CHAPTER XIII.

ON EMENDATION OF THE TEXT.

THE text of Shakespeare has been made to so great an extent the pretext for ingenious persons to display their cleverness by rewriting, altering, inserting, omitting, and otherwise tampering with the old editions, and on the other hand the old copies are in many places so undoubtedly incorrect, that it seems desirable to attempt to lay down here a few general principles as to the limits within which it is permissible to propose any alteration of the text as originally published; at present the general system of editors seems to be to alter not only everything they do not understand, but also everything that they think could be written better. The following canons would exclude two-thirds of the emendations that have been proposed.

1. That no emendation however plausible can be admitted, unless either the passage as it stands is inexplicably absurd, or in direct violation of the author's metrical system. Thus the wellknown passage, “his nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields," was absolute nonsense and required emendation; and the lines

"They say she hath abjured the sight

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And company of men. O that I served that lady!" are so palpably unmetrical that they could not have been so written by Shakespeare. Hence the readings "a' babbled" company and sight" were rightly proposed by Theobald and Steevens, and adopted by all the best editors. On the other hand, there are hundreds of instances in which Pope and Steevens endeavoured to reduce Shakespeare's free metre to regular Iambic five-foot lines; and numerous alterations by such critics as Warburton, who

evidently thought he could improve his author, are absolutely unjustifiable.

2. No emendation can be admitted unless the mode in which the reading of the old editions originated from it can be clearly explained. This point seems almost entirely disregarded by editors.

3. The character of the copy under consideration, as shown by the known or admitted errors in other parts of it, must be taken into account. Thus an emendation which would be easily admissible in the Quarto Edition of Lear, could not be allowed in a play of Ben Jonson's, if it depended for its justification on similarity of sound with the printed edition. The former being a surreptitious copy carelessly printed, the latter seen through the press by the author himself.

4. The most usual errors arise from these causes :—

a. Errors in Writing:-Every one who writes much and thinks rapidly knows how often he omits or repeats words in his writing; these errors are usually corrected in modern times in subsequent revision by the author, or by the reader for the press. In older times dramatic authors were often careless in this matter, and readers for the press did not exist.

b. Errors in Reading:-These arise from the setter-up of the type not being clever in deciphering MSS., or from want of clearness in the author's handwriting; both fruitful causes of error. In the case

of Shakespeare, every instance of certain emendation ought to be tabulated and the cause of the corruption assigned.

c. Errors of Hearing:-These occur when "copy" has been taken down from dictation: sometimes an author dictates his work originally,—but more frequent cases arise from the production of surreptitious editions derived from notes taken in shorthand at the theatre or from recitations of actors in private.

d. Errors of Printing :-These arise from the type being sorted into wrong compartments of the compositor's case, or from the compositor dipping his hand into the wrong compartment to take out a type, or from his eye being caught by a wrong word (especially where the same word occurs twice or oftener near together); these causes give rise to such misprints as b for c (compartments for

these letters being in close proximity); to such errors as r, c, t; d, e; C, G; &c., being substituted for each other (similarity of type leading to wrong sorting); to omissions and repetitions from the eye catching the first of two like words, or conversely, and so on. e. Errors of Correction:-These are caused either by the author's not clearly pointing out to the printer alterations in " copy," whether made on MS. or on a previous edition, or by the printer not understanding the directions given to him. This kind of error has scarcely been noticed heretofore.

f. Errors of partial Alteration:-These arise from an author's writing a second part of a sentence on a plan different from that on which he originally began it, and forgetting to alter the first part to correspond. These occur most often through the exigences of rhyme. They were pointed out by me in the Provincial Magazine, article "Shelley," 1857.

g. The players often inserted oaths, obscene jests, &c., at their will: sometimes these got into the text, especially in surreptitious copies.

Under this

h. Errors of Accident:-These cannot be classified. head I should place accidental destruction of part of MSS. from any cause; obliteration of words or lines; falling out of a type; and all the numerous conceivable occasions of error which, occurring only rarely, are not deserving of special notice.

5. The errors resulting from these causes are―

It would be inconsistent with our plan to go into this question in greater detail: but any error not falling under one of the heads in (5), not traceable to one of the causes in (4), not corrigible in accordance with (1) (2) (3), ought not to be assumed to exist. The curse of modern editing is unnecessary emendation.

CHAPTER XIV.

ON THE ACTORS OF THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYS.

It is not part of our scheme to give details of the lives of these men. The Variorum Shakspeare and Collier's History of Dramatic Literature are the great storehouses of facts on that subject, and they are easily accessible; but as hitherto tabulated lists of the several companies arranged in chronological order have never been published, such lists are here appended. They are of the highest value for determining dates in many instances, and have been far too much neglected for that purpose. The tables here given are derived -the first nine from the old editions of such plays as have lists of actors prefixed, and from the Variorum Shakspeare, vol. ii.; the last four from the (old) Shakspearian Society papers vols. i. and iv. The arrangement of the tables is self-explanatory.

i. Chamberlain's (King's) Company 1594-1619

The

The rest are single lists, requiring no parallel columns. Of course the sign opposite an actor's name and under the title of a play, &c., indicates his forming one of the company of that date. Roman numerals in the last column indicate that the actor's name to which they are opposite will be found also in the table indicated by the numeral. All the actors given in the Folio Shakespeare list are indicated by their having the date of their death or a (?) in a special column in Table I.