Henry Norman
Hudson
1814 - 1886
The Preface to Henry N. Hudson's "Harvard
Shakespeare," 1881.
THE
most obvious peculiarity of this edition is, that it has
two sets of notes ; one mainly devoted to explaining the
text, and printed at the foot of the page ; the other
mostly occupied with matters of textual comment and
criticism, and printed at the end of each play. Of
course the purpose of this double annotation is, to suit
the work, as far as practicable, to the uses both of the
general reader and of the special student. Now, whatever
of explanation general readers may need, they naturally
prefer to have it directly before them ; and in at least
nine cases out of ten they will pass over an obscure
word or phrase or allusion without understanding it,
rather than stay to look up the explanation either in
another volume or in another part of the same volume.
Often, too, in case the explanation be not directly at
hand, they will go elsewhere in quest of it, and then
find, after all, that the editor has left the matter
unexplained ; so that the search will be to no purpose :
whereas, with the plan of foot-notes, they will commonly
see at once how the matter stands, and what they have to
expect, and so will be spared the labour and vexation of
a fruitless quest. It scarce need be said that with
special students the case is very different. In studying
such an author as Shakespeare, these naturally expect to
light upon many things for the full discussion or
elucidation of which they will have to go beyond the
page before them ; though I believe even these like to
have the matter within convenient reach and easy
reference. At all events, they are, or well may be, much
less apt to get so intent on the author's thought, and
so drawn onwards by the interest of the work, but that
they can readily pause, and turn elsewhere, to study out
such points as may call, or seem to call, for particular
investigation. In fact, general readers, for the most
part, pay little or no attention to the language of what
they are reading, and seldom if ever interrogate, or
even think of, the words, save when the interest of the
matter is choked or checked by some strangeness or
obscurity of expression ; whereas special students
commonly are or should be carrying on a silent process
of verbal interrogation, even when the matter is their
chief concern : and as these are more sharp-sighted and
more on the look-out for verbal difficulties than the
former, so they are less impatient of the pauses
required for out-of-the-way explanation. This edition
has been undertaken, and the plan of it shaped, with a
special view to meeting what is believed to be a general
want, and what has indeed been repeatedly urged as such
within the last few years. It has been said, and, I
think, justly said, that a need is widely felt of an
edition of Shakespeare, with such and so much of
explanatory comment as may suffice for the state of
those unlearned but sane-thoughted and earnest readers
who have, or wish to have, their tastes raised and set
to a higher and heartier kind of mental feeding than the
literary smoke and chaff of the time. I have known many
bright and upward-looking minds, — minds honestly
craving to drink from the higher and purer springs of
intellectual power and beauty, — who were frank to own
that it was a sin and a shame not to love Shakespeare,
but who could hardly, if at all, make that love come
free and natural to them. To be plying such minds with
arguments of duty, or with thoughts of the good to be
gained by standing through unpleasant task-work, seems
to me a rather ungracious and impotent business. For it
has long been a settled axiom that the proper office of
poetry is to please ; of the highest poetry, to make
wisdom and virtue pleasant, to crown the True and the
Good with delight and joy. This is the very constituent
of the poet's art ; that without which it has no
adequate reason for being. To clothe the austere forms
of truth and wisdom with heart-taking beauty and
sweetness, is its life and law. Poetry, then, ought of
course to be read as poetry ; and when not read with
pleasure, the right grace and profit of the reading are
missed. For the proper instructiveness of poetry is
essentially dependant on its pleasantness ; whereas in
other forms of writing this order is or may be reversed.
The sense or the conscience of what is morally good and
right should indeed have a hand, and a prerogative hand,
in shaping our pleasures ; and so indeed it must be,
else the pleasures will needs be transient, and even the
seed-time of future pains. So right-minded people ought
to desire, and do desire, to find pleasure in what is
right and good ; the highest pleasure in what is
rightest and best : nevertheless the pleasure of the
thing is what puts its healing, purifying, regenerating
virtue into act ; and to converse with what is in itself
beautiful and good without tasting any pleasantness in
it, is or may be a positive harm. How, then, in
reference to Shakespeare, is the case of common readers
to be met? As before remarked, to urge reasons of duty
is quite from the purpose : reading Shakespeare as duty
and without pleasure is of no use, save as it may lift
and draw them into a sense of his pleasantness. The
question is, therefore, how to make him pleasant and
attractive to them ; how to put him before them, so that
his spirit may have a fair chance to breathe into them,
and quicken their congenial susceptibilities ; for,
surely, his soul and theirs are essentially attuned to
the same music. Doubtless a full sense of his
pleasantness is not to be extemporized : with most of
us, nay, with the best of us, this is and must be a
matter of growth : none but Shakespeare himself can
educate us into a love of Shakespeare ; and such
education, indeed all education, is a work of
time. But I must insist upon it, that his works can and
should be so edited, that average readers may find
enough of pleasantness in them from the first to hold
them to the perusal : and when they have been so held
long enough for the workmanship to steal its virtue and
sweetness into them, then they will be naturally and
freely carried onwards to the condition where " love is
an unerring light, and joy its own security." These
remarks, I believe, indicate, as well as I know how to
do, my idea — I can hardly say, I dare not say, my
ideal—of what a popular edition of Shakespeare ought to
be. The editorial part should, as far as possible, be so
cast and tempered and ordered as to make the Poet's
pages pleasant and attractive to common minds. Generally
to such minds, and often even to uncommon minds,
Shakespeare's world may well seem at first a strange
