuredly Shakespeare must have moved)—who wished to conceal his identity.”
I have not the shadow of assurance that the Author “moved in Court circles,” though Will would see a good deal when he played at Court, and in the houses of nobles, before “Eliza and our James.” I never moved in Court circles: Mr. Greenwood must know them better than I do, and I have explained (see Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Shakespeare, Genius, and Society) how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways.