An Introduction to ShakespeareMacCracken, H. N. (Henry Noble)
General
An Introduction to Shakespeare
MacCracken, H. N. (Henry Noble)
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Five more Shakespearean quartos followed between 1634 and 1639.
Between 1652 and 1655 two other {125} quartos were published. The
Third Folio, 1664, was published by Philip Chetwind, who had married
the widow of Robert Allott and thus got most of the rights in the
Second Folio. Chetwind's Folio is famous, not only for the addition of
_Pericles_, which alone it was his first intention to include, but also
for the addition of six spurious plays--_Sir John Oldcastle, The
Yorkshire Tragedie, A London Prodigall, The Tragedie of Locrine,
Thomas, Lord Cromwell_, and _The Puritaine_, or _The Widdow of Watling
Streete_. Chetwind's reason for thus adding these plays was that they
had passed under Shakespeare's name or initials in their earliest
prints. The Fourth Folio, 1685, is a mere reprint of the Third.
With the Fourth Folio ends the early history of how Shakespeare got
into print. From that time to this a long line of famous and obscure
men, at first mostly men of letters, but afterwards, and especially in
our own times, trained specialists in their profession, have devoted
much of their lives to the editing of Shakespeare. Their ideal has
been, usually, to give readers the text of his poems and plays in their
presumed primitive integrity. Constant study of his works, and of
other Elizabethan writers, has given them a certain knowledge of the
words and grammatical usages of that day which go far to make
Elizabethan English a foreign tongue to us. On the other hand, more
knowledge about the conditions of printing in Shakespeare's time has
helped the editors very greatly in their attempts to set right a
passage which was misprinted in the earliest printed text, or a line of
which two early texts give different versions.
{126}
An example of the difficulties that still confront editors may be given
from _II Henry IV_, IV, i, 94-96:--
"_Archbishop_. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born, an household cruelty.
I make my quarrel in particular."
Nobody knows what Shakespeare meant to say in this passage, and no
satisfactory guess has ever been made as to what has happened to these
lines.
A knowledge of Elizabethan English has cleared up the following passage
perfectly. According to the First Folio, the only early print, Antony
calls Lepidus, in _Julius Caesar_, IV, i, 36-37:--
"A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations...."
This has been corrected to read in the second line
"On abjects, orts, and imitations."
Abjects here means outcasts, and orts, scraps, or leavings; but no one
unfamiliar with the language of that time could have solved the puzzle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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