world, — strange not only for the spiritualized realism
of it, but because it is so much more deeply and truly
natural than the book-world to which they have been
accustomed. The strangeness of the place, together with
the difficulty they find in clearly seeing the real
forms and relations of the objects before them, is apt
to render the place unattractive, if not positively
repulsive, to them. The place is so emphatically the
native home of both the soul and the senses, that they
feel lost in it ; and this because they have so long
travelled in literary regions where the soul and the
senses have been trained into an estrangement from their
proper home. It is like coming back to realities after
having strayed among shadows till the shadows have come
to seem realities. Not seldom the very naturalness of
Shakespeare's world frightens unaccustomed readers :
they find, or feel, so to speak, a kind of estranged
familiarity about it, as of a place they have once
known, but have lost the memory of; so that it seems to
them a land peopled with the ghosts of what had long ago
been to them real living things. Thus the effect, for
some time, is rather to scare and chill their interest
than to kindle and heighten it. And the Poet is
continually popping his thoughts upon them so pointedly,
so vividly, so directly, so unceremoniously, that their
sensibilities are startled, and would fain shrink back
within the shell of custom ; so different is it from the
pulpy, pointless, euphemistic roundaboutness and
volubility which they have been used to hearing from the
Pulpit, the Press, the vulgar oratory, and the popular
authorship of the day. Therewithal, the Poet often
springs upon them such abrupt and searching revelations
of their inner selves, so stings them with his truth, so
wounds them with his healing, and -causes such an
undreamed-of birth of thoughts and feelings within them,
that they stare about them with a certain dread and
shudder, and " tremble like a guilty thing surprised,"
as in the presence of a magician that has stolen their
inmost secrets from them, and is showing them up to the
world. But this is not all. Besides the unfamiliarity
of Shakespeare's matter, so many and so great lingual
changes have taken place since his time, and, still
more, his manner both of thought and expression is so
intensely idiomatic, his diction so suggestive and
overcharged with meaning, his imagery so strong and
bold, his sense so subtile and delicate, his modulation
so various and of such solid and piercing sweetness,
that common readers naturally have no little difficulty
in coming to an easy and familiar converse with him. On
some of these points, an editor can give little or no
positive help : he can at the best but remove or lessen
hindrances, and perhaps throw in now and then a kindling
word or breath. But, on others of them, it lies within
an editor's province to render all the positive aid that
common readers need for making them intelligently and
even delightedly at home with the Poet. Of course this
is to be mostly done by furnishing such and so much of
comment and citation as may be required for setting the
Poet's meaning out clear and free, and by translating
strange or unfamiliar words, phrases, and modes of
speech into the plain, current language of the day. And
here it is of the first importance that an editor have
the mind, or the art, not only to see things plainly,
but to say a plain thing in a plain way ; or, in the
happy phrase of old Roger Ascham, to " think as wise men
do, and speak as common people do." And the secret of
right editing is, to help average readers over the
author's difficulties with as little sense as possible
of being helped ; to lead them up his heights and
through his depths with as little sense as possible of
being led. To do this, the editor must have such a kind
and measure of learning in the field of his labour as
can come only by many years of careful study and thought
; and he must keep the details and processes of his
learning out of sight, putting forth only the last and
highest results, the blossom and fragrance, of his
learnedness : and the editor who does not know too much
in his subject to be showing his knowledge is green and
crude, and so far unfitted for his task. Generally
speaking, it is doubtless better to withhold a needed
explanation than to offer a needless one ; because the
latter looks as if the editor were intent on thrusting
himself between the author and the reader. Probably we
all understand that the best style in writing is where
average minds, on reading it, are prompted to say, "Why,
almost anybody could have done that " ; and a style that
is continually making such readers sensible of their
ignorance, or of their inferiority to the writer, is not
good. For But what seems
specially needful to be kept in mind is, that when
common people read Shakespeare, it is not to learn
etymology, or grammar, or philology, or lingual
antiquities, or criticism, or the technicalities of
scholarism, but to learn Shakespeare himself ; to
understand the things he puts before them, to take-in
his thought, to taste his wisdom, to feel his beauty, to
be kindled by his fire, to be refreshed with his humour,
to glow with his rapture, and to be stolen from
themselves and transported into his moral and
intellectual whereabout ; in a word, to live, breathe,
think, and feel with him. I am so simple and
old-fashioned as to hold that, in so reading the Poet,
they are putting him to the very best and highest use of
which he is capable. Even their intellects, I think,
will thrive far better so, than by straining themselves
to a course of mere intellectualism. All which means, to
be sure, that far more real good will come, even to the
mind, by foolishly enjoying Shakespeare than by
learnedly parsing him. So that here I am minded to apply
the saying of Wordsworth, that " he is oft the wisest
man who is not wise at all." Now I cannot choose but
think that, if this were always duly borne in mind, we
should see much more economy of erudition than we do. It
is the instinct of a crude or conceited learning to be
ever emphasizing itself, and poking its fingers into the
readers' eyes : but a ripe and well-assimilated learning
does not act thus : it is a fine spirit working in the
mind's blood, and not a sort of foam or scum mantling
its surface, or an outgrowth bristling into notice. So
that here, as in all true strength, modesty rules the
transpiration. Accordingly an editor's proper art is to
proceed, not by a formal and conscious use of learning,
but by the silent efficacy thereof transfusing itself
insensibly into and through his work, so as to
accomplish its purpose without being directly seen.
