both to draw, and hold you for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his Friends, whom if you need, can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade yourselves, and others. And such Readers we wish him. "JOHN HEMINGE. Such is the testimony borne by two men who had acted in his plays, were his associates, in every sense of the term, partners in his pursuits, his emoluments, and his fame; and their evidence must be regarded as conclusive. Are we to suppose that if Bacon had written these dramas, and Shakespeare had been the impostor that Mr. William Henry Smith imagines, these editors, who knew the man well, would have declared, “We have scarce received from him a blot in his papers"? With Shakespeare's handwriting they must have been familiar, and that, at least, Bacon could not imitate. The poet had been dead seven years when the folio edition was published. According to the new theory, Bacon revised. these dramas between 1621 and 1623; the manuscript must, therefore, have been in his own handwriting, or in that of the friend or scribe whose assistance he sought; and John Heminge and Henry Condell would not have ventured to assert that they had received Shakespeare's papers, and that they scarcely contained a blot. Bacon, too, had some regard for the opinion of posterity, some respect for his own fair fame; and had he committed this literary fraud, would not have allowed it to go forth branded as a double deception. It would have been bad enough to deceive the public respecting the authorship of these incomparable works, without adding to the wrong, and aggravating the injustice, by the assertion, "It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings. But since it hath been ordained otherwise, and HE BY DEATH DEPARTED FROM THAT RIGHT, we pray you do not envy his friends, the office of their care and pain, to have collected and published them." Few men could be found bad and degraded enough to have affixed their names to such a wanton desecration of the memory of the dead, to such a gross injustice to the living. That preface forbids the thought that any person but William Shakespeare was the author of those dramas. This portion of the address to the general reader is remarkable; it is fatal to the Baconian theory, fatal to any conceivable theory that would attribute these productions to any conceivable person but William Shakespeare. The secret, moreover, of William Shakespeare's supposed indifference to fame is also explained. Whilst engaged in his theatrical duties, he did not enjoy leisure or opportunity to superintend the publication of his dramatic works. But in his retirement at Stratford-upon-Avon, he addressed himself to the task; and the consequence was, the collection of the thirty-six plays in the folio, which he bequeathed to mankind as the productions of his mighty mind. His editors state that the public had been before abused with "diverse stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them ;" and that they had received the poet's own papers, establishing the Shakespearian canon, and they could assert, without fear of contradiction, "EVEN THOSE ARE NOW OFFERED TO YOUR VIEW CURED, AND PERFECT OF THEIR LIMBS; AND ALL THE REST ABSOLUTE IN THEIR NUMBERS, AS HE CONCEIVED THEM. The men who penned that preface are well known, their assertion was not challenged when there were plenty of persons able to do so, had it been false, and posterity may receive their testimony without hesitation. It may suit Mr. William Henry Smith's ideas of equity and fairdealing to declare that William Shakespeare did not write these dramas; but with such evidence as this in our possession, we can smile at his frivolous expedients. The corrupt state of the text cannot in the least degree prejudice the view we have advocated; for, in the first place, the folio of 1623 was very carelessly edited; and in the second place, our language has undergone many transformations since the days of Elizabeth and the first James; and numerous changes in the outward circumstances of life, manners, and habits, have rendered allusions and sayings obscure, which, at the time of the publication of the first folio, were intelligible enough to the least enlightened of the poet's readers. That the folio of 1623 contains the real text of Shakespeare, few can doubt. That must be our basis to work upon all else is rottenness. All ideas of new texts and infallible correctors must end in smoke. Every attempt to clear up an obscure passage, or to hit upon the solution of an apparently corrupt reading, merits the warmest commendation; but conjectural emendations must not be received for more than they are worth. The text of 1623 is the rock upon which we take our stand. Self-evident blunders can be, of course, corrected; the various readings of the former quarto editions, whenever such readings are entitled to consideration, can be added in foot-notes, and the more discriminating suggestions of later commentators appended. These form the legitimate materials of footnotes and illustrations, but they ought, on no account whatever, to be given forth to the world as the words which Shakespeare wrote. Making due allowance for the blunders that would inevitably occur in a work published ere printing had attained any great degree of excellence, we are constrained to admit that this edition was issued in a very slovenly state. A single fact will prove the assertion. The H name of "John Heminge" is spelt in two ways; and innumerable errors might be, and indeed have been, pointed out. For the benefit of those who are not yet satisfied that William Shakespeare's claim to the authorship is fully made out, another illustration of the fact is appended. Following close upon the Address to "a great Variety of Readers," comes this commendatory tribute from Ben Jonson's ready and prolific pen :— "To the memory of my beloved, the Author, MR. WILLIAM "To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name, As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much. Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; And thinke to ruine, where it seem'd to raise. Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more? I, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age! The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage! Thou art a Moniment, without a Tombe, I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses : * I. e. most foolish. And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine, Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread, Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome And all the Muses still were in their prime, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please; As they were not of Nature's family. His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he, (And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame; And such wert thou. Looke how the father's face Of Shakespeare's minde, and manners brightly shines In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance, As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance. *I. e. turned. |