In preparing the following sheets it has been a main object with me to give an impartial notion of the singular and interesting volume from which the materials have been derived. It is a copy of the folio of “Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,” which was published in 1632: we need hardly say, that that edition was a reprint of a previous impression in the same form in 1623; and that it was again reprinted (with additional plays) in 1664, and for the fourth time in 1685. The reprint of 1632 has, therefore, been usually known as the second folio of the collected plays of Shakespeare.

The singularity and interest of the volume arise out of the fact, that, from the first page to the last, it contains notes and emendations in a hand-writing not much later than the time when it came from the press. Unfortunately it is not perfect: it begins, indeed, with “The Tempest,” the earliest drama, but it wants four leaves at the end of “Cymbeline,” the latest drama, and there are several deficiencies in the body of the book^{1 note}, while all the preliminary matter, consisting of dedication, address, commendatory verses, &c., may be said to be wanting, in as much as it has been

supplied by a comparatively recent possessor, from another copy of the second folio, and loosely fastened within the cover.

Without adverting to sundry known mistakes of pagination, it may be stated that the entire volume consists of nearly 900 pages, divided between thirty-six plays; and, besides the correction of literal and verbal errors, as well as lapses of a graver and more extensive kind, the punctuation has been carefully set right throughout. As there is no page without from ten to thirty of these minor emendations, they do not, in the whole, fall short of 20,000: most of them have, of course, been introduced in modern editions, since the plain meaning of a passage often contradicts the old careless and absurd pointing; but it will be seen hereafter, that in not a few instances the sense of the poet has thus been elucidated in a way that has not been anticipated^{2 note}. With regard to changes of a different and more important character, where letters are added or expunged, where words are supplied or struck out, or where lines and sentences, omitted by the early printer, have been inserted, together with all other emendations of a similar kind, it is difficult to form any correct estimate of their number. The volume in the hands of the reader includes considerably more than a thousand of such alterations; but to have inserted all would have swelled its bulk to unreasonable dimensions, and would have wearied the patience of most persons, not merely by the sameness of the information, but by the monotony of the language in which it was necessarily conveyed.

Nothing that was deemed essential has been left out: no striking or valuable emendation has been passed over, and many changes have been mentioned, upon which the writer of the notes seems to have insisted, but in which, in

some cases, concurrence must either be withheld, or doubt expressed. Whenever I have seen ground for dissenting from a proposed amendment, or for giving it only a qualified approbation, I have plainly stated my reasons, more particularly in the later portion of the work: I pursued, indeed, the same method, to a certain extent, in the earlier portion; but while I have there, perhaps, more sparingly questioned the fitness of adopting some changes, I have also noticed others, which, as I proceeded, and as the matter accumulated, might possibly have been omitted^{3 note}. If subsequent reflection or information appeared to warrant a modification of opinion, such modification will be found in the notes appended to the volume. I can only expect that each suggested alteration should be judged upon its own merits; and though I can, in no respect, be answerable for more than submitting them to critical decision, I have thought myself called upon, where they appeared to deserve support or elucidation, to offer the facts, arguments, or observations that occured to me in their favour.

In the history of the volume to which I have been thus indebted, I can offer little that may serve to give it authenticity^{4 note}. It is very certain that the manuscript notes in

its margins were made before it was subjected to all the ill-usage it experienced. When it first came into my hands, and indeed for some time afterwards, I imagined that the binding was the original rough calf in which many books of about the same date were clothed; but more recent examination has convinced me, that this was at least the second coat it had worn. It is, nevertheless, in a very shabby condition, quite consistent with the state of the interior, where, besides the loss of some leaves, as already mentioned, and the loosening of others, many stains of wine, beer, and other liquids are observable: here and there, holes have been burned in the paper, either by the falling of the lighted snuff of a candle, or by the ashes of tobacco. In several places it is torn and disfigured by blots and dirt, and every margin bears evidence to frequent and careless perusal. In short, to a choice collector, no book could well present a more forbidding appearance.

