SHAKSPEREAN STATISTICS, BY H. T. HALL. "Shall we not believe books in print." Beaumont and Fletcher's" The Night Walker," CAMBRIDGE: PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY H. WALLIS, 1865. Price, Sixpence. SHAKSPEREAN STATISTICS. THESE statistics have been chiefly derived from the article Shakspere, to be found in Bohn's edition of Lowndes' Bibliographer's Manual, from Halliwell and Wilson's Shaksperianas, and from an article which appeared in the Athenæum during the year 1864. They have been compiled, not to serve the purpose of the book-hunter, for the monetary value of none of the books are given, but they have been compiled for the use of the general reader, to show, by the number of editions, the immense popularity of Shakspere's writings. But few persons are aware of the numerous editions which have been published, the number of works written upon Shakspere, and the extent and variety of languages in which his works have been translated. The following statistics will give the desired information upon each and all of these points; the number of editions being brought down to the close of the year 1864, and the numerous works published during that year have been added to the number of Shaksperiana. No fairer way can be devised of judging of an author's popularity, than by taking the number of editions which have been published of his works, and the works which have appeared, seeking critically to explain and illustrate the meaning of his writings. If this test is B applied to Shakspere, we shall find him above all other authors. Supreme amongst human kind stands the Titan of Stratford. Not only in his own country, but in almost all European languages, and even in some of the Eastern have a part of his works been translated. The notion that Shakspere was not highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and that his works were not popular, has happily, long been an exploded one. There was no dramatic writer of his time that in any way approached his popularity; no other writer's works were to be so frequently seen upon the stage as those of Shakspere. He appears to have been in his own period the "be all and the end all," the "one bright particular star," the "observed of all observers," the "glass of fashion," in fact, a Colossus bestriding this 66 narrow world" of ours. During his life seventeen of his plays were published, some of them running through several editions. His poems of Venus and Adonis, the Sonnets, the Rape of Lucrece, and the Passionate Pilgrim met with the same results. So early as 1591, he is alluded to by Edmund Spenser, in his poem of The Tears of the Muses, in the lines "And he, the man whom Nature's self had made In 1592, he is alluded to in Robert Greene's pamphlet, A Groat's worth of wit, bought with a million of repentance. It is addressed to Marlowe, Lodge and Peele, three of his old acquaintances. "Base minded men, all three of you, if by my misery yee bee not warned; for unto none of you (like me) sought these burs to cleave; those puppets (I meane) that spake from their mouths, those anticks garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I to whom they have all been beholding; is it not like that you to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart wrapt in a player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum is in his own conceyte the only Shake-scene in a country." The apology of Chettle, who edited the posthumous works of Greene, in which this spiteful effusion was contained, serves to show the popularity of Shakspere. He says, in his preface to the Kind Heart's Dream, "how I have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the bitter envying against schollers, it hath been well knowne; and how in that I dealt I can sufficiently proove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be: the other whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had for that, as I have moderated the heate of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, especially in such a case, the author being dead. That I did not, I am as sorry as if the originall fault had been my fault, because myselfe have seene his demeanour no less civill than he excellent in the qualitie he professes; Besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty and his facetious grace in writting that approves his art." |