Nor is Shakespeare's language so antiquated, or his
idiom of thought so remote from ordinary apprehension,
as to require a minute, or cumbrous, or oppressive
erudition for making his thoughts intelligible to
average minds. His diction, after all, is much nearer
the common vernacular of the day than that of his
editors : for where would these be if they did not write
in a learned style? To be sure, here, as
elsewhere, an editor's art, or want of art, can easily
find or make ever so many difficulties, in order to
magnify itself and its office by meeting them, or by
seeming to meet them. And in fact it has now become, or
is fast becoming, very much the fashion to treat
Shakespeare in this way ; an elaborate and
self-conscious erudition using him as a sort of perch to
flap its wings and crow from. So we have had and are
having editions of his plays designed for common use,
wherein the sunlight of his poetry is so muffled and
strangled by a thick haze of minute, technical, and
dictionary learning, that common eyes can hardly catch
any fresh and clear beams of it. Small points and issues
almost numberless, and many of them running clean off
into distant teeth-cousin matters, are raised, as if
poetry so vital and organic as his, and with its mouth
so full of soul-music, were but a subject for lingual
and grammatical dissection ; or a thing to be studied
through a microscope, and so to be "examined, ponder'd,
search'd, probed, vex'd, and criticised." Is not all
this very much as if the main business of readers, with
Shakespeare's page before them, were to "pore, and
dwindle as they pore"? Here the ruling thought seems
to be, that the chief profit of studying Shakespeare is
to come by analyzing and parsing his sentences, not by
understanding and enjoying his poetry. But, assuredly,
this is not the way to aid and encourage people in the
study of Shakespeare. They are not to be inspired with a
right love or taste for him by having his lines
encumbered with such commentatorial redundances and
irrelevancies. Rather say, such a course naturally
renders the Poet an unmitigable bore to them, and can
hardly fail to disgust and repel them ; unless,
perchance, it may superinduce upon them a certain
dry-rot of formalistic learning. For, in a vast many
cases, the explanations are far more obscure to the
average reader than the things explained ; and he may
well despair of understanding the Poet, when he so often
finds it impossible to understand his explainers. Or the
effect of such a course, if it have any but a negative
effect, can hardly be other than to tease and card the
common sense out of people, and train them into learned
and prating dunces, instead of making them intelligent,
thoughtful, happy men and women in the ordinary tasks,
duties, and concerns of life. Thus Shakespeare is now
in a fair way to undergo the same fate which a much
greater and better book has already undergone. For even
so a great many learned minds, instead of duly marking
how little need be said, and how simply that little
should be said, have tried, apparently, how much and how
learnedly they could write upon the Bible ; how many
nice questions they could raise, and what elaborate
comments they could weave about its contents. Take, for
example, the Sermon on the Mount : left to its natural
and proper working, that brief piece of writing has in
it more of true culture-force or culture-inspiration
than all the mere scientific books in the world put
together : and learned commentaries stand, or claim to
stand, in the rank of scientific works. Yet even here,
as experience has amply proved, a sort of learned
incontinence can easily so intricate and perplex the
matter, and spin the sense out into such a curious and
voluminous interpretation, as fairly to swamp plain
minds, and put them quite at a loss as to what the
Divine utterances mean. The thing is clear enough, until
a garrulous and obtrusive learning takes it in hand ;
and then darkness begins to gather round it. So strong is
the conceit of studying all things scientifically, that
we must, forsooth, have Shakespeare used as the raw
material of scientific manufacture. It seems to be
presumed that people cannot rightly feed upon his
poetry, unless it be first digested for them into
systematic shape by passing through some gerund-grinding
laboratory. But the plain truth is, that works of
imagination cannot be mechanized and done over into the
forms of science, without a total dissipation of their
life and spirit, of all indeed that is properly
constitutive in them. It is simply like dissecting a
bird in order to find out where the music comes from and
how it is made. I have, perhaps, dwelt upon this topic
too long, and may fitly close it with a few pertinent
words from Bacon, which always come into my remembrance
when thinking on the subject. " The first distemper of
learning," says he, " is when men study words and not
matter. And how is it possible but this should have an
operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar
capacities, when they see learned men's works like the
first letter of a patent, or a limned book ; which,
though it hath large flourishes, yet is but a letter? It
seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or
portraiture of this vanity : for words are but the
images of matter ; and, except they have the life of
reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all
one as to. fall in love with a picture." In another
passage, he puts the matter as follows : " Surely, like
as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrefy
and corrupt into worms ; so it is the property of good
and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a
number of subtile, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term
them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of
quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter
or goodness of quality." To preclude misapprehension,
as far as may be, I must add that the foregoing remarks
have an eye only to editions of the Poet designed for
common use ; and so cannot be justly construed as
reflecting on such as look mainly to the special use of
students and scholars. Doubtless there may be, nay,
there must be, from time to time, say as often as once
in forty or fifty years, highly learned editions of
Shakespeare ; such, for instance, as Mr. Howard
Furness's magnificent Variorum, which, so far as it has
come, is a truly monumental achievement of learning,
judgment, good sense, and conscientious, painstaking
industry. Of course such a work must needs enter very
largely into the details and processes of the subject,
pursuing a great many points out through all the
subtilties and intricacies of critical inquiry. But, for
the generality of readers, such a handling of the theme
is obviously quite out of the question : in this hard
working-day world, they have too much else in hand to be
tracing out and sifting the nice questions which it is
the business of a profound and varied scholarship to
investigate and settle ; and the last and highest
results of such scholarship is all that they can
possibly have time or taste for. If any one says that
common readers, such as at least ninety-nine persons in
a hundred are and must be, should have the details and
processes of the work put before them, that so they may
be enabled to form independent judgments for themselves
; — I say, whoever talks in this way is either under a
delusion himself, or else means to delude others. It may
flatter common readers to be told that they are just as
competent to judge for themselves in these matters as
those are who have made a lifelong study of them : but
the plain truth is, that such readers must perforce
either take the results of deep scholarship on trust, or
else not have them at all; and none but a dupe or a
quack, or perhaps a compound of the two, would ever
think of representing the matter otherwise.
