[121] A charming reprint was edited by Mr. Joseph Jacobs in 1888.
[122] The whole question about the editions which Shakespeare read is a complicated one. Two things are pretty certain: (1) He must have used the first edition for Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which was in all likelihood composed before 1595, when the second appeared. (2) He must have used the first or second for Julius Caesar, which was composed before 1603, when the third appeared. It is more difficult to speak positively in regard to Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. It has been argued that the former cannot have been derived from the first two editions, because in them Menas’ remark to Sextus Pompeius runs:
“Shall I cut the gables of the ankers, and make thee Lord not only of Sicile and Sardinia, but of the whole Empire of Rome besides?”
In the third edition this is altered to cables, and this is the form that occurs in Shakespeare:
“Let me cut the cable;
And, when we are put off, fall to their throats:
All there is thine.”
(A. and C. II. vii. 77.)
But this change is a very slight one that Shakespeare might easily make for himself on the same motives that induced the editor of the Lives to make it. And though attempts have been made to prove that the fourth edition was used for Coriolanus, there are great difficulties in accepting so late a date for that play, and one phrase rather points to one of the first two editions (see Introduction to Coriolanus). If this is really so, it affects the case of Antony and Cleopatra too, for it would be odd to find Shakespeare using the first or second edition for the latter play, and the third for the earlier one. Still, such things do occur, and I think there is a tendency in those who discuss this point to confine Shakespeare over rigidly to one edition. In the twentieth century it is possible to find men reading or re-reading a book in the first copy that comes to hand without first looking up the date on the title page. Was this practice unknown in Shakespeare’s day?
[123] Themistocles.