I was tempted only by its cheapness to buy it, under the following circumstances:—In the spring of 1849 I happened to be in the shop of the late Mr. Rodd, of Great Newport-street, at the time when a package of books arrived from the country: my impression is that it came from Bedfordshire, but I am not at all certain upon a point which I looked upon as a matter of no importance. He opened the parcel in my presence, as he had often done before in the course of my thirty or forty years' acquaintance with him, and looking at the backs and title-pages of several volumes, I saw that they were chiefly works of little interest to me. Two folios, however, attracted my attention, one of them gilt on the sides, and the other in rough calf: the first was an excellent copy of Florio's “New World of Words,” 1611, with the name of Henry Osborn (whom I mistook at the moment

for his celebrated namesake, Francis) upon the first leaf; and the other a copy of the second folio of Shakespeare's Plays, much cropped, the covers old and greasy, and, as I saw at a glance on opening them, imperfect at the beginning and end. Concluding hastily that the latter would complete another poor copy of the second folio, which I had bought of the same bookseller, and which I had had for some years in my possession, and wanting the former for my use, I bought them both, the Florio for twelve, and the Shakespeare for thirty shillings^{5 note}.

As it turned out, I at first repented my bargain as regarded the Shakespeare, because, when I took it home, it appeared that two leaves which I wanted were unfit for my purpose, not merely by being too short, but damaged and defaced: thus disappointed, I threw it by, and did not see it again, until I made a selection of books I would take with me on quitting London. In the mean time, finding that I could not readily remedy the deficiencies in my other copy of the folio, 1632, I had parted with it; and when I removed into the country, with my family, in the spring of 1850, in order that I might not be without some copy of the second folio for the purpose of reference, I took with me that which is the foundation of the present work.

It was while putting my books together for removal, that I first observed some marks in the margin of this folio; but it was subsequently placed upon an upper shelf, and I did

not take it down until I had occasion to consult it. It then struck me that Thomas Perkins, whose name, with the addition of “his Booke,” was upon the cover, might be the old actor who had performed in Marlowe's “Jew of Malta,” on its revival shortly before 1633. At this time I fancied that the binding was of about that date, and that the volume might have been his; but in the first place, I found that his name was Richard Perkins, and in the next I became satisfied that the rough calf was not the original binding. Still, Thomas Perkins might have been a descendant of Richard; and this circumstance and others induced me to examine the volume more particularly: I then discovered, to my surprise, that there was hardly a page which did not present, in a hand-writing of the time, some emendations in the pointing or in the text, while on most of them they were frequent, and on many numerous.

Of course I now submitted the folio to a most careful scrutiny; and as it occupied a considerable time to complete the inspection, how much more must it have consumed to make the alterations? The ink was of various shades, differing sometimes on the same page, and I was once disposed to think that two distinct hands had been employed upon them: this notion I have since abandoned; and I am now decidedly of opinion that the same writing prevails from beginning to end, but that the amendments must have been introduced from time to time, during, perhaps, the course of several years. The changes in punctuation alone, always made with nicety and patience, must have required a long period, considering their number; the other alterations, sometimes most minute, extending even to turned letters and typographical trifles of that kind, from their very nature could not have been introduced with rapidity, while many of the errata must have severely tasked the industry of the old corrector^{6 note}.

Then comes the question, why any of them were made, and why such extraordinary pains were bestowed on this particular copy of the folio, 1632? To this inquiry no complete reply, that I am aware of, can be given; but some circumstances can be stated, which may tend to a partial solution of the difficulty.

Corrections only have been hitherto spoken of; but there are at least two other very peculiar features in the volume. Many passages, in nearly all the plays, are struck out with a pen, as if for the purpose of shortening the performance^{7 note}; and we need not feel much hesitation in coming to the conclusion, that these omissions had reference to the representation of the plays by some company about the date of the folio, 1632. To this fact we may add, that hundreds of stage-directions have been inserted in manuscript, as if for the guidance and instruction of actors, in order that no mistake might be made in what is usually denominated stage-business^{8 note}. It is known that in this respect the old printed copies are very deficient^{9 note}; and sometimes the written additions of this kind seem even more frequent, and more

explicit, than might be thought necessary. The erasures of passages and scenes are quite inconsistent with the notion that a new edition of the folio, 1632, was contemplated; and how are they, and the new stage-directions, and “asides,” to be accounted for, excepting on the supposition that the volume once belonged to a person interested in, or connected with, one of our early theatres? The continuation of the corrections and emendations, in spite of, and through the erasures, may show that they were done at a different time, and by a different person; but who shall say which was done first, or whether both were not, in fact, the work of the same hand^{1 note}?