Illustration
from frontespiece to Hudson's "Harvard
Shakespeare"
the proper light of a truly luminous speaker is one that
strikes up a kindred light in the hearer ; so that the
light seems to come, and indeed really does come, from
the hearer's own mind. It is much the same in editing a
standard author for common use. And for an editor to be
all the while, or often, putting average readers in mind
how ignorant and inferior they are, is not the best way,
nor the right way, to help them.
And so the Bible generally, as we all know, has been so
worried and belaboured with erudite, or ignorant, but at
all events diffusive, long-winded, and obstructive
commentary ; its teachings and efficacies have got so
strangled by the interminable yarns of interpretation
spun about them ; that now at length common people have
pretty much lost both their faith in it and their taste
for it : reverence for it has come to be regarded as
little better than an exploded superstition : and indeed
its light can hardly struggle or filtrate through the
dense vapours of learned and elaborate verbosity exhaled
from subjacent regions. The tendency now is to replace
the Bible with Shakespeare as our master-code of
practical wisdom and guidance. I am far, very far
indeed, from regarding this as a sign of progress,
either moral or intellectual : viewed merely in
reference to literary taste, the Bible is incomparably
beyond any other book in the world : but, if such a
substitution must be made, Shakespeare is probably the
best. The Poet himself tells us, "they that dally nicely
with words may quickly make them wanton." And so, to be
sure, the process has set in, and is already well
advanced, of smothering his proper light beneath
commentatorial surplusage and rubbish.
But the main business of this Preface is yet to come,
and what remains must be chiefly occupied with certain
questions touching the Poet's text. And here I must
first make a brief general statement of the condition in
which his text has come down to us, leaving the
particular details in this kind to be noted in
connection with the several plays themselves. Of the
thirty-eight plays included in this edition, sixteen,
or, if we count-in the originals of the Second and Third
Parts of King Henry the Sixth, eighteen, were
published, severally and successively, in what are known
as the quarto editions, during the Poet's life. Some of
them were printed in that form several times, but often
with considerable variations of text. One more,
Othello, was issued in that form in 1622, six years
after the Poet's death. Copies of these editions are
still extant, though in some cases exceedingly rare.
Most of these issues were undoubtedly " stolen and
surreptitious " ; and it is nowise likely that in any of
them a single page of the proofs was ever corrected by
Shakespeare himself. In the popular literature of his
time, proof-reading generally was done, if done at all,
with such a degree of slovenliness as no one would think
of tolerating now. And that proof-sheets can be rightly
and properly corrected by none but the author himself,
or by one very closely and minutely familiar with his
mind, his mouth, and his hand, is a lesson which an
experience of more than thirty years in the matter has
taught me beyond all peradventure. And, in fact, the
printing in most of these quarto issues is so shockingly
bad, that no one can gain an adequate idea of how bad it
is, except by minutely studying the text as there given,
and comparing it in detail with the text as given in
modern editions. All the forecited plays, with one
exception, Pericles, were set forth anew in the
celebrated folio of 1623, seven years after the Poet's..
death. Most of them are indeed printed much better there
than in the earlier issues, though some of them are well
known to have been printed from quarto copies.
Therewithal the folio set forth, for the first time, so
far as is known, all the other plays included in this
edition, except The Two Noble Kinsmen. The volume
was published, professedly at least, under the editorial
care of the Poet's friends and fellow-actors, John
Heminge and Henry Condell. The printing of the folio
is exceedingly unequal : in some of the plays, as, for
instance, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night,
and As You Like It, it is remarkably good for the
time, insomuch that the text, generally, is got into an
orderly and intelligible state without much trouble ;
while others, as All's Well, Coriolanus,
and Timon of Athens, abound in the grossest
textual corruptions, so that the labour of rectification
seems to be literally endless. Even where the printing
is best, there are still so many palpable, and also so
many more or less probable, misprints, that the text, do
the best we can with it, must often stand under
considerable uncertainty. It is not unlikely that in
some parts of the volume the Editors themselves may have
attended somewhat to the correcting of the proofs, while
in others they left it entirely to the printers. Of
course all the plays then first published must have been
printed either from the author's own manuscripts, or
else from play-house transcripts of them. Doubtless
these were made by different hands, sometimes with
reasonable care, sometimes otherwise, and so with
widely-varying degrees of accuracy and legibility. In
their "Address to the Readers," the Editors, after
referring to the earlier quarto issues, go on as follows
: " Even those are now offered to your view cured and
perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in
their numbers as he [the author] conceived them ; who,
as he was a happy imitator of Nature, was a most gentle
expresser of it : and what he thought, he uttered with
that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a
blot in his papers." Heminge and Condell appear to have
been honest and amiable men ; but they naturally felt a
strong interest in having the volume sell well, and so
were moved to recommend it as highly as they could to
purchasers. Probably there was something of truth in
what they said, perhaps enough to excuse, if not to
justify them in saying it : nevertheless it is perfectly
certain that their words were not true to the full
extent ; and most likely what was true only of a portion
of the volume they deemed it right to put forth in a
general way as if applicable to the whole, without
staying to express any limitations or exceptions. The
folio was reprinted in 1632, again in 1664, and yet
again in 1685. The folio of 1632 was set forth with a
good many textual changes, made by an unknown hand ;
sometimes corrections, and sometimes corruptions, but
none of them carrying any authority. Changes of text,
though less both in number and importance, were also
made in the third and fourth folios. Before passing on
from this topic, I must add that, after 1623, single
plays continued to be reprinted, from time to time, in
quarto form. But as these are seldom of any use towards
ascertaining or helping the text, it seems not worth the
while to specify them in detail. Probably the most
valuable of them is that of Othello, issued in
1630. Others of them are occasionally referred to in the
Critical Notes. As I have frequent occasion to cite a
famous volume, which I designate as "Collier's second
folio," it appears needful to give some account thereof
in this place. — In 1849, Mr. J. P. Collier, a very
learned and eminent Shakespearian, lighted upon and
purchased a copy of the second folio containing a very
large number of verbal, literal, and punctuative
alterations in manuscript ; all of course intended as
corrections of the text. At what time or times, and by
what hand or hands, these changes were made, has not
been settled, nor is likely to be. For some time there
was a good deal of pretty warm controversy about them.
