out acknowledgement. That the Clown's pocket was then and there picked by Autolycus we all know by the Clown's confession in a subsequent scene, but in the scene itself, where the theft is actually committed, there is no hint in the Folio of the precise moment. To select the very minute, as CAPELL did, and insert [picks his pocket] between two groans by Autolycus, and, after the deed is done, to give thereby a double meaning to 'you ha' done me a charitable office,'—all this required the acuteness of a-shall it be said?—' sharper,'—an acuteness not, in general, deemed requisite to a Shakespearian editor. In 1756 GARRICK brought out at Drury Lane a version of The Winter's Tale, called Florizel and Perdita, a Dramatic Pastoral, in Three Acts. Like all of GARRICK'S adaptations, it was designed to meet the popular demands of the hour, whereof he was an excellent and successful judge. Is it not folly to criticise harshly such adaptations? When they are successful, they assuredly reflect the taste of the day, and for that taste the manager of a theatre is as little responsible as a bookseller for the style of poetry on his counter. We must remember that the great literary arbiter of that day asserted that certain lines in CONGREVE'S Mourning Bride were the finest poetical passage he had ever read, and that he could recollect none in SHAKESPEARE equal to them. When, too, that same ponderous authority had said that there were not six, or at most seven, faultless lines in SHAKESPEARE, what excuse in omitting or altering scenes did a theatrical manager need? Certainly no compunctious visitings of conscience need GARRICK have had after receiving such approval as the following, from one who was not only a Bishop and an editor of SHAKESPEARE, but a luminary in the world. of letters but little less brilliant or worshipped in his day than DR JOHNSON : 'DEAR SIR: As you know me to be [no] less an idolizer of Shake'speare than yourself, you will less suspect me of compliment when I 'tell you, that besides your giving an elegant form to a monstrous com'position, you have in your own additions written up to the best scenes in this play, so that you will easily imagine I read the "Reformed "Winter's Tale" with great pleasure. You have greatly improved 'a fine prologue, and have done what we preachers are so commonly 'thought unable to do-mend ourselves while we mend others. 'I am, dear sir, With truest esteem and regard, 'Your most affectionate and faithful humble servant, * Garrick's Private Correspondence, vol. i, p. 88. However much, therefore, we in these days may, with Othello, ' yawn at alteration,' let us be lenient with GARRICK, who as a theatrical manager studied his public, and knew its temper far better than we can possibly know it. In feeling the pulse of that public he had as a guide the most sensitive of nerves: the pocket; and we may be very sure that its pulsations were to him, as they are to us all, unmistakeable. It is not the author of Florizel and Perdita who deserves the ferule, but the hands that applauded it. Moreover, does it not really betoken small faith in the true quality of SHAKESPEARE's plays, by whose adamant Time passes without 'injury,' to suppose that any art of man's device can seriously affect them? Who now remembers a line of DRYDEN'S Tempest, or of CHARLES JOHNSON's Love in a Forest? The loudest echoes of these Versions have long since died away, but Miranda and Rosalind and Perdita remain the same, and will reign unchanged and unchangeable for ever in our hearts. December, 1897. H. H. F. |