Passing by these matters, upon which we can arrive at no certain result, we must briefly advert to another point upon which, however, we are quite as much in the dark:—we mean the authority upon which these changes, of greater or of less importance, were introduced. How are we warranted in giving credit to any of them?

The first and best answer seems to be that which one of the most acute of the commentators applied to an avowedly conjectural emendation—that it required no authority—that it carried conviction on the very face of it^{2 note}. Many of the most valuable corrections of Shakespeare's text are, in truth, self-evident; and so apparent, when once suggested, that it seems wonderful how the plays could have passed through the hands of men of such learning and critical acumen, during the last century and a half (to say nothing of the period occupied by the publication of the four folios), without the detection of such indisputable blunders. Let us take an instance from “The Taming of the Shrew,” Act I. Scene I., where Lucentio, arriving in Padua, to read

at the university, Tranio, his man, entreats his master not to apply himself too severely to study:—

Such has been the invariable text from the first publication of the comedy, in 1623, until our own day; yet it is unquestionably wrong, and wrong in the most important word in the quotation, as the old corrector shows, and as the reader will be sure to acknowledge the moment the emendation is proposed:—

In the manuscript, from which the old printer worked, Ethics was, no doubt, written with a small letter, and with ke near the end of the word, as was then the custom, and the careless compositor mistook ethickes for “checkes,” and so printed it: “checkes” is converted into ethickes in the hand-writing of the emendator of the folio, 1632; and it is hardly too much to say that this misprint can never be repeated.

Another proof of the same kind, but perhaps even stronger, may be taken from “Coriolanus,” Act II. Scene III. It relates to a word which has puzzled all editors, and yet ought not to have delayed them for a moment, the corruption, when pointed out by an emendation in the folio, 1632, being so glaring. The hero, disdainfully soliciting the “sweet voices” of the plebeians, asks himself,—

Johnson says that “woolvish” is rough, hirsute; and Malone, Steevens, Ritson, Douce, &c., have all notes regarding wolves (as if wild beasts had any thing to do with the matter), and

all erroneous, but Johnson's the most unfortunate, because it has been previously stated that the “toge” (or gown) was not hirsute, but absolutely “napless.” It seems astonishing, on this very account, that the right word was never guessed, as it is found in the margin of my volume:—

Can there be an instant's hesitation about it? The printer, or the scribe who wrote the copy used by the printer, mistook the termination of the word, and “woolvish” has been eternally reiterated as the real language of the poet. It seems impossible that “woolvish” should ever hereafter find a single supporter.

Other verbal amendments are restorations of words that were becoming somewhat obsolete in the time of Shakespeare, such as bisson, blind, blead, fruit, &c; but there is one instance of the sort so remarkable, that I cannot refuse to notice it here. It regards the expression “a woollen bagpipe,” in “The Merchant of Venice,” Act IV. Scene I.; and it must appear strange that “woolless” in one play, and “woollen” in another, should have formed such hard and insuperable stumbling-blocks to all the commentators. When Shylock observes,

ingenuity has been exhausted to explain, or to explain away, the epithet “woollen,” as applied to a bagpipe. Some would have it wooden, others swollen, and a third party (myself among the number) were for adhering, in a case of such difficulty, to the text of the old editions. What turns out to be the fact? that every body was in error, and that our great dramatist employed an old word, which he had already used in his “Lucrece,” 1594, and which means swollen, viz.

bollen: it is the participle of the verb bolne, “to become puffed up or swollen,” as Sir F. Madden states, in his excellent “Glossary to the Wycliffite Versions of the Bible.” Bollen is spelt in various ways by old and modern lexicographers; but we may be confident that we shall never again see “woollen bagpipe” in any edition of the text of Shakespeare, unless it be reproduced by some one, who, having no right to use the emendation of our folio, 1632, adheres of necessity to the antiquated blunder, and pertinaciously attempts to justify it.