All, I believe, are now pretty much agreed, and
certainly such is my own judgment, that none of them
have any claim to be regarded as authentic : most of
them are corruptions decidedly ; but a considerable
number may be justly spoken of as corrections ; and some
of them are exceedingly happy and valuable. To be sure,
of those that may be called apt and good, the larger
portion had been anticipated by modern editors, and so
had passed into the current text. Still there are enough
of original or unanticipated corrections to render the
volume an important contribution towards textual
rectification. Nevertheless they all stand on the common
footing of conjectural emendation, and so carry no
authority in their hand but that of inherent fitness and
propriety. Herewith I must also mention another copy
of the same folio, which is sometimes referred to in my
Critical Notes. This was owned by the late Mr. S. W.
Singer, also one of the most learned and eminent
Shakespearians of his time. All that need be said of it
here may as well be given in Singer's own words : " In
June, x852, I purchased from Mr. Willis, the bookseller,
a copy of the second folio edition of Shakespeare, in
its original binding, which, like that of Mr. Collier,
contains very numerous manuscript corrections by several
hands ; the typographical errors, with which that
edition abounds, are sedulously corrected, and the
writers have also tried their hands at conjectural
emendation extensively. Many of these emendations
correspond with those in Mr. Collier's volume, but
chiefly in those cases where the error in the old copy
was pretty evident ; but the readings often vary, and
sometimes for the better." Thus much may suffice for
indicating generally the condition in which
Shakespeare's plays have come down to us. Of course the
early quartos and the first folio are, in the proper
sense, our only authorities for the Poet's text. But his
text has not been, and most assuredly never will be
allowed to remain in the condition there given. The
labours and the judgment of learned, sagacious,
painstaking, diligent workmen in the field have had,
ought to have, must have, a good deal of weight in
deciding how the matter should go. And now the question
confronts us whether, after all, there is any likelihood
of Shakespeare's text being ever got into a satisfactory
state. Perhaps, nay, I may as well say probably, not.
Probably the best to be looked for here is a greater or
less degree of approximation to such a state. At all
events, if it come at all, it is to come as the slow
cumulative result of a great many minds working jointly,
or severally, and successively, and each contributing
its measure, be it more, be it less, towards the common
cause. A mite done here, and a mite done there, will at
length, when time shall cast up the sum, accomplish we
know not what. The Bible apart, Shakespeare's dramas
are, by general consent, the greatest classic and
literary treasure of the- world. His text, with all the
admitted imperfections on its head, is nevertheless a
venerable and sacred thing, and must nowise be touched
but under a strong restraining sense of pious awe. Woe
to the man that exercises his critical surgery here
without a profound reverence for the subject! All glib
ingenuity, all shifty cleverness, should be sternly
warned off from meddling with the matter. Nothing is
easier than making or proposing ingenious and plausible
corrections. But changes merely ingenious are altogether
worse than none ; and whoever goes about the work with
his mind at all in trim for it will much rather have any
corrections he may make or propose flatly condemned as
bad, than have that sweetish epithet politely
smiled, or sneered, upon them. On the other hand,
to make corrections that are really judicious,
corrections that have due respect to all sides of the
case, and fit all round, and that keep strictly within
the limits of such freedom as must be permitted in the
presenting of so great a classic so deeply hurt with
textual corruptions ; — this is, indeed, just the nicest
and most delicate art in the whole work of modem
editorship. And as a due application of this art
requires a most circumspective and discriminating
judgment, together with a life-long acquaintance with
the Poet's mental and rhythmic and lingual idiom ; so,
again, there needs no small measure of the same
preparation, in order to a judicious estimate of any
ripely-considered textual change. The work of
ascertaining and amending Shakespeare's. text
systematically began with Rowe in 1709, his first
edition having came out that year, his second in 7x4.
The work was continued by Pope, who also put forth two
editions, in 1723 and 1728. Pope was followed by
Theobald, whose two editions appeared in 1733 and 1740.
Then came Hanmer's edition in 1743, and Warburton's in
1749. All through the latter half of the eighteenth
century the process was sedulously continued by Johnson,
Capell, Steevens, Malone, Rann, and sundry others.
