A Life of William Shakespeare Part 21

The 'Poems' of 1640.

A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 'Poems' in 1640 (London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) was mainly a reissue of the 'Sonnets,' but it omitted six (Nos. xviii., xix., xliii., lvi., lxxv., and lxxvi.) and it included the twenty poems of 'The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim,'

with some other pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. There were prefatory poems by Leonard Digges and John Warren, as well as an address 'to the reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' were described as 'serene, clear, and elegantly plain; such gentle strains as shall re-create and not perplex your brain.

No intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of interest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty-second place in 1640.

In most cases a more or less fanciful general t.i.tle is placed in the second edition at the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a single t.i.tle serves for short sequences of two or three sonnets which are printed as independent poems continuously without s.p.a.cing. The poems drawn from 'The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim' are intermingled with the 'Sonnets,'

together with extracts from Thomas Heywood's 'General History of Women,'

although no hint is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. The edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shakespeare and a short section ent.i.tled 'an addition of some excellent poems to those precedent by other Gentlemen.' The volume is of great rarity. An exact reprint was published in 1885.

Quartos of the plays in the poet's lifetime.

Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 1616 only sixteen (all in quarto), or eighteen if we include the 'Contention,' the first draft of '2 Henry VI' (1594 and 1600), and 'The True Tragedy,' the first draft of '3 Henry VI' (1595 and 1600). These sixteen quartos were publishers'

ventures, and were undertaken without the co-operation of the author.

Two of the plays, published thus, reached five editions before 1616, viz.

'Richard III' (1597, 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612) and '1 Henry IV' (1598, 1599, 1604, 1608, 1615).

Three reached four editions, viz. 'Richard II' (1597, 1598, 1608 supplying the deposition scene for the first time, 1615); 'Hamlet' (1603 imperfect, 1604, 1605, 1611), and 'Romeo and Juliet' (1597 imperfect, 1599, two in 1609).

Two reached three editions, viz. 'Henry V' (1600 imperfect, 1602, and 1608) and 'Pericles' (two in 1609, 1611).

Four reached two editions, viz. 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (both in 1600); 'Merchant of Venice' (both in 1600); 'Lear' (both in 1608); and 'Troilus and Cressida' (both in 1609).

Five achieved only one edition, viz. 'Love's Labour's Lost' (1598), '2 Henry IV' (1600), 'Much Ado' (1600), 't.i.tus' (1600), 'Merry Wives' (1602 imperfect).

Posthumous quartos of the plays.

Three years after Shakespeare's death--in 1619--there appeared a second edition of 'Merry Wives' (again imperfect) and a fourth of 'Pericles.'

'Oth.e.l.lo' was first printed posthumously in 1622 (4to), and in the same year sixth editions of 'Richard III' and 'I Henry IV' appeared. {302} The largest collections of the original quartos--each of which survives in only four, five, or six copies--are in the libraries of the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the Bodleian Library. {303} All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare's day at sixpence each.

The First Folio. The publis.h.i.+ng syndicate.

In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the world a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. Two of the dramatist's intimate friends and fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, were nominally responsible for the venture, but it seems to have been suggested by a small syndicate of printers and publishers, who undertook all pecuniary responsibility.

Chief of the syndicate was William Jaggard, printer since 1611 to the City of London, who was established in business in Fleet Street at the east end of St. Dunstan's Church. As the piratical publisher of 'The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim' he had long known the commercial value of Shakespeare's work. In 1613 he had extended his business by purchasing the stock and rights of a rival pirate, James Roberts, who had printed the quarto editions of the 'Merchant of Venice' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream' in 1600 and the complete quarto of 'Hamlet' in 1604. Roberts had enjoyed for nearly twenty years the right to print 'the players' bills,'

or programmes, and he made over that privilege to Jaggard with his other literary property. It is to the close personal relations with the playhouse managers into which the acquisition of the right of printing 'the players' bill' brought Jaggard after 1613 that the inception of the scheme of the 'First Folio' may safely be attributed. Jaggard a.s.sociated his son Isaac with the enterprise. They alone of the members of the syndicate were printers. Their three partners were publishers or booksellers only. Two of these, William Aspley and John Smethwick, had already speculated in plays of Shakespeare. Aspley had published with another in 1600 the 'Second Part of Henry IV' and 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and in 1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' Smethwick, whose shop was in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet Street, near Jaggard's, had published in 1611 two late editions of 'Romeo and Juliet' and one of 'Hamlet.' Edward Blount, the fifth partner, was an interesting figure in the trade, and, unlike his companions, had a true taste in literature. He had been a friend and admirer of Christopher Marlowe, and had actively engaged in the posthumous publication of two of Marlowe's poems. He had published that curious collection of mystical verse ent.i.tled 'Love's Martyr,' one poem in which, 'a poetical essay of the Phoenix and the Turtle,' was signed 'William Shakespeare.' {304}

The First Folio was doubtless printed in Jaggard's printing office near St. Dunstan's Church. Upon Blount probably fell the chief labour of seeing the work through the press. It was in progress throughout 1623, and had so far advanced by November 8, 1623, that on that day Edward Blount and Isaac (son of William) Jaggard obtained formal license from the Stationers' Company to publish sixteen of the twenty hitherto unprinted plays that it was intended to include. The pieces, whose approaching publication for the first time was thus announced, were of supreme literary interest. The t.i.tles ran: 'The Tempest,' 'The Two Gentlemen,' 'Measure for Measure,' 'Comedy of Errors,' 'As you like it,'

'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's Tale,' '3 Henry VI,' 'Henry VIII,' 'Coriola.n.u.s,' 'Timon,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Cymbeline.' Four other hitherto unprinted dramas for which no license was sought figured in the volume, viz. 'King John,' '1 and 2 Henry VI,' and the 'Taming of the Shrew;' but each of these plays was based by Shakespeare on a play of like t.i.tle which had been published at an earlier date, and the absence of a license was doubtless due to an ignorant misconception on the past either of the Stationers' Company's officers or of the editors of the volume as to the true relations subsisting between the old pieces and the new. The only play by Shakespeare that had been previously published and was not included in the First Folio was 'Pericles.'

