The Facts About Shakespeare Part 6

The scene is in the street, _i.e._, on the front stage; the person knocks at one of the doors and is admitted to a house; when he reappears, it is through the inner stage, the curtains of which have been drawn, disclosing the setting of a room. Or this process is reversed. In _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedy_, there is an interesting case of such an alternation from indoors to outdoors, with one character remaining on the stage all of the time. A more extensive use of this "alternation"

could be employed to indicate marked changes of place. As long as the action remains in Venice, the bare front stage will do, but a transfer to Portia's house at Belmont can be made by means of the curtains and the inner stage. In the later plays at the private theaters this use of the inner stage, then better lighted, seems to have increased, especially in the change from a street or general hall to special apartments.

[Page Heading: Evolution of the Theater]

These uses of the inner stage, together with that of the upper stage or gallery, gave a chance for considerable variety in the action, and rendered the rapid succession of scenes less bewildering than one would at first suppose. Shakespeare's stage was the outcome of the peculiar conditions of acting by professionals in the sixteenth century, but it was also a natural step in the evolution from the medieval to the modern stage. On the medieval stage there was a neutral place or _platea_ and special localized and propertied places called _sedes_, _domus_, _loca_.

On the Elizabethan stage the front stage is the _platea_, the inner and upper stages the _domus_ or _loca_. In the Restoration theater the scenery was placed on the inner stage and shut off from the outer stage by a curtain. With the use of scenery, the inner stage became more important, and the projecting ap.r.o.n of the front stage was gradually cut down. The proscenium doors in front of the curtain long survived their original use as entrances, but, as a rule, they have now finally disappeared with the front stage. The modern picture-frame stage of to-day is the evolution of the inner stage of the Elizabethans.

Similarly the method of stage presentation has changed only gradually from Shakespeare's day to ours. The alternation from outer to inner stage was very common in the Restoration theaters, where flat scenes were used instead of a curtain, and it may still be seen in the production of melodrama or of Shakespeare's plays. A painted drop shuts off a few feet of the stage, which becomes a street or a hall, while properties and scenery are being arranged in the rear. When the drop goes up, we pa.s.s from the street or the court of the wicked Duke to the Forest of Arden, just as the Elizabethans did.

The Elizabethan stage affected Shakespeare's dramatic art in many ways.

The absence of scenery, of women actors, and of a front curtain, the use of a bare stage that served for neutral or unspecified localities, naturally influenced the composition of every play. But the theatrical presentation was by no means as crude or as medieval as these differences from modern practice seem to indicate. The intimacy established between actors and audience by the projecting stage, the rapidity of action hastened by the lack of scenery or furniture, the possibilities of rapid changes of scene rendered intelligible by the use of the inner stage, were all manifest advantages in encouraging dramatic invention. The traditions formed in this theater for the presentation of _Hamlet_, _Romeo and Juliet_, and the other plays, were handed on from Shakespeare and Burbage to Lowin and Taylor, to Betterton, Cibber, and Garrick, down to the present day; and have perhaps been less revolutionized by scenery and electric lights than we might imagine.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE

The main difficulties that stand in the way of determining the actual form in which Shakespeare left his plays are due, first, to the total absence of ma.n.u.scripts, and, secondly, to the fact that he, like his contemporaries, regarded dramatic literature as material for performance on the stage, not as something to be read in the library. The most obvious evidence of this lies in his having himself issued with every appearance of personal attention his poems of _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, while he permitted his plays to find their way into print without any trace of supervision and, in some cases, apparently without his consent. When the author sold a play to the theatrical company which was to perform it, he appears to have regarded himself as having no longer any rights in it; and when a play was published, we are in general justified in supposing either that it had been obtained surrept.i.tiously, or that it had been disposed of by the company.

Exceptions to this begin to appear in the first half of the seventeenth century, notably in the case of Heywood, who defended his action on the plea of protecting the text from mutilation, and in that of Ben Jonson, who issued in 1616, in the face of ridicule for his presumption, a folio volume of his "Works." But, though Shakespeare is reported to have felt annoyance at the pirating of his productions, there is no evidence of his having been led to protect himself or the integrity of his writings by departing from the usual practice in his profession.