Heath, though not an editor, was hardly inferior to any
of them in understanding and judgment ; and his comments
remain to this day among the best we have. Most of these
men were very strong and broad in learning and sagacity,
and in the other furnishings needful for their task ;
none of them were wanting in respect for the Poet ; and
all of them did good service. It must be admitted,
however, that many, if not most, of these workmen
handled the text with excessive freedom ; and perhaps it
may be justly said that, taken all together, they
corrupted quite as much as they corrected it. They seem
to have gone somewhat upon the principle of giving what,
in their judgment, the Poet ought to have written ;
whereas the thing we want is not what anybody may think
he ought to have written, but what, as nearly as can be
judged, he actually did write. Accordingly much labour
has since had to be spent in undoing what was thus
overdone. During the present century the process of
correction has been kept up, but much more temperately,
and by minds well fitted and furnished for the task,
though probably, as a whole, not equal to the earlier
series of workmen. Among these are Singer, Collier,
Dyce, Staunton, Halliwell, and White, faithful and
highly competent labourers, whose names will doubtless
hold prominent and permanent places in Shakespearian
lore. The excessive freedom in textual change used by
the earlier series of editors has naturally had the
effect of provoking a reaction. For the last forty years
or thereabouts, this reaction has been in progress, and
is now, I think, at its height, having reached an
extreme fully as great, and not a whit more commendable
than the former extreme. Of course this can hardly fail
in due time to draw on another reaction ; and already
signs are not wanting that such a result is surely
forthcoming. To the former license of correction there
has succeeded a license, not less vicious, of
interpretation. Explanations the most strained,
far-fetched, and over-subtile are now very much the
order of the day, —things sure to disgust the common
sense of sober, candid, circumspective, cool-judging
minds. It is said that the old text must not be changed
save in cases of " absolute necessity " ; and this
dictum is so construed, in theory at least, as to prompt
and cover all the excesses of the most fanciful,
fine-drawn, and futile ingenuity. The thing has grown to
the ridiculous upshot of glozing and conjuring stark
printer's errors into poetic beauties, and the
awkwardest hitchings and haltings of metre into "elegant
retardations." To minds so captivated with their own
ingenuity, an item of the old text that is utter
nonsense is specially attractive ; because, to be sure,
they can the more easily spell their own sense, or want
of sense, into it. And so we see them doggedly tenacious
of such readings as none but themselves can explain, and
fondly concocting such explanations thereof as none but
themselves can understand ; tormenting the meaning they
want out of words that are no more akin to it than the
multiplication-table is to a trilobite. Surely, then,
the thing now most in order is a course of temperance
and moderation, a calmness and equipoise of judgment,
steering clear of both extremes, and sounding in harmony
with plain old common sense, one ounce of which is worth
more than a ton of exegetical ingenuity. For
Shakespeare, be it observed, is just our great imperial
sovereign of common sense ; and sooner or later the
study of him will needs kill off all the editors that
run in discord with this supreme quality of his
workmanship. The present generation of Shakespearians
are rather conspicuously, not to say ostentatiously,
innocent of respect for their predecessors. 'They even
seem to measure the worth of their own doings by their
self-complacent ignoring or upbraiding of what has been
done before. Might it not be well for them to bethink
themselves now and then what sort of a lesson their
contempt of the past is likely to teach the future ?
Possibly plain sensible people, who prefer small
perspicuities to big obscurities, soft-voiced solidities
to high-sounding nihilities, may take it into their
heads that wisdom was not born with the present
generation, and will not die with it. After all, Rowe,
Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Capell, and
others, though by no -means infallible, yet were not
fools : they knew several things ; and their minds were
at least tolerably clear of conceit and cant : I suspect
they understood their business quite as well, and
laboured in it quite as uprightly and fruitfully, as
those who now insist on proceeding as if nothing had
ever been done ; as if it had been reserved exclusively
for them to understand and appreciate the Poet. In this,
as in some other matters, to " stand as if a man were
author of himself, and knew no other kin," is not
exactly the thing. The best that any of us can do is to
add somewhat, perhaps a very, very little, to the
building that others have worked upon and helped to rear
; and if we are to begin by a clean sweeping away of
what others have done, that so our puny architecture may
have a better chance of being seen, is it not possible
that the sum of our own doings, as time shall foot it
up, will prove a minus quantity? Certainly changes in
the old text of Shakespeare ought not to be made without
strong and clear reasons : and after they have been so
made, stronger and clearer reasons may arise, or may be
shown, for unmaking them. Very well ; be it so. But such
reasons are not to be nonsuited by unreasonable
explanations, by superfine glozings, and rhetorical
smokings. The cacoethes emendandi and the
cacoethes explanandi are alike out of place, and to
be avoided. I have already quoted the phrase "absolute
necessity," now so often used by the ultraists of
textual conservatism. This phrase seems to bind the
thing up very tightly : yet, even with those who urge it
most strongly, it is found to have, in effect, no firm
practical meaning ; at least not a whit more than the
phrase " strong and clear reasons." To illustrate what I
mean : Mr. Furness, in his King Lear, iii. 6,
prints "This rest might yet have balm'd thy broken
sinews" ; thus rejecting Theobald's reading, "broken
senses," for the old text : and he does this on
the ground that "the change is not absolutely
necessary." Yet, in ii. 4, he prints "To be a comrade of
the wolf, and howl necessity's sharp pinch ! "
thus substituting howl, from Collier's second
folio, for owl, the old reading. And I think he
shows strong and clear reasons for the change. But,
strictly speaking, I can see no absolute necessity for
it : some tolerable sense can be made, has been made,
out of the old text. Nay, more ; the change, in this
case, as it seems to me, does not come so near being
absolutely necessary as in the case of Theobald's
senses. I must needs think that owl yields,
of the two, a better and more fitting sense in the one
place than sinews does in the other.
Nevertheless, in the instance of howl, Mr.
Furness seems to me to make out a clear case ; to
justify the change triumphantly ; this too without any
approach to overstrained refinement ; insomuch that I
should henceforth never think of printing the passage
otherwise than as he prints it. So, be it that absolute
necessity is the true rule, have we not here a pretty
good instance of that rule being " more honour'd in the
breach than the observance "? And I think the same
argument will hold even more strongly touching another
reading which he adopts from the same source. It is in i.
1, where he prints "It is no vicious blot, nor other
foulness," instead of the old reading, "no vicious blot,
murther, or foulness." Here the need of the
change, to my thinking, is not so exigent nor so evident
as in either of the former cases, especially the first :
a good deal, I think, can here be said in defence of the
old reading : at all events, I can nowise understand how
the absolute necessity that rules out senses can
consistently rule-in howl and nor other.
