The earliest collected edition of his plays, complete except for Pericles (which has come down to us in an imperfect text) was published seven years after his death, in 1623. This volume, known as the First Folio, included twenty plays that had not previously seen the light of print, and two that had only appeared in pirated form. Fourteen plays, however, with good texts which often formed the basis of the corresponding texts in the Folio, preceded the publication of that book, and were issued in quarto form. These, with the dates of publication, were: Titus Andronicus (1594), Richard III. (1597), Richard II. (1597), Love's Labour's Lost (1598), I Henry IV. (1598), Romeo and Juliet (1599), Merchant of Venice (1600), Much Ado (1600), 2 Henry IV. (1600), MidNight's Dream

summer

(1600), Hamlet (1604-5), Lear (1608), Troilus and Cressida (1609), Othello (1622). By adding to them Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and the Sonnets (1609), we bring up the number of

M William Shakespears

COMEDIES, HISTORIES

TRAGEDIES.

PLAYS,

good" quarto volumes to seventeen. On the other hand, we have five "bad" texts, viz., Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry V. (1600), The Merry Wives (1602), Hamlet (1603), and Pericles (1608), all of which are probably based upon theatrical abridgments, touched up in the case of the first four by a pirate-actor, who filled out the gaps in the abridgments as best he could from memory. Recent research has done much to emphasize the importance of these quarto texts, claiming, among other things, that many of the "good quartos were printed direct from Shakespeare's own manuscripts. At the same time an even more sensational claim has lately been advanced-namely, that a scene of 147 lines in a partially revised 16th-century manuscript play, entitled Sir Thomas More, at the British Museum, is actually in the handwriting of the master-dramatist himself. It seems likely, therefore, that we are at the beginning of a new era in Shakespearean textual scholarship.

Title-page and Frontispiece of the Fourth Folio of the Plays.

TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE APPROXIMATE DATES OF
SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

(Plays are grouped according to subject-matter or species, within a given period)

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts.-The Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Aldis Wright (9 vols., Macmillan, 1863-91); The Globe Shakespeare (same text in I vol.); The Oxford Shakespeare, ed. W. J. Craig (Clarendon Press, 1904); The Arden Shakespeare (separate vols. and separate editors, in progress, fully annotated, Methuen, 1899-1906); The Temple Shakespeare, ed. Sir Israel Gollancz (40 handy vols. with glossaries, Dent, 1894-5); New Variorum Shakespeare, ed. H. H. Furness (Lippincott, 1871); The Works of Shakespeare, ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and J. Dover Wilson (in progress, Cambridge University Press, 1921); Sonnets of Shakespeare, with variorum readings, ed. R. M. Alden (Constable, 1916).

Studies: (a) Literary and Biographical.-BRADLEY, A. C. : Shakespearian Tragedy (Macmillan, 1904).— BRANDES, G. William Shakespeare (Heinemann, 1899).—Coleridge, S. T.: Lectures on Shakespeare (Bell, 1849, 1888).-CHAMBERS, E. K.: article on Shakespeare in Encyclopædia Britannica.-DOWDEN, E. A.: Shakespeare's Mind and Art (Kegan Paul, 1874).—FLEAY, F. G.: Life and Work of William Shakespeare (Nimmo, 1886).—LEE, Sir S.: Life of William Shakespeare (Murray, 1922).—MasefielD, JOHN: Shakespeare (Home University Library, Williams & Norgate, 1911).—RALEIGH, Sir W. Shakespeare (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1907).—POEL, W.: Prominent Points in the Life and Writings of Shakespeare (useful tables: Longmans, 1919).—QUILLER-Couch, Sir A.: Shakespeare's Workmanship (Fisher Unwin, 1918).-SWINBURNE, A. C.: A Study of Shakespeare (Chatto, 1909). (b) Recent Textual Work.-POLLARD, A. W. Shakespeare Folios and Quartos (Methuen, 1909); Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1920).—THOMPSON, Sir E. Maunde: Shakespeare's Handwriting (Clarendon Press, 1916).-SIMPSON, P.: Shakespearian Punctuation (Clarendon Press, 1911). (c) Social.-Shakespeare's Englaná (2 vols., Clarendon Press, 1917).-WILSON, J. Dover: Life in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1911).

Glossaries, etc.-ABBOT, E. A.: A Shakespearian Grammar (Macmillan, 1870).-ONIONS, C. T.: A Shakespeare Glossary (Clarendon Press, 1911).—BARTLETT, J.: Concordance to Shakespeare (Macmillan, 1910).