Among the various doc.u.ments which make us aware of this situation, so general then, but so strongly in contrast with modern methods, three explicit statements by Heywood are so illuminating that they deserve quotation. One occurs in the preface to his _Rape of Lucrece_, 1630:

To the Reader.--It hath beene no custome in mee of all other men (courteous Reader) to commit my plaies to the presse: the reason though some may attribute to my owne insufficiencie, I had rather subscribe in that to their seuare censure then by seeking to auoide the imputation of weaknes to incurre greater suspition of honestie: for though some haue vsed a double sale of their labours, first to the Stage, and after to the presse, For my owne part I heere proclaime my selfe euer faithfull in the first, and neuer guiltie of the last: yet since some of my plaies haue (vnknowne to me, and without any of my direction) accidentally come into the Printers hands, and therefore so corrupt and mangled, (coppied only by the eare) that I have bin as vnable to know them, as ashamed to chalenge them, This therefore, I was the willinger to furnish out in his natiue habit: first being by consent, next because the rest haue beene so wronged in being publisht in such sauadge and ragged ornaments: accept it courteous Gentlemen, and prooue as fauorable Readers as we haue found you gratious Auditors. Yours T. H.

[Page Heading: The Right to Print]

The second is in Heywood's _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_, 1637, the prologue to _If you know not me, you know no bodie; Or, The troubles of Queen Elizabeth_. It is as follows:

A Prologve to the Play of Queene Elizabeth as it was last revived at the c.o.c.k-pit, in which the Author taxeth the most corrupted copy now imprinted, which was published without his consent.

PROLOGUE

Playes have a fate in their conception lent, Some so short liv'd, no sooner shew'd than spent; But borne to-day, to morrow buried, and Though taught to speake, neither to goe nor stand.

This: (by what fate I know not) sure no merit, That it disclaimes, may for the age inherit.

Writing 'bove one and twenty: but ill nurst, And yet receiv'd as well performed at first, Grac't and frequented, for the cradle age, Did throng the Seates, the Boxes, and the Stage So much: that some by Stenography drew The plot: put it in print: (scarce one word trew:) And in that lamenesse it hath limp't so long, The Author now to vindicate that wrong Hath tooke the paines, upright upon its feete To teache it walke, so please you sit, and see't.

The third pa.s.sage occurs in the address to the reader prefixed to _The English Traveller_, 1633:

True it is that my plays are not exposed to the world in volumes, to bear the t.i.tles of Works (as others). One reason is that many of them by s.h.i.+fting and changing of companies have been negligently lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third that it was never any great ambition in me in this kind to be voluminously read.

From these pa.s.sages we gather that Heywood considered it dishonest to sell the same play to the stage and to the press; that some of his plays were stolen through stenographic reports taken in the theater and were printed in corrupt forms; that, in order to counteract this, he obtained the consent of the theatrical owners to his publication of a correct edition; that some actors considered the printing of plays against their interest (presumably because they thought that if a man could read a play, he would not care to see it acted); and that many plays were lost through negligence and the changes in the theatrical companies. That we are here dealing with the conditions of Shakespeare's time is clear enough, since the edition of _If you know not me_ on which Heywood casts reflections was published in 1605, and in 1604 Marston supplies corroboration in the preface to his _Malcontent_:

I would fain leave the paper; only one thing afflicts me, to think that scenes, invented merely to be spoken, should be enforcively published to be read, and that the least hurt I can receive is to do myself the wrong. But since others otherwise would do me more, the least inconvenience is to be accepted. I have myself, therefore, set forth this comedy; but so, that my enforced absence must much rely upon the printer's discretion: but I shall entreat slight errors in orthography may be as slightly overpa.s.sed, and that the unhandsome shape which this trifle in reading presents, may be pardoned for the pleasure it once afforded you when it was presented with the soul of lively action.

[Page Heading: Pirated Editions]

The only form in which any of Shakespeare's plays found their way into print during his lifetime was that of small pamphlets, called Quartos, which were sold at sixpence each.[7] In the case of five of these there is general agreement that they came to the press by the surrept.i.tious method of reporting described by Heywood: the first Quarto versions of _Romeo and Juliet_, _Henry V_, _The Merry Wives_, _Hamlet_, and _Pericles_. All of these bear clear traces of the effects of such mutilation as would naturally result from the attempt to write down the dialogue during the performance, and patch up the gaps later. The first Quartos of _Richard III_ and _King Lear_, though much superior to the five mentioned, yet contain so many variants from the text of the Folio which seem to be due to mistakes of the ear and to slips of memory on the part of the actors, that probably they should also be included in the list of those surrept.i.tiously obtained.

