paternity, the general desire to acquit Shakespeare of that wise child ought to be respected. General report of the vicinage during the lifetime of all concerned - Davenant's own conviction in the premises are of very little weight as against a public opinion formed some century after everybody competent to the question is dead and gone. Even a suggestion that the greatest expresser of human passion may himself have had the passions of his kind, would have no weight. Therefore it would not be well, in searching for an American Shakespeare, to concern ourselves with any American Davenants. X The Donnelly and Prior Ciphers, and the Furnivall Verse-Tests 蛋 REGARD the publication of the Third Folio edition of the Shakespeare plays in 1663-4 as by far the most important step in their circumstantial history subsequent to their appearance during William Shakespeare's own lifetime. As early as 1623 we are confronted with a well-recognized and reasonable doubt as to what plays William Shakespeare really wrote. Thirty-six plays had been printed in quarto during William Shakespeare's lifetime, all of them bearing his name, either in full or in abbreviation. Which were his and which were spurious? John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's fellows and friends, whom he mentioned in his will and made beneficiaries in testimonial of attachment, undertook to make decision, and deliberately sorted out of these thirty-six just twenty-six, thus putting themselves on record as deliberately rejecting almost fully onethird of the literary matter which traveled as the dramatist's own composition during his own lifetime. Of seven plays contemporary with this list (to only one of which-on its appearing in a second edition- was Shakespeare's name ever attached) they included all. They added one play which belonged to a rival theatrical company which operated during Shakespeare's lifetime a rival theater ("The Rose," which competed with "The Globe" for the public favor and patronage): one that first appeared five years after Shakespeare's death: in all, ten that were never known before their appearance in the First Folio. The numerical result was the same: thirty-six plays in the lifetime list, and thirty-six in the Heminges and Condell list. But the Heminges and Condell list of thirty-six is not by any means the lifetime list of thirty-six. "William Shakespeare" had been a well-known name in London seven years before. It had been signed to more than one dedication addressed to a noble Lord. Had there been an "Athenæum" or a "Saturday Review" in 1623 we need not doubt that these would have called rather peremptorily on Messrs. Heminges and Condell to give their reasons for discarding substantially one-half of what had passed current as "Will Shakespeare's plays" for so many years. But there was no critical press to ask for an accounting, and moreover this Heminges and Condell list does contain has always been admitted to contain - the best of the plays included in the lifetime list of Shakespeare. But, since there is no literary statute of limitations it appears that there very soon began to be demurrer to the Heminges and Condell pronouncement as to what was and was not Shakespeare. The Revised List of the Third Folio of 1663-4 was, therefore, a demurrer filed in the only way it could have been filed at all, and which, had it appeared in the nineteenth instead of the seventeenth century, would have made the "Athenæum," or the "Saturday Review," or some other prominent critical London journal, its vehicle; and that those demurrers have continued to be filed from that day to this will also appear upon opening any modern edition of Shakespeare, all of which include the "Pericles," 1 and many of which include the "Edward Third" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," while "Titus Andronicus," "Henry VIII,” and others, though generally included, are by several modern editors admitted on sufferance only. What editor thus went to the expense and took the critical responsibility of restoring to the name of Shakespeare seven of the lifetime list of thirty-six plays, which Heminges and Condell had set aside as un-Shakespearean, must unhappily always remain matter of conjecture. When we remember that these were years in London very unfavorable to literary ventures,-England being then recovering from the Rebellion,- we can only infer that some other than mercenary motives induced the publication. But why should the unknown 1663-4 editor have had any doubts as to the Heminges and Con 1 Ante, p. 213, note: I have conjectured that the First Folio editors overlooked the "Pericles" through carelessness rather than rejected it from critical motives. They are certainly entitled to the benefit of the doubt. dell dictum as to which were and which were not Shakespeare's plays? For one thing, he probably had read the plays he edited (not always, as we shall see further on, considered a necessary preliminary) and had noted certain palpable discrepancies. The vast preponderance of lines in the admitted plays had a trend and gait of their own. Such lines as those in "Macbeth": "If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, were everywhere, stamping the plays as from a mind more ratiocinative, an expression more despotic and at the same time more graceful than the run of Elizabethan dramatists. But, at the same time, there were other lines in the plays which had no one of these qualities,-being rather florid, measured, and ponderously magnificent, such as the passage from "Titus Andronicus": "Now climbeth Tamora Olympus' top Safe out of fortune's shot, and sits aloft, Secure of thunder's crack and lightning flash, Advanced above pale envy's threat'ning beams, As when the golden sun salutes the morn And, having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the Zodiac in his glistering coach." — [II. i. 1.] And, yet again, here was a passage in "Lear" which hardly arose to the dignity of a doggerel: "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go, My master calls me, I must not say no." — [V. iii. 322.] |