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

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

THE SHAKESPEARE MYSTERY

THE BATH

SACCHARISSA MELLASYS

I. THE HERO

II. THE HEROINE

III. THE SUNNY SOUTH

MY ODD ADVENTURE WITH JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH

MY OUT-DOOR STUDY

A SERMON IN A STONE

AGNES OF SORRENTO

CHAPTER X. THE INTERVIEW

CHAPTER XI. THE CONFESSIONAL

THE AQUARIUM

THE YOUNG REPEALER

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER

"UNDER THE CLOUD AND THROUGH THE SEA."

JOURNAL OF A PRIVATEERSMAN

THE ADVANTAGES OF DEFEAT

ODE TO HAPPINESS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

Отрывок из книги

In 1853 there went up a jubilant cry from many voices upon the publication of Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from Early Manuscript Corrections," etc. "Now," it was said, "doubt and controversy are at an end. The text is settled by the weight of authority, and in accordance with common sense. We shall enjoy our Shakespeare in peace and quiet." Hopeless ignorance of Shakespeare-loving nature! The shout of rejoicing had hardly been uttered before there arose a counter cry of warning and defiance from a few resolute lips, which, swelling, mouth by mouth, as attention was aroused and conviction strengthened, has overwhelmed the other, now sunk into a feeble apologetic plea. The dispute upon the marginal readings in this notorious volume, as to their intrinsic value and their pretence to authority upon internal evidence, has ended in the rejection of nearly all of the few which are known to be peculiar to it, and the conclusion against any semblance of such authority. The investigation of the external evidence of their genuineness, though it has not been quite so satisfactory upon all points, has brought to light so many suspicious circumstances connected with Mr. Collier's production of them before the public, that they must be regarded as unsupported by the moral weight of good faith in the only person who is responsible for them.

Since our previous article upon this subject,1 nothing has appeared upon it in this country; but several important publications have been made in London concerning it; and, in fact, this department of Shakespearian literature threatens to usurp a special shelf in the dramatic library. The British Museum has fairly entered the field, not only in the persons of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Maskelyne, but in that of Sir Frederic Madden himself, the head of its Manuscript Department, and one of the very first paleographers of the age; Mr. Collier has made a formal reply; the Department of Public Records has spoken through Mr. Duffus Hardy; the "Edinburgh Review" has taken up the controversy on one side and "Fraser's Magazine" on the other; the London "Critic" has kept up a galling fire on Mr. Collier, his folio, and his friends, to which the "Athenaeum" has replied by an occasional shot, red-hot; the author of "Literary Cookery," (said to be Mr. Arthur Edmund Brae,) a well-read, ingenious, caustic, and remorseless writer, whose first book was suppressed as libellous, has returned to the charge, and not less effectively because more temperately; and finally an LL.D., Mansfield Ingleby, of Trinity College, Cambridge, comes forward with a "Complete View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives, what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally with candor. Its view, however, is from the stand-point of uncompromising hostility to Mr. Collier, and its spirit not unlike that with which a man might set out to exterminate vermin.2

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but, doubtful as to this at first, (for we regard the interrogation-point as a query to himself, and not as indicating the insertion of that point after "Dost thou hear,") he finally came to the conclusion, that, although he, and many a respectable poet, might have written "begging" in this passage, Shakespeare was just the man to write "pregnant,"—an instance of critical sagacity of which he has left us few examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare (8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "begging hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe, with the publication of the "Poetical Decameron," in 1820, shown rather the faithfulness, the patience, and the judgment of a literary antiquary, than the insight, the powers of comparison, the sensibility, and the constructive ingenuity of a literary critic. And one of the great improbabilities against his authorship of all the corrections in his folio is, that it is not according to Nature that so late in life he should develop the constructive ability necessary for the production of many of its specious and ingenious, though inadmissible, original readings.

We see, then, no way of avoiding the conclusion that this notorious folio was first submitted to erasure for stage purposes; that afterward, at some time between 1650 and 1675, it was carefully corrected for the press with the view to the publication of a new edition; and that finally it fell into the hands of Mr. Collier, who, either alone or by the aid of an accomplice, introduced other readings upon its margins, for the purpose of obtaining for them the same deference which he supposed those already there would receive for their antiquity. Either this is true, or Mr. Collier is the victim of a mysterious and marvellously successful conspiracy; and by his own unwise and unaccountable conduct—to use no harsher terms—has aided the plans of his enemies.

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