[7] For facsimile reproductions see Bibliography, Appendix D.

Redress for such pirating as is implied in these publications was difficult on account of the absence of a law of copyright. The chief pieces of legislation affecting the book trade were the law of licensing and the charter of the Stationers' Company. According to the first, all books, with a few exceptions, such as academic publications, had to be licensed before publication by the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury. This was an unworkable provision, and in fact the responsibility for all books not likely to raise political or theological controversy was left to the Stationers' Company. This close corporation of printers and publishers exercised its powers for the protection of its members rather than of authors. A publisher wis.h.i.+ng to establish a monopoly in a book he had acquired entered it on the Stationers' Register, paying a fee of sixpence, and was thereby protected against piracy. When the copy so registered was improperly acquired, the state of the case is not so clear. At times the officials showed hesitation about registering a book until the applicant "hath gotten sufficient authoritye for yt," and _As You Like It_, for example, appears in the Register only "to be staied," which it was until the publication of the first Folio. Further, the pirated _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Henry V_ were never entered at all; the pirated _Hamlet_ and _Pericles_ were entered, but to other publishers, who in the case of _Hamlet_ brought out a more correct text in the following year; the pirated _Merry Wives_ was transferred from one publisher to another on the day of entry, and actually issued by the second. Thus this group of plays does not support the view that the Stationers' Company stood ready to give perpetual copyright to their members even for obviously stolen goods. It is to be noted, too, that the previous publication of these surrept.i.tious copies formed no hindrance to the later issue of an authentic copy. The second Quarto of _Hamlet_, printed from a complete ma.n.u.script, followed, as has been said, the first the next year, and the same thing happened in the case of _Romeo and Juliet_.

[Page Heading: Publisher's Copyright]

On the other hand, the great majority of the Quartos printed from playhouse copies of the plays were regularly entered, and the rights of the original publisher preserved to him. The appearance of groups of plays in the market following interference with theatrical activity such as came from the plague in 1594, from the breaking up of companies, or from Puritan attempts at restriction, confirm the belief that these better Quartos were honorably acquired by the publishers from the companies owning them, when the actors thought that there was more to gain than to lose by giving them to the press.

[Page Heading: Table of Quarto Editions]

The accompanying "Table of Quarto Editions" gives the names of all the Shakespearean plays issued in this form before the publication of the collected edition in 1623, known as the First Folio. In the cases of _Romeo and Juliet_, _1 Henry IV_, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Much Ado_, _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, and _Richard II_, a Quarto, usually the most recent, provided the text from which the version in the Folio was printed. Hence, though in several cases the copy of the Quarto thus employed seems to have been one used by the actors and containing corrections of some value, the extant Quarto rather than the Folio is the prime authority for the text to-day. The same is true of _t.i.tus Andronicus_, except that in this case the Folio restores from some ma.n.u.script source a scene which had been dropped from the Quarto. If, as some hold, the Folio texts of _Richard III_ and _King Lear_ were printed from Quartos, there must have been available also a ma.n.u.script version, which is so heavily drawn upon that the Folio text virtually represents an independent source, as it does in the case of four of the five plays acknowledged to be due to surrept.i.tious reporting. _Pericles_, the fifth of these, was first admitted to the collected works in the third Folio, and is the only "reported" text forming our sole authority.[8]

TABLE OF QUARTO EDITIONS BEFORE 1623

Transcriber's Note: The following abbreviations are used in the "SOURCE OF Q TEXT" column: D--Disputed; P--Playhouse; R--Reported.