By the mention of the scribe, or copyist, who wrote the manuscript from which the printer composed, we are brought to the consideration of another class of errors, for which, probably, the typographer was not responsible. If there be one point more clear than another, in connexion with the text of Shakespeare as it has come down to us, it is that the person, or persons, who prepared the transcripts of the plays for the printer, wrote by the ear, and not by the eye: they heard the dialogue, and wrote it down as it struck them. This position has been completely established by Malone^{3 note}; and only in this way can we explain many of the whimsical mistakes in the quartos and folios. It is very well known that associations of actors, who bought dramas of their authors, were at all times extremely averse to the publication of them, partly under the persuasion that the number of readers would diminish the number of auditors^{4 note}. The managers and sharers did their utmost to prevent the appearance of plays in print; and it is the surreptitious manner in which pieces got out to the public that will account for the especial imperfectness, in respect to typography, of this department of our early literature. About half the productions of Shakespeare remained in manuscript until seven years after his death: not a few of

those which were printed in his life-time were shamefully disfigured, and not one can be pointed out to the publication of which he in any way contributed. When he finally retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, we cannot find that he took the slightest interest in works which had delighted living thousands, and were destined to be the admiration of unborn millions: he considered them the property of the theatre for which they had been written, and doubtless conceived that they were beyond his control.

If, therefore, popular dramas did make their way to the press, it was generally accomplished either by the employment of shorthand writers, who imperfectly took down the words as they indistinctly heard them, or by the connivance and aid of inferior performers, who, being “hirelings” at weekly wages, had no direct interest in the receipts at the doors. They may have furnished the booksellers with such parts as they sustained, or could in any way procure from the theatre; and it is not unlikely that, listening, as they must have daily done, to the repetitions of the principal actors, they would be able to recite, with more or less accuracy, whole speeches, and even scenes, which a little ingenuity could combine into a drama. We may readily imagine, that what these inferior performers had thus got by heart, they might dictate to some mechanical copyist, and thus many words, and even sentences, which sounded like something else, would be misrepresented in the printed editions, and nobody take the pains to correct the blunders. Of course, those who were sharers in theatres would be the last to remedy defects; and in this way oral representations on our early stages, by the chief actors, might easily be more correct than the published copies of performances.

Upon this supposition we must account for not a few of the remarkable manuscript emendations in my folio, 1632: the annotator of that volume may have been connected with one of our old play-houses; he may have been a manager, or a member of a company, and as an admirer of Shakespeare, as

well as for his own theatrical purposes, he may have taken the trouble, from time to time, to set right errors in the printed text by the more faithful delivery of their parts by the principal actors. This might have been accomplished by him as a mere spectator, and he may have employed the edition nearest his own day as the receptacle of his notes; he may, however, have been aided by the prompt-books; and the whole appearance of our volume seems to afford evidence that the work of correction was not done speedily, nor continuously, but as the misprints became apparent, and the means of correcting them occurred. Thus a long interval may have elapsed before this copy of the second folio was brought to the state in which it has reached us.

An example or two will suffice to make what is meant intelligible; and here, as in former instances, I take them from many, almost at random, for the real difficulty is selection. When Henry VIII. (Act III. Scene II.) tells Wolsey,—

he cannot mean that the Cardinal has scarcely time to steal from “leisure,” but from labour: the word was misheard by the scribe; and while “leisure” makes nonsense of the sentence, labour is exactly adapted to the place:—

The substituted word is found in the margin of the folio, 1632. This instance seems indisputable; but we meet with a more striking proof of the same kind in “King Lear” (Act IV. Scene VII.), where, after he has read Goneril's letter of love to Edmund and hate to her husband, Edgar exclaims, as the poet's language has been represented,

The commentators have striven hard to extract sense from the first line, but not one of them satisfied another, nor indeed themselves. Edgar, in truth, is shocked at the profligate and uncontrollable licentiousness of Goneril:—

in other words, desire (i. e. “will” or lust) in the female sex bursts forth in a flame that cannot be subdued. The scribe did not understand what he put upon paper, misheard unextinguish'd blaze, and wrote “undistinguish'd space.” Such was, probably, the origin of the hitherto received nonsense.