The prefatory matter.

Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. The volume consisted of nearly one thousand double-column pages and was sold at a pound a copy. Steevens estimated that the edition numbered 250 copies.

The book was described on the t.i.tle-page as published by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and in the colophon as printed at the charges of 'W.

Jaggard, I. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley,' as well as of Blount. {306} On the t.i.tle-page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Commendatory verses were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M., perhaps Jasper Maine. The dedication was addressed to the brothers William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, the lord chamberlain, and Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and was signed by Shakespeare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell. The same signatures were appended to a succeeding address 'to the great variety of readers.' In both addresses the two actors made pretension to a larger responsibility for the enterprise than they really incurred, but their motives in identifying themselves with the venture were doubtless irreproachable.

They disclaimed (they wrote) 'ambition either of selfe-profit or fame in undertaking the design,' being solely moved by anxiety to 'keepe the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.'

'It had bene a thing we confesse worthie to haue bene wished,' they inform the reader, 'that the author himselfe had liued to haue set forth and ouerseen his owne writings. . . .' A list of contents follows the address to the readers.

The value of the text.

The t.i.tle-page states that all the plays were printed 'according to the true originall copies.' The dedicators wrote to the same effect. 'As where (before) we were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surrept.i.tious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of incurious impostors that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect in their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.' There is no doubt that the whole volume was printed from the acting versions in the possession of the manager of the company with which Shakespeare had been a.s.sociated. But it is doubtful if any play were printed exactly as it came from his pen. The First Folio text is often markedly inferior to that of the sixteen pre-existent quartos, which, although surrept.i.tiously and imperfectly printed, followed playhouse copies of far earlier date. From the text of the quartos the text of the First Folio differs invariably, although in varying degrees. The quarto texts of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and 'Richard II,' for example, differ very largely and always for the better from the folio texts. On the other hand, the folio repairs the glaring defects of the quarto versions of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' and of 'Henry V.' In the case of twenty of the plays in the First Folio no quartos exist for comparison, and of these twenty plays, 'Coriola.n.u.s,' 'All's Well,' and 'Macbeth' present a text abounding in corrupt pa.s.sages.

The order of the plays.

The plays are arranged under three headings--'Comedies,' 'Histories,' and 'Tragedies'--and each division is separately paged. The arrangement of the plays in each division follows no principle. The comedy section begins with the 'Tempest' and ends with the 'Winter's Tale.' The histories more justifiably begin with 'King John' and end with 'Henry VIII.' The tragedies begin with 'Troilus and Cressida' and end with 'Cymbeline.' This order has been usually followed in subsequent collective editions.

The typography.

As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not to be commended.

There are a great many contemporary folios of larger bulk far more neatly and correctly printed. It looks as though Jaggard's printing office were undermanned. The misprints are numerous and are especially conspicuous in the pagination. The sheets seem to have been worked off very slowly, and corrections were made while the press was working, so that the copies struck off later differ occasionally from the earlier copies. One mark of carelessness on the part of the compositor or corrector of the press, which is common to all copies, is that 'Troilus and Cressida,' though in the body of the book it opens the section of tragedies, is not mentioned at all in the table of contents, and the play is unpaged except on its second and third pages, which bear the numbers 79 and 80.

Unique copies.

Three copies are known which are distinguished by more interesting irregularities, in each case unique. The copy in the Lenox Library in New York includes a cancel duplicate of a leaf of 'As You Like It' (sheet R of the comedies), and the t.i.tle-page bears the date 1622 instead of 1623; but it is suspected that the figures were tampered with outside the printing office. {308} Samuel Butler, successively headmaster of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, possessed a copy of the First Folio in which a proof leaf of 'Hamlet' was bound up with the corrected leaf. {309a}

The Sheldon copy.

The most interesting irregularity yet noticed appears in one of the two copies of the book belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy is known as the Sheldon Folio, having formed in the seventeenth century part of the library of Ralph Sheldon of Weston Manor in the parish of Long Compton, Warwicks.h.i.+re. {309b} In the Sheldon Folio the opening page of 'Troilus and Cressida,' of which the recto or front is occupied by the prologue and the verso or back by the opening lines of the text of the play, is followed by a superfluous leaf. On the recto or front of the unnecessary leaf {309c} are printed the concluding lines of 'Romeo and Juliet' in place of the prologue to 'Troilus and Cressida.' At the back or verso are the opening lines of 'Troilus and Cressida' repeated from the preceding page. The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on each page proves that the two are not taken from the same setting of the type. At a later page in the Sheldon copy the concluding lines of 'Romeo and Juliet' are duly reprinted at the close of the play, and on the verso or back of the leaf, which supplies them in their right place, is the opening pa.s.sage, as in other copies, of 'Timon of Athens.' These curious confusions attest that while the work was in course of composition the printers or editors of the volume at one time intended to place 'Troilus and Cressida,' with the prologue omitted, after 'Romeo and Juliet.' The last page of 'Romeo and Juliet' is in all copies numbered 79, an obvious misprint for 77; the first leaf of 'Troilus' is paged 78; the second and third pages of 'Troilus' are numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless suddenly determined while the volume was in the press to transfer 'Troilus and Cressida' to the head of the tragedies from a place near the end, but the numbers on the opening pages which indicated its first position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the extensive typographical corrections that were required by the play's change of position, its remaining pages were allowed to go forth unnumbered. {310}