A Life of William Shakespeare Part 23

Edmund Malone, 1741-1812.

Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit and incisive style, was a laborious and amiable archaeologist, without much ear for poetry or delicate literary taste. He threw abundance of new light on Shakespeare's biography, and on the chronology and sources of his works, while his researches into the beginnings of the English stage added a new chapter of first-rate importance to English literary history. To Malone is due the first rational 'attempt to ascertain the order in which the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written.' His earliest results on the topic were contributed to Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years later he published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two volumes containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, with reprints of Arthur Brooke's 'Romeus and Juliet,' Shakespeare's Poems, and the plays falsely ascribed to him in the Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel with Steevens followed, and was never closed. In 1787 Malone issued 'A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to show that those plays were not originally written by Shakespeare. In 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare in ten volumes, the first in two parts.

Variorum editions.

What is known among booksellers as the 'First Variorum' edition of Shakespeare was prepared by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed, after Steevens's death. It was based on a copy of Steevens's work of 1793, which had been enriched with numerous ma.n.u.script additions, and it embodied the published notes and prefaces of preceding editors. It was published in twenty-one volumes in 1803. The 'Second Variorum' edition, which was mainly a reprint of the first, was published in twenty-one volumes in 1813. The 'Third Variorum' was prepared for the press by James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's biographer. It was based on Malone's edition of 1790, but included ma.s.sive acc.u.mulations of notes left in ma.n.u.script by Malone at his death. Malone had been long engaged on a revision of his edition, but died in 1812, before it was completed. Boswell's 'Malone,' as the new work is often called, appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1821. It is the most valuable of all collective editions of Shakespeare's works, but the three volumes of preliminary essays on Shakespeare's biography and writings, and the ill.u.s.trative notes brought together in the final volume, are confusedly arranged and are unindexed; many of the essays and notes break off abruptly at the point at which they were left at Malone's death. A new 'Variorum'

edition, on an exhaustive scale, was undertaken by Mr. H. Howard Furness of Philadelphia, and eleven volumes have appeared since 1871 ('Romeo and Juliet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 2 vols., 'King Lear,' 'Oth.e.l.lo,' 'Merchant of Venice,' 'As You Like It,' 'Tempest,' 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and 'Winter's Tale').

Nineteenth-century editors.

Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared collective editions of Shakespeare's work with original annotations those who have most successfully pursued the great traditions of the eighteenth century are Alexander Dyce, Howard Staunton, Nikolaus Delius, and the Cambridge editors William George Clark (1821-1878) and Dr. Aldis Wright.

Alexander Dyce, 1798-1869. Howard Staunton, 1810-1874. The Cambridge edition, 1863-6.

Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as Steevens in Elizabethan literature, and especially in the drama of the period, and his edition of Shakespeare in nine volumes, which was first published in 1857, has many new and valuable ill.u.s.trative notes and a few good textual emendations, as well as a useful glossary; but Dyce's annotations are not always adequate, and often tantalise the reader by their brevity. Howard Staunton's edition first appeared in three volumes between 1868 and 1870.

He also was well read in contemporary literature and was an acute textual critic. His introductions bring together much interesting stage history.

Nikolaus Delius's edition was issued at Elberfeld in seven volumes between 1854 and 1861. Delius's text is formed on sound critical principles and is to be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two volumes appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which first appeared in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866, exhaustively notes the textual variations of all preceding editions, and supplies the best and fullest _apparatus criticus_. (Of new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine volumes, and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.)

Other nineteenth-century editions.

Other editors of the complete works of Shakespeare of the nineteenth century whose labours, although of some value, present fewer distinctive characteristics are:--William Harness (1825, 8 vols.); Samuel Weller Singer (1826, 10 vols., printed at the Chiswick Press for William Pickering, ill.u.s.trated by Stothard and others; reissued in 1856 with essays by William Watkiss Lloyd); Charles Knight, with discursive notes and pictorial ill.u.s.trations by F. W. Fairholt and others ('Pictorial edition,' 8 vols., including biography and the doubtful plays, 1838-43, often reissued under different designations); Bryan Waller Procter, _i.e._ Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.); John Payne Collier (1841-4, 8 vols.; another edition, 8 vols., privately printed, 1878, 4to); Samuel Phelps, the actor (1852-4, 2 vols.; another edition, 1882-4); J. O.