But Mr. Furness, with all his austere and, as I must
think, rather overstrained conservatism, so commands my
respect, that I accept his judgment in both the latter
cases, though dissenting from him altogether in the
first ; herein following, as I take it, the absolute
necessity which he practises, and not the one which he
preaches. And indeed so many men preach better than they
practise, that it is decidedly refreshing to meet, now
and then, with one who reverses this order, and makes
his practice come out ahead. Of course this point
might easily be illustrated at almost any length. For
the old text has hundreds of cases substantially
parallel with those I have cited ; cases where, in my
judgment, there are strong and clear reasons for textual
changes made or proposed by former Shakespearians, but
where the new school, with their canon of " absolute
necessity," hold on to stark corruptions, and then make
up for their textual strictness with the largest
exegetical license. Yet I have never caught any of these
bigots (so I must term them) of the old letter finding
fault when we, of a somewhat more liberal bent, have
adopted any corrections which they have themselves
proposed. Here, as, to he sure, is very natural, their "
absolute necessity " smiles itself into an aspect
practicable enough. For, in truth, several of them
seem equally intent on finding reasons for condemning
corrections that others have made, and for proposing or
approving new corrections ; and their wrong-headed,
perhaps I should say pig-headed, ingenuity in both parts
of the business is sometimes ludicrous, sometimes
otherwise. So, for instance, one of them has lately
approved, and another adopted, a new reading in The
Tempest, i. 2 : "Urchins shall forth at vast
of night, that they may work all exercise on thee" ;
where both the old and the common reading is, "Urchins
shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
all exercise on thee." Here, of course, for gives
the sense of duration, or prolonged action ; which is
just what the occasion requires. For it is well known
that urchins were wont to go forth, and work, or play,
during the vast of night, anyhow ; this was their
special right or privilege ; and Prospero means that,
during that time, he will have them exercise their
talents on Caliban. In my poor opinion, therefore, both
the approver and the adopter of the forecited change
have thereby, so far as one instance can tell against
them, earned an exclusion, or a dismissal, from the seat
of judgment in questions of that sort. However, when any
of these gentlemen offer us, as they sometimes do,
corrections that can show strong and clear reasons, I,
for one, shall be happy to prefer their practice also to
their preaching ; and if they see fit to frown their
preaching upon me, I have but to laugh back their own
practice upon them : so, if they can stand it, I can.
But there is one thing which I feel bound to set my face
against, however insignificant that setting may be. It
is this. Of course there are a great many plain cases of
textual corruption, where, notwithstanding, a full and
perfect certainty as to the right correction is not to
be attained. These often try an editor's labour and
judgment and patience to the uttermost. But it is an
editor's business, in such cases, to sift and weigh the
whole matter with all possible care, to make up his
mind, and do the best he can. This is a tedious and
painful, as also, in most cases, a thankless process. So
a custom has lately been started, for editors, when on
this score any "doubts or scruples tease the brain," to
shirk the whole matter, to shift off the burden upon
others, and to dodge all responsibility and all hazard
of a wrong decision, by sticking an obelus in to note
the corruption ; thus calling the reader's attention to
his need of help, and yet leaving him utterly unhelped.
This is indeed "most tolerable and not to be endured."
It is, in effect, equivalent to telling us that they
know more than all the previous editors, yet do not know
enough for the cause they have undertaken, and so have
no way but to adjourn the court. There is one other
topic upon which I must say a few words. —It is somewhat
in question how far the spelling and the verbal forms of
the old copies ought to be retained. Mr. White,
following the folio, prints murther for murder,
fadom for fathom, and in some cases, if I
rightly remember, moder for mother. Now
there seems to me just as much reason for keeping the
two latter archaisms as for keeping the first ; that is
to say, none at all. Herein, however, Mr. White is at
least consistent ; which is more than can be said of
some other recent editing ; though I admit that in this
instance consistency is not a jewel. And Mr. Furness, in
the Preface to his King Lear, announces that
hereafter he shall adhere to the old form, or old
spelling, of then for than, as also of the
antique concessive and for an. In an
edition like his designed chiefly for students and
scholars, there may be some reason for this which does
not hold in the case of editions looking to general use
; yet even that appears to me somewhat more than
doubtful. Mr. Furness urges that Spenser always uses
then for than, and that none of his modern
editors think of substituting the latter. But Spenser
manifestly took pains to give his language a special air
or smack of antiquity, and so made it more archaic than
the general usage of his time. Moreover, Spenser is now
very little read, if at all, save by scholars and
students ; and, if I were to edit any portion of him for
common use, I should make no scruple of printing than,
except in cases where then might need to be kept
for the rhyme. Again : All students of Shakespeare
know that the folio has many instances of God buy you,
the old colloquial abridgment of God be with you,
which has been still further shortened into our Good
bye. Probably, in the Poet's time, the phrase was
sounded God bwy you. Here I see no other, or no
better, way to keep both sense and sound, and rhythm
also, than by printing God b' w' you ; and so in
this edition I always print, or mean to print. Would Mr.
Furness, in this instance also, retain the old form or
spelling buy? The phrase, I believe, does not
occur in King Lear, so that he had no occasion
there for making any sign of his thought on the subject.
The phrase occurs twice in Hamlet, first in ii.