Facsimiles. First Folio (Clarendon Press, 1902; Methuen, 1905); Poems (Clarendon Press, 1905); Quartos, ed. F. J. Furnivall and W. Griggs (43 vols., Quaritch, 1881-91).

CHAPTER 4. BEN JONSON, CHAPMAN, MARSTON, AND DEKKER

Jonson's Comedy of Humours: Every Man in his Humour; Every Man out of his
Humour Satire: The Poetaster-Popular Comedy: Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist,
Bartholomew Fair-Tragedy: Sejanus, Catiline-Masques and Pastoral Drama-
Poems and Prose Works-Chapman-Marston-Dekker

BEN JONSON (1573-1637)

Ben Jonson (or Johnson, as he more frequently spelt the name) was of Scottish extraction, and was born at Westminster in 1573. His father had been deprived of his estate during the reign of Mary, and had become a minister after that queen's death; he died about a month before the dramatist came into existence. His widow married again, a bricklayer, whose name is said to have been Fowler; and it was in the bricklayer's home in Hartshorne Lane, near Charing Cross, that Ben's childhood was spent. From the sneers of some of his enemies we gather that Ben learned his stepfather's trade. About 1593 he gave up bricklaying and enlisted in the English army, then serving in Flanders: there, as he told Drummond of Hawthornden, he slew an enemy in single combat and carried off his arms in the presence of both armies. The fearless pugnacity thus indicated was characteristic of him throughout his life. His military career was short, and he returned to London-possibly for a while to bricklaying; but not long afterwards he must have become connected with the stage. Every Man in his Humour was acted in 1598, and that play is so mature a production as to suggest a good deal of experience in stage matters. Like Shakespeare, he is supposed to have served his apprenticeship as an actor, but without any real success. His appearance seems to have been against him. He probably touched up old plays and collaborated on new ones, now lost. By 1597 he had become sufficiently well known to be engaged on a commission for Henslowe, the owner of the Rose Theatre—a commission which apparently he did not carry out. About this time he mortally wounded a fellow-actor in a duel, and had to stand his trial at the Old Bailey on the charge of murder. While in prison, Jonson is said to have become a Roman Catholic, through the intervention of a priest who visited him; he was suspected of sharing in a Popish conspiracy, and was watched by spies; and it was some time before he obtained release.

Jonson's quarrelsome proclivities drew him during the next three years into a violent quarrel with some of his fellow-playwrights and satirists, Dekker, Marston, and Chapman. It was probably about 1605 that the famous meetings at the Mermaid tavern commenced, with their jovial good fellowship and their celebrated wit combats. The accession of James I. was a fortunate event for Jonson; he

became a favourite with the king from the first, and during the whole of his reign was continuously employed in the production of court entertainments, and enjoyed his highest prosperity. In 1605 he seems to have been employed by the court in some mysterious business connected with the Gunpowder Plot. At this time he was still a Catholic, and remained so for some four or five years more.

During the next five years (1605-10) he continued to write masques for the court and other patrons; but he did

not neglect the public, and Volpone, produced at the Globe in 1605, was one of his greatest popular triumphs; he was almost as successful in Epicene (1609) and The Alchemist (1610), the latter of which represents the climax of his genius in comedy: in 1614 he again made a hit at the Hope Theatre, Bankside, with the lively and amusing comedy of Bartholomew Fair. Meanwhile, he had become acquainted at the Mermaid with Sir Walter Raleigh, whom he assisted with his History of the World, and whose son he accompanied to Paris in 1613. Young Raleigh seems to have given his tutor a lively time, and to have taken advantage of his convivial habits to play absurd practical jokes upon him.

One more comedy, The Devil is an Ass (1616), together with a number of masques, completes the tale of Ben's work during the rest of James I.'s reign. In 1618 he set out on foot to visit Scotland, and during one month of the ensuing winter was the guest of the poet Drummond of Hawthornden. Drummond afterwards published in his Conversations an account of this visit, recording many of the chief confidences of his guest, which dealt with his private life, his trenchant opinions, and his personal habits. This record does not show Ben in a very favourable light-unintentionally on Drummond's part, no doubt; and Ben's own notes and impressions were unfortunately lost when his library was burnt. In 1621 the King granted him the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, with a pension.

The year 1625. in which King James died, was a disastrous turning-point in