Halliwell (1853-61, 15 vols. folio, with an encyclopaedic collection of annotations of earlier editors and pictorial ill.u.s.trations); Richard Grant White (Boston, U.S.A., 1857-65, 12 vols.); W. J. Rolfe (New York, 1871-96, 40 vols.); the Rev. H. N. Hudson (the Harvard edition, Boston, 1881, 20 vols.) The latest complete annotated editions published in this country are 'The Henry Irving Shakespeare,' edited by F. A. Marshall and others--especially useful for notes on stage history (8 vols.

1888-90)--and 'The Temple Shakespeare,' concisely edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz (38 vols. 12mo, 1894-6).

Of one-volume editions of the unannotated text, the best are the Globe, edited by W. G. Clark and Dr. Aldis Wright (1864, and constantly reprinted--since 1891 with a new and useful glossary); the Leopold (1876, from the text of Delius, with preface by Dr. Furnivall); and the Oxford, edited by Mr. W. J. Craig (1894).

XX--POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION

Shakespeare defied at every stage in his career the laws of the cla.s.sical drama. He rode roughshod over the unities of time, place, and action.

There were critics in his day who zealously championed the ancient rules, and viewed with distrust any infringement of them. But the force of Shakespeare's genius--its revelation of new methods of dramatic art--was not lost on the lovers of the ancient ways; and even those who, to a.s.suage their consciences, entered a formal protest against his innovations, soon swelled the chorus of praise with which his work was welcomed by contemporary playgoers, cultured and uncultured alike. The unauthorised publishers of 'Troilus and Cressida' in 1608 faithfully echoed public opinion when they prefaced the work with the note: 'This author's comedies are so framed to the life that they serve for the most common commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies. . . . So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies that they seem for their height of pleasure to be born in the sea that brought forth Venus.'

Ben Jonson's tribute.

Antic.i.p.ating the final verdict, the editors of the First Folio wrote, seven years after Shakespeare's death: 'These plays have had their trial already and stood out all appeals.' {327a} Ben Jonson, the staunchest champion of cla.s.sical canons, noted that Shakespeare 'wanted art,' but he allowed him, in verses prefixed to the First Folio, the first place among all dramatists, including those of Greece and Rome, and claimed that all Europe owed him homage:

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, To whom all scenes [_i.e._ stages] of Europe homage owe.

He was not of an age, but for all time.

In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 'the great heir of fame:'

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a lifelong monument.

A writer of fine insight who veiled himself under the initials I. M. S.

{327b} contributed to the Second Folio of 1632 a splendid eulogy. The opening lines declare 'Shakespeare's freehold' to have been

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear And equal surface can make things appear Distant a thousand years, and represent Them in their lively colours' just extent.

It was his faculty

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie Great heaps of ruinous mortality.

Milton and I. M. S. were followed within ten years by critics of tastes so varied as the dramatist of domesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philosophic and 'ever-memorable' John Hales of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant. Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms at Eton, the proposition that 'there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it much better done in Shakespeare.' {328} Leonard Digges (in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') a.s.serted that every revival of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, Shakespeare's plays were the 'closet companions' of Charles I's 'solitudes.' {329a}

1660-1702. Dryden's view.

After the Restoration public taste in England veered towards the French and cla.s.sical dramatic models. {329b} Shakespeare's work was subjected to some unfavourable criticism as the product of nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is commonly admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the cla.s.sical canons attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy'

(1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on 'Oth.e.l.lo,' and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was 'a b.l.o.o.d.y farce without salt or savour.' In Pepys's eyes 'The Tempest' had 'no great wit,' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream' was 'the most insipid and ridiculous play;' yet this exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing 'Hamlet' four times, and 'Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 'a most excellent play for variety,' nine times. Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly complained of Shakespeare's inequalities--'he is the very Ja.n.u.s of poets.' {330a} But in almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was held in as much veneration among Englishmen as AEschylus among the Athenians, and that 'he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . When he describes anything, you more than see it--you feel it too.' {330b} In 1693, when Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus:

TO SIR G.o.dFREY KNELLER.

_Shakespear_, thy Gift, I place before my sight; With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write; With Reverence look on his Majestick Face; Proud to be less, but of his G.o.dlike Race.

His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write, And I, like _Teucer_, under _Ajax_ fight.

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite temperaments as Margaret Cavendish, d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare's supremacy. As a girl the sober d.u.c.h.ess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare. In her 'Sociable Letters,' which were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been 'transformed into every one of those persons he hath described,' and suffered all their emotions.

When she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that she was witnessing an episode in real life. 'Indeed,' she concludes, 'Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution.' The profligate Sedley, in a prologue to the 'Wary Widdow,' a comedy by one Higden, produced in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus:

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools, Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules.

Restoration adaptations.