SOME NOTES ON SHAKSPEARE.

In 1849, the discovery by Mr. Payne Collier of a copy of the Works of Shakspeare, known as the folio of 1632, with manuscript notes and emendations of the same or nearly the same date, created a great and general interest in the world of letters.

The marginal notes were said to be in a handwriting not much later than the period when the volume came from the press; and Shakspearian scholars and students of Shakspeare, and the far more numerous class, lovers of Shakspeare, learned and unlearned, received with respectful eagerness a version of his text claiming a date so near to the lifetime of the master that it was impossible to resist the impression that the alterations came to the world with only less weight of authority than if they had been undoubtedly his own.

The general satisfaction of the literary world in the treasure-trove was but little alloyed by the occasional cautiously expressed doubts of some caviller at the authenticity of the newly discovered "curiosity of literature"; the daily newspapers made room in their crowded columns for extracts from the volume; the weekly journals put forth more elaborate articles on its history and contents; and the monthly and quarterly reviews bestowed their longer and more careful criticism upon the new readings of that text, to elucidate which has been the devout industry of some of England's ripest scholars and profoundest thinkers; while the actors, not to be behindhand in a study especially concerning their vocation, adopted with more enthusiasm than discrimination some of the new readings, and showed a laudable acquaintance with the improved version, by exchanging undoubtedly the better for the worse, upon the authority of Mr. Collier's folio, soon after the publication of which I had the ill-fortune to hear a popular actress destroy the effect and meaning of one of the most powerful passages in "Macbeth" by substituting the new for the old reading of the line,—

"What beast was it, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?"

The cutting antithesis of "What beast" in retort to her husband's assertion, "I dare do all that may become a man," was tamely rendered by the lady, in obedience to Mr. Collier's folio, "What boast was it, then,"—a change that any one possessed of poetical or dramatic perception would have submitted to upon nothing short of the positive demonstration of the author's having so written the passage.

Opinions were, indeed, divided as to the intrinsic merit of the emendations or alterations. Some of the new readings were undoubted improvements, some were unimportant, and others again were beyond all controversy inferior to the established text of the passages; and it seemed not a little difficult to reconcile the critical acumen and poetical insight of many of the corrections with the feebleness and prosaic triviality of others.

Again, it was observed by those conversant with the earlier editions, especially with the little read or valued Oxford edition, that a vast number of the passages given as emendations in Mr. Collier's folio were precisely the same in Hanmer's text. Indeed, it seems not a little remarkable that neither Mr. Collier nor his opponents have thought it worth their while to state that nearly half, and that undoubtedly the better half, of the so-called new readings are to be found in the finely printed, but little esteemed, text of the Oxford Shakspeare. If, indeed, these corrections now come to us with the authority of a critic but little removed from Shakspeare's own time, it is remarkable that Sir Thomas Hanmer's, or rather Mr. Theobald's, ingenuity should have forestalled the fiat of Mr. Collier's folio in so many instances. On the other hand, it may have been judged by others besides a learned editor of Shakspeare from whom I once heard the remark, that the fact of the so-called new readings being many of them in Rowe and Hanmer, and therefore well known to the subsequent editors of Shakspeare, who nevertheless did not adopt them, proved that in their opinion they were of little value and less authority. But, says Mr. Collier, inasmuch as they are in the folio of 1632, which I now give to the world, they are of authority paramount to any other suggestion or correction that has hitherto been made on the text of Shakspeare.

Thus stood the question in 1853. How stands it in 1860? After a slow, but gradual process of growth and extension of doubt and questionings, more or less calculated to throw discredit on the authority of the marginal notes in the folio,—the volume being subjected to the careful and competent examination of certain officers of the library of the British Museum,—the result seems to threaten a considerable reduction in the supposed value of the authority which the public was called upon to esteem so highly.

The ink in which the annotations are made has been subjected to chemical analysis, and betrays, under the characters traced in it, others made in pencil, which are pronounced by some persons of a more modern date than the letters which have been traced over them.

Here at present the matter rests. Much angry debate has ensued between the various gentlemen interested in the controversy,—Mr. Collier not hesitating to suggest that pencil-marks in imitation of his handwriting had been inserted in the volume, and a fly-leaf abstracted from it, while in the custody of Messrs. Hamilton and Madden of the British Museum; while the replies of these gentlemen would go towards establishing that the corrections are forgeries, and insinuating that they are forgeries for which Mr. Collier is himself responsible.

While the question of the antiquity and authority of these marginal notes remains thus undecided, it may not be amiss to apply to them the mere test of common sense in order to determine upon their intrinsic value, to the adequate estimate of which all thoughtful readers of Shakspeare must be to a certain degree competent.

The curious point, of whose they are, may test the science of decipherers of palimpsest manuscripts; the more weighty one, of what they are worth, remains, as it was from the first, a matter on which every student of Shakspeare may arrive at some conclusion for himself. And, indeed, to this ground of judgment Mr. Collier himself appeals, in his preface to the "Notes and Emendations," in no less emphatic terms than the following:—"As Shakspeare was especially the poet of common life, so he was emphatically the poet of common sense; and to the verdict of common sense I am willing to submit all the more material alterations recommended on the authority before me."

I take "The Tempest," the first play in Mr. Collier's volume of "Notes and Emendations," and, while bestowing my principal attention on the inherent worth of the several new readings, shall point out where they tally exactly with the text of the Oxford edition, because that circumstance has excited little attention in the midst of the other various elements of interest in the controversy, and also because I have it in my power to give from a copy of that edition in my possession some passages corrected by John and Charles Kemble, who brought to the study of the text considerable knowledge of it and no inconsiderable ability for poetical and dramatic criticism.

In the first scene of the first act of "The Tempest" Mr. Collier gives the line,—

"Good Boatswain, have care,"—

adding, "It may be just worth remark, that the colloquial expression is have a care, and a is inserted in the margin of the corrected folio, 1632, to indicate, probably, that the poet so wrote it, or, at all events, that the actor so delivered it."

In the copy of Hanmer in my possession the a is also inserted in the margin, upon the authority of one of the eminent actors above mentioned.