Another brief and laughable proof may be adduced from “Coriolanus:” it is where Menenius, in Act II. Scene I., is talking of himself to the Tribunes:—“I am known” (he says in all editions, ancient and modern) “to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine, with not a drop of allaying Tyber in it; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint.” Nobody has offered a note explanatory of “the first complaint,” and it has always passed current as the language of Shakespeare. Is it so? Assuredly not; for what has “a cup of hot wine” to do with “the first complaint?” The old corrector calls upon us to read “a cup of hot wine, with not a drop of allaying Tyber in it; said to be something imperfect in favouring the thirst complaint,” and the utterly lost humour of the passage is at once restored. The scribe misheard thirst, and wrote “first;” and the blunder has already lasted between two and three centuries, and might have lasted two or three centuries longer, but for the discovery of this corrected folio.

It is to be observed that these last emendations apply to plays which were printed for the first time in the folio, 1623. This fact tends to prove that the manuscript, put into the hands of the printer by Heminge and Condell, in spite of what they say, was not in a much better condition than the manuscript used by stationers for the separate plays which they had previously contrived to publish. The effect of the ensuing pages must be considerably to lessen our confidence

in the text furnished by the player-editors, for the integrity of which I, among others, have always strenuously contended. Consequently, I ought to be among the last to admit the validity of objections to it; and it was not until after long examination of the proposed alterations, that I was compelled to allow their general accuracy and importance. There are some that I can yet by no means persuade myself to adopt; others to which I can only give a qualified approbation; but still a large remainder from which I am utterly unable to dissent^{5 note}.

It was, as may be inferred, very little, if at all, the habit of dramatic authors, in the time of Shakespeare, to correct the proofs of their productions; and as we know that, in respect to the plays which had been published in quarto before 1623, all that Heminge and Condell did, was to put the latest edition into the hands of their printer, so, possibly, in respect to the plays which for the first time appeared in the folio, 1623, all that they did might be to put the manuscript, such as it was, into the hands of their printer, and to leave to him the whole process of typography. It is not at all unlikely that they borrowed playhouse copies to aid them; but these might consist, sometimes at least, of the separate parts allotted to the different actors, and, for the sake of speed in so long a work, scribes might be employed, to whom the manuscript was read

as they proceeded with their transcripts. This supposition, and the fraudulent manner in which plays in general found their way into print, may account for many of the blunders they unquestionably contain in the folios, and especially for the strange confusion of verse and prose which they sometimes exhibit. The not unfrequent errors in prefixes, by which words or lines are assigned to one character, which certainly belong to another, may thus also be explained: the reader of the drama to the scribe did not at all times accurately distinguish the persons engaged in the dialogue; and if he had only the separate parts, and what are technically called the cues, to guide him, we need not be surprised at the circumstance. The following is a single proof, the first that occurs to memory: it is from “Romeo and Juliet,” Act III. Scene V., where the heroine declares to her mother that, if she must marry, her husband shall be Romeo:—

This is the universal regulation; but, as we may very well believe, the closing words, “These are news, indeed!” do not belong to Juliet, but to Lady Capulet, who thus expresses her astonishment at her daughter's resolution: therefore, her speech ought to begin earlier than it appears in any extant copy. Juliet ends,—

There cannot surely be any dispute that this is the mode in which the poet distributed the lines, and in which the old corrector of the folio, 1632, had heard the dialogue divided on the stage in his time.

It has been stated that he did not pass over minute

changes, sometimes of most trifling consequence; but it is obvious that alterations, very insignificant in appearance, may be of the utmost importance in effect. A single letter, wrongly inserted, may strangely pervert or obscure the meaning; and it may never have been suspected that the early editions were in fault. We meet with a remarkable instance of it in “Macbeth,” Act I. Scene VII., where the Lady is reproaching her irresolute husband for not being ready to murder Duncan when time and opportunity offered, although he had previously vaunted his determination to do it: she asks him,—

Such is the text as it has always been recited on modern stages, and printed in every copy of the tragedy from the year 1623 to the year 1853; yet that there is a most singular misprint in it will be manifest, when the small, but most valuable, manuscript emendation of the folio, 1632, is mentioned. In truth, Lady Macbeth does not ask her husband the absurd question, “what beast” made him communicate the enterprise to her? but, what induced him to vaunt that he would kill Duncan, and then, like a coward, shrink from his own resolution?—

She taunts him with the braggart spirit he had at first displayed, and the cowardice he had afterwards evinced. It cannot be denied by the most scrupulous sticker for the purity of the text of the folio, 1623 (copied into the folio, 1632), that this mere substitution of the letter o for the letter e, as it were, magically conjures into palpable existence the long-buried meaning of the poet.

In another place, and in another play, the accidental

omission of a single letter has occasioned much doubt and discussion. In Act III. Scene I. of “The Tempest,” Ferdinand, while engaged in carrying logs, rejoices in his toil, because his burdens are lightened by thoughts of Miranda:—

and he afterwards adds, as the passage is given in the folio, 1623:—

The folio, 1632, altered the hemistich to “Most busy least when I do it,” and Theobald read “Most busiless when I do it,” not understanding how Ferdinand, at the same moment, could be most busy, and least busy. The corrector of the folio, 1632, however, removes the whole difficulty by showing that in the folio, 1623, a letter had dropped out in the press, the addition of which makes the sense clear and consistent, and concludes the speech by a most felicitous compression of the sentiment of the whole in seven words:—

that is to say, he was most laboriously employed, but blest in that very toil by the sweet thoughts of his mistress. The old corrector converted “least,” of the folio, 1632, into blest, by striking out a, and by inserting b with a caret.

The constantly recurring question in all these cases is, from whence the information was derived, which enabled a person, so frequently and so effectually, to give us what, by implication, he asserts to be the real language of the greatest poet of mankind? Was he in a condition to resort to other and better manuscripts? Had he the use of printed copies which do not now remain to us? Was he instructed by more accurate recitation at a theatre? Was he indebted to his

own sagacity and ingenuity, and did he merely guess at arbitrary emendations? I am inclined to think that the last must have been the fact as regards some of his changes; and, so far, his suggestions are only to be taken as those of an individual, who lived, we may suppose, not very long after the period when the dramas he elucidates were written, and who might have had intercourse with some of the actors of Shakespeare's day. As to this, and other sources of his knowledge, all we can do is to speculate^{6 note}.

There is a class of emendations, not yet adverted to, even more convincing, than the happiest alterations we have already noticed, that the old corrector must have had recourse to some not now extant authority. Malone contended that lines, in the old editions, were more frequently omitted than ordinary readers were disposed to believe; and he might well so argue, seeing that in his own text, as we last receive it in the Variorum Edition of 1821^{7 note}, no fewer than three entire lines are left out in three separate plays; while those who have been content to reprint that text have not discovered the deficiencies^{8 note}. No wonder, then, if

the old editors and printers, who made no professions of peculiar care and accuracy, were guilty of similar mistakes, and that several of them should have remained undetected to our own day. They are indicated in the folio, 1632, and are written in the margin for insertion in the proper places.

To say nothing of words, sometimes two, three, and four together, which are wanting in the folios, and are supplied in manuscript, to the improvement both of meaning and measure, there are at least nine different places where lines appear to have been left out. From what source could these have been derived, if not from some more perfect copies, or from more faithful recitation? However we may be willing to depreciate other emendations, and to maintain that they were only the results of bold, but happy speculation—the feliciter audentia of conjecture—how can we account for the recovery of nine distinct lines, most exactly adapted to the situations where they are inserted, excepting upon the supposition that they proceeded from the pen of the poet, and have been preserved by the curious accuracy of an individual, almost a contemporary, who, in some way, possessed the means of supplying them^{9 note}?

In certain cases the absence of a corresponding line, in a rhyming speech, affords evidence that words terminating with the required jingle have been lost. Are we prepared to say that the old corrector, noting the want, has, of his own head, and out of his own head, forged and furnished it, making it also entirely consistent with what precedes and follows? When, in “Henry VI. Part II.” Act II. Scene III., Queen Margaret calls upon Gloster to relinquish his staff of

office to her son, the Protector, addressing the young king, exclaims,—

The line in Italic type is met with in no old copy, but when we find it in a hand-writing of about the time; when we see that something has so evidently been lost, and that what is offered is so nicely dovetailed into the place assigned to it, can we take upon ourselves to assert that it was foisted in without necessity or authority? On the contrary, ought we not to welcome it with thankfulness, as a fortunate recovery, and a valuable restoration?

