Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861

Of these four hundred and twenty-six marginal changes, a very large proportion, quite one-half, and we should think more, are mere insignificant literal changes or additions, such as an editor in supervising manuscript, or an author in reading proof, passes over, and leaves to the proof-readers of the printing-office, by whom they are called "literals," we believe. Such are the change of " Whon yond same starre" to " When yond," etc.; " Looke it not like the king" to " Lookes it," etc.; "He smot the sledded Polax" to "He smote ," etc.; " Heaven will direct it" to " Heavens will," etc.; "list, Hamle , list," to "list, Hamlet , list"; "the Mornings Ayre" to "the Morning Ayre"; "My Liege and Madrm " to "My Liege and Madam "; " locke of Wit" to " lacke of Wit"; "both our judgement joyne" to "both our judgements joyne"; "my convseration " to "my conversation "; "the strucken Deere" to "the stricken Deere"; " Requit him for your Father" to " Requite him," etc.; "I'll anoiot my sword" to "I'll anoint " etc.; "the gringding of the Axe" to "the grinding " etc. To corrections like these the alleged forger must have devoted more than half his time; and if the thirty-one pages that "Hamlet" fills in the folio furnish us a fair sample of the whole of the forger's labors, 36 36 Dr. Ingleby says,—"The collations of that single play are a perfect picture of the contents of the original, and a just sample of the other plays in that volume."— Complete View , p. 131. we have the enormous sum of six thousand four hundred, and over, of such utterly useless changes upon the nine hundred pages of that volume. Such another laborious scoundrel, who labored for the labor's sake, the world surely never saw!

But among these marginal changes in "Hamlet," a large number present a very striking and significant peculiarity,—a peculiarity which was noticed in our previous article as characterizing other marginal changes in the same volume, and which it is impossible to reconcile with the purpose of a forger who knew enough to make the body of the corrections on these margins, and who meant to obtain authority for them as being, in the words of Mr. Collier, "Early Manuscript Corrections in the Folio of 1632." That peculiarity is a modernization of the text absolutely fatal to the "early" pretensions of the readings; and it appears in the regulation of the loose spelling prevalent at the publication of this folio, and for many years after, by the standard of the more regular and approximately analogous fashion of a later period, and also in the establishment of grammatical concords, which, entirely disregarded in the former period, were observed by well-educated people in the latter.

Thus we find "He smot " changed to "He smote "; "Some sayes " to "Some say "; " veyled lids" to " vayled lids"; " Seemes to me all the uses" to " Seem to me all the uses"; "It lifted up it head" to "It lifted up its head"; " dreins his draughts" to " drains his draughts"; "fast in fiers " to "fast in fires "; "a vild phrase, beautified is a vild phrase," to "a vile phrase, beautified is a vile phrase"; "How in my words somever she be shent" to "How in my words soever ," etc.; " currants of this world" to " currents ," etc.; "theres matters " to "theres matter "; "like some oare " to "like some ore "; "this vilde deed" to "this vile deed"; "a sword unbaited " to "a sword unbated "; "a stoape liquor" to "a stoop liquor"; and "the stopes of wine" to "the stoopes of wine." Of corrections like these we have discovered twenty-eight among the collations of "Hamlet" alone, and there are probably more. We may safely assume that in this respect "Hamlet" fairly represents the other plays in Mr. Collier's folio; for we have not only Dr. Ingleby's assurance that it is a "just sample" of the volume, but in the four octavo sheets of fac-similes privately printed by Mr. Collier we find these instances of like corrections: " Betide to any creature" to " Betid ," etc.; " Wreaking as little" to " Wrecking as little"; "painted cloathes " to "painted clothes "; "words that shakes " to "words that shake ." Twenty-eight such corrections for the thirty-one pages of "Hamlet" give us about eight hundred and fifty for the nine hundred pages of the whole volume,—eight hundred and fifty instances in which the alleged forger, who wished to obtain for his supposed fabrication the consideration due to antiquity, modernized the text, though he obtained thereby only a change of form, and not a single new reading, in any sense of the term!

We turn to kindred evidence in the stage-directions. In "Love's Labor's Lost," Act IV., Sc. 3, when Birone conceals himself from the King, the stage-direction in the folio of 1632, as well as in that of 1623, is " He stands aside ." But in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632 this is changed to " He climbs a tree ," and he is afterward directed to speak " in the tree ." So again in "Much Ado about Nothing," Act II., Sc. 3, there is a MS. stage-direction to the effect that Benedick, when he hides "in the arbour," " Retires behind the trees ." Now as this use of scenery did not obtain until after the Restoration, these stage-directions manifestly could not have been written until after that period. Upon this point—which was first made in "Putnam's Magazine" for October, 1853, in the article "The Text of Shakespeare: Mr. Collier's Corrected Folio of 1632,"—Mr. Halliwell says (fol. Shak. Vol. IV. p. 340) that the writer of that article "fairly adduces these MS. directions as incontestable evidences of the late period of the writing in that volume, 'practicable' trees certainly not having been introduced on the English stage until after the Restoration." See, too, in the following passage from "The Noble Stranger," by Lewis Sharpe, London, 1640, direct evidence as to the stage customs in London, eight years after the publication of Mr. Collier's folio, in situations like those of Birone and Benedick:—

But no man in the world knows the ancient customs of the English stage better than Mr. Collier,—we may even say, so well, and pay no undue compliment to the historian of that stage; 37 37 The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration . By J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831. and though he might easily, in the eagerness of discovery, overlook the bearing of such stage-directions as those in question, will it be believed, by any one not brimful of blinding prejudice, that, in attempting the imposition with which he is charged, and in forging in a copy of the folio of 1632 notes and emendations for which he claimed deference because they were, in his own words, "in a handwriting not much later than the time when it came from the press," he deliberately wrote in these stage-directions, which in any case added nothing to the reader's information, and which he, of all men, knew would prove that his volume was not entitled to the credit he was laboring to obtain for it?

Again, Mr. Hamilton's collations of "Hamlet" show that no less than thirty-six passages have been erased from that play in this folio. These erased passages are from a few insignificant words to fifty lines in extent They include lines like these in Act I., Sc. 2:—