========================================================================== | | DATES OF | | | ENTRIES IN |--------------------------------|SOURCE| | STATIONERS' | | | | | | | OF Q | SOURCE OF | REGISTER |Q1 | Q2 |Q3 |Q4 |Q5 |Q6 | TEXT | F1 TEXT | | | | | | | | | ------+--------------+----+------+-----+----+----+----+------+------------ T.A. |Feb. 6, 1594 |1594| 1600| 1611| | | |P |Q3 completed | | | | | | | | | & corrected | | | | | | | | | R. II |Aug. 29, 1597 |1597| 1598| 1608|1615| | |P |Q4 corrected | | | | | | | | | R. III|Oct. 19, 1597 |1597| 1598| 1602|1605|1612|1622|D |Disputed | | | | | | | | | R.J. |No entry |1597| 1599| 1609|n.d.| | |{Q1 R |Q3 from Q2 | | | | | | | |{Q2 P | | | | | | | | | | 1 H.IV|Feb. 25, 1598 |1598| 1599| 1604|1608|1613|1622|P |Q5 corrected | | | | | | | | | L.L.L.|No entry |1598| | | | | |P |Q1 | | | | | | | | | Merch.|July 22, 1598 | | | | | | | | |(conditional) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | {1600| | | | | | |Oct. 28, 1600 |1600| { or | | | | |P |Q1 (Heyes) | | | {1619| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |{1608| | | | | H.V. |[Aug. 4, 1600]|1600| 1602|{ or | | | |R |Independent |"to be stayed"| | |{1619| | | | | | | | | | | | | | M.Ado |[Aug. 4, 1600]| | | | | | | | |"to be stayed"| | | | | | | | |Aug. 23, 1600 |1600| | | | | |P |Q1 corrected | | | | | | | | | 2 H.IV|Aug. 23, 1600 |1600| | | | | |P |Independent | | | | | | | | | | | | {1600| | | | | | M.N.D.|Oct. 8, 1600 |1600| {or | | | | |P |Q2 corrected | | | {1619| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | M.W. |Jan. 18, 1602 |1602| 1619| | | | |R |Independent | | | | | | | | | Hml. |July 26, 1602 |1603|1604,5| 1611| | | |{Q1 R |Independent | | | | | | | |{Q2 P | | | | | | | | | | | | | {1608| | | | | |Disputed (Q1 Lear |Nov. 26, 1607 |1608| { or | | | | |D | in several | | | {1619| | | | | | states) | | | | | | | | | T.C. |Feb. 7, 1603 }| | | | | | | |Independent |(conditional)}|1609| | | | | |P | (Q1 in two |Jan. 28, 1609}| | | | | | | | issues) | | | | | | | | | Per. |May 20, 1608 |1609| 1609| 1611|1619| | |R |Not in F1 | | | | | | | | |F3 from Q4 | | | | | | | | | Oth. |Oct. 6, 1621 |1622| | | | | |P |Independent ==========================================================================

[8] In the table of Quarto editions may be noted four entries with the words "or 1619" added to the date which appears on the t.i.tle-page. These four plays, the Roberts Quartos of _The Merchant of Venice_ and _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ of 1600, the third Quarto of _Henry V_, 1608, the second Quarto of _King Lear_, 1608, along with the 1619 Quartos of _The Merry Wives_ and _Pericles_, an undated Quarto of _The Whole Contention_ (the earlier form of _2_ and _3 Henry VI_), the Quarto of _Sir John Oldcastle_, dated 1600, and the Quarto of _A Yorks.h.i.+re Tragedie_, dated 1619, have been shown by Mr. A. W. Pollard, with the cooperation of Mr. W. W. Greg, to have been put on the market at the same time, and Mr. W. J. Neidig has proved from typographical evidence that the t.i.tle-pages of all nine were set up in succession in 1619. A very curious problem is thus presented, and the motives for the deception practised, apparently by the printers Pavier and Jaggard, have not been satisfactorily cleared up; but at present it appears likely that in the case of these nine Quartos the correct date of publication should be 1619, and that, in the case of the first two mentioned, the question of the comparative authority of the Heyes and Fisher Quartos respectively as against that of the Roberts Quartos should be settled against the latter. This last point is the only part of this remarkable discovery which is of importance in determining the text, as the Quartos dated 1608 and 1619 were already known to be mere reprints of earlier ones.

[Page Heading: The First Folio]

We come now to the publication of the First Folio, the most important single volume in the history of the text of Shakespeare. On November 8, 1623, the following entry occurs in the Stationers' Register:

Mr. Blount: Isaak Jaggard. Entred for their copie under the hands of M^r Doctor Worrall and M^r Cole, Warden, M^r William Shakspeers Comedyes, Histories and Tragedyes, soe manie of the said copyes as are not formerly entred to other men viz^t, Comedyes. The Tempest.

The two gentlemen of Verona. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errors. As you like it. All's well that ends well. Twelft Night. The winters tale. Histories. The thirde part of Henry the sixt. Henry the eight. Tragedies. Coriola.n.u.s. Timon of Athens. Julius Caesar.