1, and again in ii. 2 ; and there he prints "God be wi'
you" and "God be wi' ye" ; but on some points his views
have changed since his superb edition of that play was
issued. Whatever his purpose may be, I cannot but think
there is quite as good reason for adhering strictly to
the old letter in this instance as in that of then
or of and. And the case is substantially the same
in reference to a great many other words : in fact, I do
not see how this principle of retention can consistently
stop, till it shall have restored the old spelling
altogether. My own practice in this matter is,
wherever any thing either of sense, or of rhythm, or of
metre, or of rhyme, is involved, to retain the old forms
or old spelling. For instance, the folio has eyne
for eyes, and rhyming with mine ; also
denay for denial, and rhyming with say
: it also has throughly for thoroughly,
and thorough for through. Of course I
should never think, probably no editor would think, of
disturbing these archaisms, or such as these. Even when,
as is often the case, there is no reason of metre or of
rhyme for keeping them, they are essential items in the
Poet's rhythm ; for good prose has a rhythm of its own
as well as verse. Now Shakespeare, especially in his
verse, was evidently very particular and exact in the
care of his rhythm and metre, and therefore of his
syllables. The folio has almost numberless minute proofs
and indications of this ; and here, of course, the
smaller the note, the more significance it bears as
regards the Poet's habit and purpose. Perhaps there is
no one point wherein this is oftener shown than in his
very frequent elision of the article the, so as
to make it coalesce with the preceding word into one
syllable. So, especially in his later plays, there is
almost no end to such elisions as by th', do
th', for th', from th', on th',
to th', &c. ; and the folio has many instances of
the double elision wi' th' for with the.
Now I hold, and have long held it important that, as far
as practicable, these little things be carefully
preserved, not only because they are essential parts of
the Poet's verbal modulation, but also as significant
notes or registers of his scrupulous and delicate
attention to this element of his workmanship. Yet the
whole thing is totally ignored in all the recent
editions that I am conversant with ; all, with the one
exception of Mr. Furness's latest volume, his King
Lear, where it is carefully attended to. And right
glad am I that it is ; for, as I must think, it ought
never to have been neglected. But, in certain other
points, — points where nothing of rhyme or metre or
rhythm or sense is concerned, — I have pursued, and
shall pursue, a somewhat different course. — It is well
known to Shakespearians that the old text has some
twelve or fifteen, perhaps more, instances of it
used possessively, or where we should use its,
the latter not being a current form in the Poet's time,
though then just creeping into use. And so the English
Bible, as originally printed in 1611, has not a single
instance of its : it has, however, one or two,
perhaps more, instances of it used in the same
way. In these cases, all modern editions, so far as I
know, print its, and are, I hold, unquestionably
right in doing so. It is true, Shakespeare's old text
has repeated instances of its, and these are more
frequent in the later plays than in the earlier. And in
most of these cases the folio prints it with an
apostrophe, it's; though in two or three places,
if not more, we there have it printed without the
apostrophe. In all these cases, whether of it
or it's or its, I make no scruple whatever
of printing simply its; though I sometimes call
attention to the old usage in my Critical Notes. For, in
truth, I can perceive no sort of sense or reason in
retaining the possessive it in Shakespeare's
text, or, at all events, in any presentation of it
designed for common use. Yet we have some recent editing
apparently taking no little credit to itself for keeping
up and propagating this unmeaning and worthless bit of
archaic usage ; whereas the Poet himself was evidently
impatient of it, as he shook himself more and more free
from it, the riper he grew. Of course the same recent
editing insists punctually on keeping the apostrophized
form, it's, wherever the folio prints it so.
Surely there is no more reason for retaining the
apostrophe here, than there is for omitting it in the
numberless cases where the folio omits it ; as in " like
my brothers fault," and " against my brothers life." For
all who have so much as looked into that volume must
know that genitives and plurals are there commonly
printed just alike. But, indeed, the retention of these
archaisms seems to me no better than sheer idolatry or
dotage of the old letter ; all the arguments but those
of pedantry or affectation drawing clean away from it.
That an editor who stands rigidly on these points should
nevertheless quite overlook other things of real weight,
like those I pointed out a little before, may seem
strange to some : but I suspect it is all in course ;
for they who ride hobbies are apt to lose sight of every
thing but the particular hobby they happen to be riding.
And now a word as to the ordering of the plays in this
edition. The folio has them arranged in three distinct
series, severally entitled Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies. The plays of the first and third series are
there arranged seemingly at haphazard, and without any
regard to the order of time in which they were written ;
those of the second or historic series, simply according
to the chronological order of the persons and events
represented in them ; the three that were no doubt
written first being thus placed after several that were
of later composition. In this edition, the three series
of the folio are kept distinct ; but the several plays
of each series are meant to be arranged, as nearly as
may be, according to the chronological order of the
writing. This is done merely because such appears to be
the most natural and fitting principle of arrangement,
and not that the Poet may be read or studied "
historically " ; a matter which is made a good deal of
by some, but which, as it seems to me, is really of no
practical consequence whatever. Nor is it claimed that
the actual order of the writing is precisely followed in
every particular : in fact, this order has not yet been
fully settled, and probably never will be ; though, to
be sure, something considerable has been done towards
such settlement within the last few years.
I
must not let this Preface go without expressing a very
deep and lively sense of my obligations to Mr. JOSEPH
CROSBY. The work of preparing this edition was set about
in good earnest on the 23d of April, 1873, and has been
the main burden of my thought and care ever since. From
that time to the present, a frequent and steady
correspondence, of the greatest use and interest to me,
has been passing between Mr. Crosby and myself. The
results thereof are in some measure made apparent in my
Critical Notes, and still more in the foot-notes ; but,
after all, a very large, if not the larger, portion of
the benefit I have received is not capable of being put
in definite form, and having credit given for it in
detail. Indeed, I owe him much,—much in the shape of
distinctly-usable matter, but more in the way of
judicious counsel, kindly encouragement, and friendship
steadfast and true. CAMBRIDGE, August 2, 1880.
