KING RICHARD III. Richard III.' was first published anonymously in 1597. In the following year a second edition appeared, ascribed on the titlepage to William Shakespeare. Then followed a third edition in 1602; a fourth, in 1605; a fifth, in 1612; and a sixth, in 1622. The changes made in these successive editions were not important; but when the folio appeared in 1623, some very marked improvements had been effected in the text. Mr. Richard Grant White says that these additions and corrections are "undeniable evidence that the copy in question had been subjected to carefullest revision at the hands (it seems to me beyond a doubt) of Shakespeare himself, by which it gained much smoothness and correctness and lost no strength. In minute beauties of rhythm, in choice of epithets, and in the avoidance of bald repetition, the play was greatly improved by this revision," and was "evidently from the perfecting hand of the author in the maturity of his powers."

The Cambridge editor, Mr. W. A. Wright, also testifies to the same effect:

"Passages which in the quarto are complete and consecutive are amplified in the folio, the expanded text being quite in the manner of Shakespeare. The folio, too, contains passages not in the quartos, which, though not necessary to the sense, yet harmonize so well, in sense and tone, with the context, that we can have no hesitation in attributing them to the author himself."

The reappearance, in the folio version, of twelve printer's errors that were peculiar to the quarto of 1622 is conclusive proof that the latter was in existence when these additions were made to the text. In other words, the changes in the play, comprising one hundred and ninety-three new lines and nearly two thousand retouched, were made by the author himself in 1622-23.

We summarize these statistics as follows:

Date of last Quarto before Publi

cation of 1623 Folio.

Taming of the Shrew, 1607.1

1608.

1608.

1609.

1611.

1611.

1615.

1619.8
1619.

Changes made in the Folio of 1623, subsequently to date of last Quarto.

New title; 1000 new lines added; extensively rewritten.

88 new lines added; 119 retouched. New title; the choruses and two new scenes added; text nearly doubled in length.

New title; prologue inserted.

One entire new scene added.

Important additions and omissions. Corrections throughout; version based directly on last quarto.

1081 new lines added; text rewritten. New title; 1139 new lines added; 2000 old retouched; version based directly on last quarto.

1619. New title; 906 new lines added; many

old retouched.

1622. New title; 1000 new lines added, including one entire new scene; whole dialogue rewritten.

1622.4 193 new lines added; nearly 2000 retouched; version based directly on last quarto.

1622.4 160 new lines added; other important emendations throughout the text.

The hypothesis of the commentators that all this new work on thirteen of the Shakespearean dramas (some of them becoming practically new compositions in the process) was secretly left in manuscript by the reputed author at his death in 1616, unknown even to the publishers of his writings for a period of seven years subsequent thereto, would not be tolerated under similar circumstances in other fields of criticism for a single moment. Indeed, in the case

1 Three years after Shakspere's permanent retirement to Stratford.

↑ An undated quarto, issued subsequently to 1611.

* Three years after Shakspere's death at Stratford.

• Six years after Shakspere's death at Stratford.

of several of them, the author, if he died in 1616, must have left behind him, unpublished, two manuscript copies of each, both being successive improvements on earlier editions, and the less perfect one of the two in every instance printed first.

Mirabeau, who was very fat, was fond of saying that his mission in life was to test the elasticity of the human skin; the mission of our friends, the Shakspereans, would seem to be to test the elasticity of human credulity.

Chapter Four

THE PLACE OF THE SHAKE-SPEARE DRAMAS IN BACON'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY

F

RANCIS BACON died April 9, 1626. In his last will he made disposition of his unpublished writings as follows:

"I desire my executors, especially my brother Constable and also Mr. Bosvile, presently after my decease, to take into their hands all my papers whatsoever, which are either in cabinets, boxes, or presses, and them to seal up till they may at their leisure peruse them."

Some time after Bacon's death (probably in 1627), in accordance with this provision of the will, Mr. Bosvile, or (as he is better known) Sir William Boswell, British Minister to Holland, having possession of the manuscripts, carried them with him to the Hague, and there committed them to his learned friend, Isaac Gruter, for publication. Gruter took the matter in hand, but determined first of all to reissue for Continental readers the works of Bacon which had previously been printed in England. Accordingly, in anticipation of his work on the manuscripts, he edited and published the following:

Sylva Sylvarum, Leyden

New Atlantis

Novum Organum
De Augmentis

66

66

In 1653 Gruter finally gave to the world, in a book printed at Amsterdam and entitled Francisci Baconi de Verulamio Scripta in Naturali et Universali Philosophia, nineteen of the manuscripts with which he had been intrusted by Boswell. In an Address to the Reader,' prefixed to the volume, he tells us that he and Boswell had had many long, confidential interviews on the subject, in consequence of which, as it appears, some of the papers in the collection were, for reasons not given, withheld from the public. The exact statement is as follows:

"All these hitherto unpublished writings you owe, dear reader, to the most noble William Boswell, to whom they were devised by Bacon himself, together with others of a political and moral nature, which are now, by gift of the deceased, in my private keeping, and which ought not to be long suppressed."1

That Gruter regarded these reserved papers, whatever they were, as important, and that he was compelled against his will to keep them back in the dark, we know beyond a doubt; for on March 20, 1655, he wrote to Sir William Rawley, Bacon's old chaplain and amanuensis in London, a letter in which he expressed great impatience because he was not permitted to publish them. He said:

"At present I will restrain my impatient desires, in hope of seeing some day those things which, now committed to faithful privacy, await the time when they may safely see the light and not be stifled in their birth." 2

1 For a copy of Gruter's 'Address to the Reader,' in the original Latin, with the sentence translated above, in italic, see Appendix A.

2 We give this sentence in Latin also, as Gruter wrote it: Nunc vota impatientis desiderii sustentabo spe aliquando videndi, quæ fidis mandata latebris occasionem expectant ut tuto in lucem educantur, non enecentur suffocato partu.