Mackbeth. Anthonie and Cleopatra. Cymbeline.

One notes here the omission of _1_ and _2 Henry VI_, _King John_, and _The Taming of the Shrew_, which had neither been previously entered nor issued in Quarto. This is probably due to the fact that three of these are based on older plays of which Quartos exist, which may have seemed to the publishers reason enough to save their sixpences. If we a.s.sume that "The thirde part of Henry the sixt" is a misprint for "The first part," the explanation covers the whole case. The registration of _Antony and Cleopatra_ was superfluous, as it had been entered, though not printed, so far as we know, on May 20, 1608.

There are thus in the First Folio, the publication of which immediately followed this entry in 1623, twenty plays not before issued, for which the text of this volume is our sole authority. The emphasis so commonly placed on the supreme value of the text of the First Folio is justified with regard to these twenty plays; as for the remaining seventeen, its importance is shared, in proportions varying from play to play, with the texts of the Quartos. The sources from which the compilers of the Folio obtained their new material were in all probability playhouse copies, as in the case of the better Quartos. Heminge and Condell, Shakespeare's actor colleagues and friends, who sign the Address to the Readers,[9]

would obviously be the instruments for obtaining such copies. As for the so-called "private transcripts" which some have postulated as a source of material, there is no evidence that at this date any such existed.

Whether any of the playhouse ma.n.u.scripts provided by Heminge and Condell were in Shakespeare's autograph we can neither affirm nor deny, but it is well to be cautious in accepting at its face value the implication contained in their words that they had "scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

[9] For this and other prefatory matter from the First Folio, see Appendix A.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE t.i.tLE PAGE OF THE FIRST FOLIO

(_From the copy in the New York Public Library._)]

[Page Heading: The First Folio]

The First Folio is a large volume of 908 pages, measuring in the tallest extant copy 13-3/8 x 8-1/2 inches. A reduced facsimile of the t.i.tle page with the familiar wood-cut portrait appears on the opposite page. The text is printed in two columns with sixty-six lines to a column. The typography is only fairly good, and many mistakes occur in the pagination. Extant copies, of which there are at least 156, vary in some respects, on account of the practice of making corrections while the sheets were being printed. The printer was William Jaggard, and his a.s.sociates in the publis.h.i.+ng enterprise were his son Isaac and the booksellers, William Aspley, John Smethwick, and Edward Blount.

Estimates of the size of the edition vary from five to six hundred.

Many of the causes which made the text of these early editions inaccurate are common to all the plays, while some are peculiar to those obtained by reporters in the theater. Of the first, the most fundamental is, of course, the illegibility or ambiguity of the author's original ma.n.u.script. Such flaws were perpetuated and multiplied with each successive transcript, and when the ma.n.u.script copy came into the printer's hands, the errors of the compositor--confusion of words sounding alike, of words looking alike, unconscious subst.i.tution of synonyms, mere manual slips, and the like--were added to those already existing. The absence of any uniform spelling, and carelessness in punctuation, which led to these being freely modified by the printer, increased the risk of corruption. The punctuation of both Quartos and Folio, though by no means without weight, cannot be regarded as having the author's sanction, and all modernized editions re-punctuate with greater or less freedom. Most nineteenth-century editors carry on with minor modifications the punctuation of Pope, so that their texts show a composite of sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century methods; the text used in the Tudor edition is frankly punctuated, as far as the syntax permits, according to modern methods, with, it is believed, no loss in authority. There is no clear evidence that, in such productions as plays, proof was read outside of the printing-office. The theory, insisted on by Dr. Furness in successive volumes of the _New Variorum Shakespeare_, that the Elizabethan compositor set type to dictation is without foundation, the phenomena which he seeks to explain by it occurring commonly to-day when there is no question of such a practice.

Another cla.s.s of variation in text arose from the treatment of the ma.n.u.script in the playhouse. Cuts, additions, and alterations were made for acting purposes, stage directions were added with or without the a.s.sistance of the author, revivals of the play called for revision by the original writer or another. The majority of stage directions in modern editions, except exits and entrances, are due to editors from Rowe onwards, and these unauthorized additions are distinguished in the Tudor edition by brackets. Almost all notes of place at the beginnings of scenes belong to this cla.s.s.