21 “The impression of the man that hath been dear unto us, living an after life in our memory, etc.”
—Blunt’s Dedication of Hero and Leander, 1598.
22 “Is it a dream? or is the Highest minde
That ever haunted Pauls, or haunted winde
Bereft of that same sky-surmounting breath,
That breath that taught the Timpany to swell?”
—“Sonet Gorgon,” Gabriel Harvey, 1593.
23 “Dead Musæus’ gracious song.”
—Henry Chettle.
24 “Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had; his raptures were
All air and fire which made his verses clear.”
—Michael Drayton’s Epistle, etc.
25 Ben Jonson’s commendatory verses prefixed to the Folio Edition of 1623, cannot be included among the contemporary notices. They were not written until seven years after Shakespere’s death. Ben Jonson failed to write aught about Shakespere while the latter lived. His sneers at the early “Shakespere plays,” as shown in the Prologue to “Every Man In His Humor” and his sonnet “On Poet-Ape,” are too well known to need quotation; and, being a “contemner and scorner of others,” one must look to self interest as being the motive for the production of those commendatory lines to his “beloved, the author, Master William Shakespere.” Was not this self interest a financial one in the Shakespere plays? Shakespere died in 1616. The first folio edition appeared in 1623. The address, therein, attributed by Malone and many other commentators, to Jonson, recited that the plays are now offered to “view cured and perfect of their limbs,” and “we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.” If these statements were true of manuscripts, unmentioned in the will of Shakespere, and “collected” by Heminge and Condell from the playhouses, it must be that some master mind arranged, revised and recopied them during the seven years between Shakespere’s death and this publication. From the date of the death of Shakespere (1616) to 1625, “Jonson did not write one line for the stage!” It was this revision that kept him silent, and as editor of the folio edition he sought for reimbursement for his labors in its sale. “But whatever you do, buy,” reads the address in that edition; and the commendatory verses are praise enough to excite purchases.
Quarto editions of what are now termed the genuine, and also of what are now termed the spurious plays, had been appearing for an interval of twenty-five years, with the announcement on their title pages of being “newly arranged by,” or “written by” William Shakespere. The claims announced on these title pages appear never to have been disputed by Shakespere. “A Yorkshire Tragedy,” “The London Prodigal,” and “The First Part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle” were so published as his work. Then followed the collection of dramas in the edition of 1623. Jonson may, or may not, have known the real facts of the authorship. If he knew that some persons, other than Shakespere, were the authors, he went only a step further than he did in his address in “Sejanus,” where he fails to mention the name of the “happy genius” who wrote that tragedy with him; but his own molding of the play has not destroyed the trace of Marlowe’s elemental wit therein. We would rather attribute to Jonson ignorance of the authorship of the plays, and in this ignorance assigning them to the Manager of the Globe, than to place him on the level of the Archbishop who ordered Marlowe’s translation of the “Amores” burnt, or of Richard Bame, who wrote the accusation of blasphemy, or of those unknown and more powerful persons, either of Church or State, who labored to blot out of memory the daring and impious Marlowe.
The copy of the second folio edition (1632), containing emendations of the original text, as given to the world by Mr. Collier, if genuine, contains evidence of my theory of Ben Jonson’s editing the earliest edition of the plays. This copy contained interlineations and corrections of text which could have been made only by an editor with the manuscript before him, or by a student deeply versed. The handwriting displayed in these emendations is a facsimile of Ben Jonson’s.
—The Author.
For comparison, a portion of a facsimile page of emendations in Collier’s volume, and some of the writing of Jonson, are here printed: