THE original quarto edition of Troilus and Cressida, printed in 1609, bears the following title: The famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the Beginning of their Loues, with the Conceited Wooing of Pandarus Prince of Licia. Written by William Shakespeare. London, Imprinted by G. Eld, for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the Spred Eagle in Paules Churchyeard, ouer against the great North Doore, 1609.' In the same year a second edition was put forth by the same publishers, in the title page of which appears, "As it was acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at the Globe." There was a preface to the first edition, which is omitted in the second, in which are these words:-"You have here a new play, never staled with the stage." We shall have occasion more fully to notice this preface. No other edition of the play was published until it appeared in the folio collection of 1623. Its position in this collection has given rise to a singular hypothesis. Steevens says, Perhaps the drama before us was not entirely of his (Shakspere's) construction. It appears to have been unknown to his associates, Hemings and Condell, till after the first folio was almost printed off." If the play had been unknown to Hemings and Condell, the notion that, for this reason, it might not be entirely of Shakspere's construction, would be a most illogical inference. But how is it shown that the play was unknown to Shakspere's associates? Farmer tells us, "It was at first either unknown or forgotten. It does not, however, appear in the list of the plays, and is thrust in between the Histories and the Tragedies, without any enumeration of the pages; except, I think on one leaf only." If these critics had carried their

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inquiries one step farther, they would have found that Troilus and Cressida was neither unknown noi forgotten by the editors of the first folio. It is more probable that they were only doubtful how to classify it. In the first quarto edition it is called a famous History, in the title-page; but in the preface it is repeatedly mentioned as a Comedy. In the folio edition it bears the title of 'The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida.' In that edition the Tragedies begin with Coriolanus; and the paging goes on regularly from 1 to 76, that last page bringing us within a hundred lines of the close of Romeo and Juliet. We then skip pages 77 and 78, Romeo and Juliet concluding with 79. Now the leaf of Troilus and Cressida on which Farmer observed an enumeration of pages includes the second and third pages of the play, and those are marked 79, 80. If the last page of Romeo and Juliet had been marked 77, as it ought to have been, and the first page of Troilus and Cressida 78, we should have seen at once that this Tragedy was intended by the editors to follow Romeo and Juliet. But they found, or they were informed, that this extraordinary drama was neither a Comedy, nor a History, nor a Tragedy; and they therefore placed it between the Histories and the Tragedies, leaving to the reader to make his own classification. This is one solution of the matter which we have to offer; and it is a better one, we think, than the theory that so remarkable a production of Shakspere's later years should be unknown or forgotten by his "fellows." But there is another view of the matter, to be presently noticed, which involves a curious point in literary history. The first quarto edition of 1609 contains the following very extraordinary preface :—

"A never writer to an ever reader.

"News.

"Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical; for it is a birth of your brain, that never undertook anything comical vainly and were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now style them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities; especially this author's comedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit, that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that wit there that they never found in themselves, and have parted better witted than they came; feeling an edge of wit set upon them more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. So much and such favoured salt of wit is in his comedies, that they seem (for their height of pleasure) to be born in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this: and had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not (for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed), but for so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed in it. It deserves such a labour, as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, that when he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the peril of your pleasures' loss and judgments, refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank Fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you, since by the grand possessors' wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to be prayed for (for the states of their wit's healths) that will not praise it. Vale."

In 1609, then, the reader is told, "You have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar ;" and he is farther exhorted-" refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude." The reader is also invited to spend a sixpence upon this play :-"Had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not, for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed." Never was one of Shakspere's plays set forth during his life with such commendation as here abounds. His Comedies" are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives." The passage towards the conclusion is the most remarkable :-" Thank Fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you, since by the grand possessors' wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed." We have here, then, first, a most distinct assertion that, in 1609, Troilus and Cressida was a new play, never staled with the stage. This, one might think, would be decisive as to the chronology of this play; but in the Stationers' books is the following entry :-" Feb. 7, 1602. Mr. Roberts. The booke of Troilus and Cresseda, as yt is acted by my Lo. Chamberlen's men." Malone assumes that the Troilus and Cressida thus acted by the Lord Chamberlain's men

(the players at the Globe during the reign of Elizabeth) was the same as that published in 1609. Yet there were other authors at work upon the subject besides Shakspere. In Henslowe's manuscripts there are several entries of moneys lent, in 1599, to Dekker and Chettle, in earnest of a book called Troilus and Cressida. This play, thus bargained for by Henslowe, appears to have been subsequently called Agamemnon. The probability is, that the rival company at the Globe had, about the same period, brought out their own Troilus and Cressida; and that this is the play referred to in the entry by Roberts in 1602; for if that entry had applied to the Troilus and Cressida of Shakspere, first published in 1609, how are we to account for the subsequent entry in the same registers made previously to the publication of that edition? "Jan. 28, 1608. Richard Bonian and Hen. Walley. A booke called the History of Troylus and Cressuda." According to Malone's theory, the copyright in 1602 was in Roberts; but in 1608 a new entry claims it for Bonian and Walley. In that case there must have been an assignment from Roberts to Bonian and Walley. Roberts was a printer. His name appears as printer to the second edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, to the second edition of The Merchant of Venice, and to two editions of Hamlet; but nowhere as a publisher. Altogether the evidence of the date of the play, derived from the entry of 1602, appears to us worth very little. Malone most gratuitously assumes that the statement in the preface to the edition of 1609, that it was a new play never staled by the stage, was altogether false: "Mr. Pope, in his Table of Editions of Shakspeare's Plays,' having mentioned one of Troilus and Cressida in 1609, subjoined a notice of a second copy-'as acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at the Globe;' not thinking it necessary to repeat the year. But in fact both these copies are one and the same edition. The truth is, that in that edition, where no mention is made of the theatre in which the play was represented, we find a preface, in which, to give an additional value to the piece, the booksellers assert that it never had been acted. That being found a notorious falsehood, they afterwards suppressed the preface, and printed a new title-page, in which it is stated to have been acted at the Globe Theatre by his Majesty's Servants. The date of this, as of the other titlepage, is 1609."* According to this theory, a preface is written which sets out with a lie, known to be such by every person who buys the book; and then, because the lie is found out, a new titlepage is printed, acknowledging the truth that the play had been acted, and the lying preface is withdrawn. Is not all this the most forced interpretation of two very simple facts, which are perfectly consistent with each other? Troilus and Cressida was a new play, and it had not been publicly acted, when the original edition appeared. The editor does not state this to give an "additional value to the piece," for he evidently thinks that the circumstance may be injurious to the sale of the book: "Refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude." After the piece has thus been published, it is publicly acted; and then the preface which states that it has not been acted is naturally suppressed, in a new edition of which the title-page bears the additional recommendation of, "As it was acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at the Globe."

And here arises the question, whether the expressions, "never staled with the stage,"-"never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar,"-"not sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude," mean that the play had not been acted at all, or that it had not been acted on the public stage. There is a good deal of probability in the conjecture of Tieck upon this subject:—

"In the palace of some great personage, for whom it was probably expressly written, it was first repre sented, according to my belief for the King himself, who, weak as he was, contemptible as he sometimes showed himself, and pedantic as his wisdom and shortsighted as his politics were, yet must have had & certain fine sense of poetry, wit, and talent, beyond what his historians have ascribed to him. But whether the King, or some one else of whom we have not received the name, it is sufficient to know that for this person, and not for the public, Shakspere wrote this wonderful comedy."

We have already noticed the remarkable passage in the conclusion of the preface of 1609 in the Introductory Notice to Henry V. We there stated that the copy of Troilus and Cressida was acknowledged by the editor to have been obtained by some artifice; that we learn that the copy had an escape from some powerful possessors; and that those possessors were probably the proprietors of the Globe Theatre. But another view of this matter may be taken without any glaring inconsistency

* Note in Malone's edition of Dryden's Prose Works, vol. i., part ii., p. 261.