In several instances, it is easy, on other grounds, to understand how the blunders were occasioned. In more than one of those places, where Malone was himself guilty of omissions of the sort, two consecutive lines ended with the same word, and the modern printer missed one of them, thinking that he had already composed it. Such was, doubtless, the predicament of the ancient printer; and we may quote a remarkable proof of the fact from “Coriolanus,” that worst specimen of typography in the whole folio. In Act III. Scene II., Volumnia thus entreats her indignant and impetuous son to be patient:—

To what is Volumnia's heart as little apt as that of Coriolanus? She does not tell us, and the sense is undeniably incomplete; but it is thus completed in the folio, 1632, by the addition of a lost line:—

To brook control without the use of anger,
But yet a brain, that leads my use of anger
To better vantage.”

It seems impossible to doubt the genuineness of this insertion, unless we go the length of pronouncing it not only an invention, but an invention of the utmost ingenuity; for while it renders perfect the deficient sense, it shows at once what caused the error: the recurrence of the same words, “use of anger,” at the end of two following lines, deceived the old compositor, and induced him to fancy that he had already printed a line, which he had excluded.

Are we not entitled, then, to consider this copy of the folio, 1632, an addition to our scanty means of restoring and amending the text of Shakespeare, as important as it is unexpected? If it had contained no more than the comparatively few points to which we have adverted in this Introduction, would it not have rendered an almost inappreciable service to our literature, and to Shakespeare as the great example of every species of dramatic excellence? It strikes me as an impossible supposition, that such as these were purely conjectural and arbitrary changes; and it follows as a question, upon which I shall not now enlarge, how far such indisputable emendations and apposite additions warrant us in imputing to a higher authority, than we might otherwise be inclined to acknowledge, some of the more doubtful alterations recorded in the ensuing pages.

In order to give the reader an exact notion of the handwriting of the old corrector, and of his businesslike method of annotation, a facsimile has been prefixed, which faithfully represents the original. In this place the ink seems uniform, but our choice has been influenced, not so much by the worth of the play, or by the value of the emendations, as by the circumstance that it includes, in the compass of an octavo page, examples of the manner in which corrections of nearly all kinds are made, from the insertion of a single

letter to the addition of a line, omitted in all the folios, together with the striking out of a passage not considered necessary for the performance^{1 note}.

It will be remarked, from the title-page, that the present volume is supplemental to the edition of Shakespeare's Works I formerly superintended. It was there my leading principle to adhere to the old quartos and folios, wherever sense could be made out of the words they furnished: that they were wrong, in many more places than I suspected, will now be evident; but I allowed myself no room for speculative emendation, even where it seemed most called for. Had the copy of the folio, 1632, the authority for nearly all that follows, devolved into my hands anterior to the commencement of that undertaking, the result would have been in many important respects different: as it is, those volumes will remain an authentic representation of the text of our great dramatist, as it is contained in the early editions; and all who wish to ascertain the new readings proposed in the present work, will have the means of doing so without disturbing the ancient, and hitherto generally received, language of Shakespeare.

It will, I hope, be clear from what precedes, that I have been anxious rather to underrate, than to overstate the claims of this annotated copy of the folio, 1632. I ought not, however, to hesitate in avowing my conviction, that we

are bound to admit by far the greater body of the substitutions it contains, as the restored language of Shakespeare. As he was especially the poet of common life, so he was emphatically the poet of common sense; and to the verdict of common sense I am willing to submit all the more material alterations recommended on the authority before me. If they will not bear that test, as distinguished from mere verbal accuracy in following old printed copies, I, for one, am content to relinquish them. Hitherto the quartos and folios have been our best and safest guides; but it is notorious that in many instances they must be wrong; and while, in various places, the old corrector does not attempt to set them right, probably from not possessing the means of doing so, the very fact, that he has here refrained from purely arbitrary changes, ought to give us additional confidence in those emendations he felt authorized to introduce.

I shall probably be told, in the usual terms, by some whose prejudices or interests may be affected by the ensuing volume, that the old corrector knew little about the spirit or language of Shakespeare; and that, in the remarks I have ventured on his emendations, I prove myself to be in a similar predicament. The last accusation is probably true: I have read and studied our great dramatist for nearly half a century, and if I could read and study him for half a century more, I should yet be far from arriving at an accurate knowledge of his works, or an adequate appreciation of his worth. He is an author whom no man can read enough, nor study enough; and as my ambition always has been to understand him properly, and to estimate him sufficiently, I shall accept, in whatever terms reproof may be conveyed, any just correction thankfully.

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